Let's Make Beautiful Stuff Together Week 5
Erasures
THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 2023
My erasure generated in this week’s workshop
Well, it was our last week together, and we saved erasures for this session. We gathered up a few newspapers and books that we could rip pages out of, some black markers and whiteout pens, looked at some examples of erasures, and then dove in.
Poems of the Week
Tracy K. Smith’s “Declaration” derived from The Declaration of Independence from her book, Wade in the Water.
Excerpt from Mary Ruefle’s Little White Shadow
Jessica Farquhar, “Like Treen,” published in Diagram
Austin Kleon’s Newspaper Blackout Poems
Generative exercise of the week: Erasure/Blackout poetry
Choose your source text and either a dark marker or whiteout pen.
Without reading or absorbing the text’s meaning, scan the page for interesting words, repetitions, images, juxtapositions, etc. - the things that make poetry interesting and exciting to you!
Now take into account the visual aspects and readability. Select the sequence of words that works on some level to make poetic logic but also lays out nicely on the page. Outline them with pen or pencil then blackout or whiteout everything else.
How will you title it?
That’s a wrap with this fun group making beautiful stuff together. Subscribe (for free) if you want access to the archives where I’ve been posting these poems and exercises every week and to continue to get updates from my poet-brain.