Blackout Poetry

3 blackout poems

Nov 29, 2024

There was a recent call for blackout poetry so I created three poems from a 1968 Time Life book, “Recipes: The Cooking of Italy.” I found this book at a recent estate sale. I love going to estate sales around L.A. - for books, mostly. The more banged up the book, the better. If it’s falling apart anyway, I can feel good about repurposing it for art.

What I like about Blackout poetry is, it helps me slow down. I need to take it slow in order to do the blacking out and read it after.

Blackout poetry's roots go back to the idea of found poetry, which has been around for ages. Found poetry is about taking words or phrases from other sources and arranging them into a new work of art.

Blackout poetry, specifically, became more popular thanks to

Austin Kleon

, a writer and artist who made it trend with his book Newspaper Blackout. He took pages from newspapers, crossed out words, and turned the leftovers into these moody, minimalist poems. (I love him, BTW, you might want to follow him!)

Back in the day, Dadaists and Surrealists in the early 20th century played around with cutting up texts and rearranging them to make new works. Blackout poetry is kind of like a modern, sharpie-fueled descendant of that movement.