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How to Write a Blackout Poem: Step-by-Step Guide

A blackout poem is made from a page that already has words on it: a newspaper column, a photocopied book page, an old letter. You keep a handful of those words and ink out everything else. Nothing is invented, so the work sits in the choosing, and a finished poem usually takes about twenty minutes with a page, a pencil and a marker. This guide walks through the seven decisions in order, then shows how to revise the result.

What a Blackout Poem Is

Blackout poetry is also called erasure poetry. The source page was written for another purpose, and the reader's eye travels from one surviving word to the next, so the blacked-out space does the work that white space does in an ordinary poem: it sets the pace and creates the silences. Because the words arrive in the order the page gave them, the poem often reads as found rather than composed.

The form shares a habit with free verse: both depend on where the line ends. Here the original page has already broken the text into lines and columns, and your job is to cut the noise around them.

Step 1: Choose the Source Text

Pick a page dense enough to hide several good phrases in. A newspaper column, a page of a novel, a textbook page, a printed email, a photocopy of a diary entry — all work. Thin text, such as a poem with wide margins or a poster with a dozen words, gives you too little to choose from and rarely carries a whole poem.

If you plan to share or publish what you make, use text you wrote yourself or text that is free to reuse, and name the source when you show the poem. Second-hand paperbacks, public-domain books and your own unpublished drafts are the usual places to look.

Step 2: Circle the Anchor Words

Now work with a pencil and circle single words, pairs or short phrases that could carry the poem. Aim for somewhere between three and twelve circles, spread down the column rather than bunched at the top, because a poem has to travel from one place to another. Nothing is final yet, and circles can be rubbed out.

Three tests sort the strong candidates from the weak ones:

• Is it concrete? Smoke, gate, Tuesday survive. Realisation and inevitability usually do not.
• Does it move? Prefer verbs and nouns to adjectives. Two strong verbs beat four decorative ones.
• Can it stand alone? A word that needs the rest of its sentence to make sense will look orphaned on the finished page.

Step 3: Read Only the Circles, in Order

Cover the rest of the page with your hand and read your circled words aloud, top to bottom, exactly in the order the page put them. This is the first time you hear the poem. Most selections fail on the first pass, and that is information rather than a setback.

Listen for three things. Does the sequence say something, even loosely? Does any word pull the meaning somewhere you do not want to go? Is there a line that only works if you add a word you never circled? Mark the gaps and return to Step 2. Two or three rounds of circling and reading is normal, and the second selection is usually better than the first.

Step 4: Decide the Line Breaks

You can break your selection three ways: at the end of each source line, at the punctuation of the original sentence, or wherever a new thought begins. Try one arrangement and then read it a different way before you commit, because the break decides the pause, and the pause decides the emphasis. The break-swap drill in our poetry writing exercises trains the same decision on your own drafts.

Source line: The bus was late again and the streetlights flickered on without warning. Kept: bus late streetlights on without warning

The three kept fragments hold the facts of the sentence and drop the connective tissue, so the poem moves in jumps instead of a straight line.

Step 5: Black Out Everything Else

Use a marker, a brush pen, correction tape, paint or a blunt pencil, whichever gives the texture you want. Work in one direction with steady strokes so the covered area reads as a single block, and let the ink bleed a little if the paper is thin, since the bleed is part of the look. Cover every word you did not choose, including the ones that seem harmless: a stray actually left visible changes how the line reads.

Two options stay open here. Solid black pushes the eye at the surviving words. A pattern that leaves faint texture softens the page but competes with them.

Step 6: Treat the Black Space as Design

Once the ink is down, the page is a picture as well as a text. Decide what the reader sees first: a single word isolated on white, a heavy column that funnels the eye downwards, a last paragraph left untouched. You can black the margins so the words sit in a bright window, or leave one clear band to give the poem an ending.

How to Revise a Blackout Poem

Revise on a photocopy or a second print of the page. Take your finished poem and try three changes, one at a time: remove one circle, add one circle, and move the break before the final line. Read each version aloud and keep the one that lands hardest. If the poem needs a title, write it after the ink is dry, and keep the title short.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a blackout poem?

A blackout poem is made by taking an existing page of text, choosing a small number of words from it, and covering the rest with ink or paint. The chosen words become the poem and the covered text becomes the visual field around it. The form is also called erasure poetry.

Can I make a blackout poem on a screen?

Yes. Open the page in a document or drawing app and place solid black shapes over the text you are not keeping. A screen version is easier to undo, while paper gives you the texture of a real marker, so plenty of people draft on screen and make a final paper copy.

Am I allowed to add words of my own?

You can, but the result is no longer a strict blackout poem. The form keeps the source words and adds nothing except a title, whereas adding new lines makes a collage. Pick one convention before you start and stay with it.

How long should a blackout poem be?

Most work well between five and fifteen kept words. Fewer than five and the poem has nothing to argue with; more than twenty and the black page stops shaping the reading, at which point you may as well have written on a blank sheet.

What if the page has no good words?

Set that page aside and choose another. Not every column yields a poem, and the supply of pages is endless, so there is no reason to force one. Keep the discarded pages, because a line that fails today often works inside a different selection later.