Start with a book. Keep in mind that you’ll be using black marker on this book, so be sure to pick one that you can enthusiastically, purposefully deface without the action feeling like a physical ache. It can be an old, spare copy of a book you like, or a random encyclopedia you got at a thrift store for a quarter. It just needs words on pages. Got it?

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Okay. Next step.

 

Find a page that has some interesting words. You don’t have to read the book all the way through - skim for standout lines or phrases. The page doesn’t have to be home to a pivotal scene in the book to be “right” for your blackout poetry project - actually, it can be a lot of fun to pick what initially appears to be an unextraordinary page. With your black marker - yes, I know it sounds like a Disney cliche, but bear with me - it’s your imagination that matters. Once you’ve picked a page, go through with a pencil and circle words that strike you, words that could work in concert as a poem. Read from left to right and top-to-bottom (as usual) because this is the order that readers of your blackout poem will visually interpret your work. Be creative!

 

Lastly: go through the page with your black marker and ink out all the words except the ones you’ve circled. When you write a traditional poem, you’re not inventing a new language, you’re drawing on words you know and arranging them in innovative, illuminating ways. Think of blackout poetry as a more restrictive version of that. Instead of all the words you’ve ever known, the tools at your disposal are just the words on the page and the marker in your hand. What do you keep? What is inked over into illegible oblivion? The poem is built by the words you leave visible, and shaped by the ones you leave out. Take some time to look at these examples below, created by one of CreativiTea’s founders, Emily Fisher! Get inspired, then give your own blackout poetry project a shot!