Blackout Poetry 101

I've been teaching a workshops in my hometown of Grand Forks, North Dakota for a few years now and I've got one coming up at the Grand Forks Public Library. In honor of National Poetry Month, I'm teaching a mixed media blackout poetry class! 

Not familiar with blackout poetry? Essentially, you create a "poem" by blacking out words on a book page, leaving behind a specific selection of words. 

Here are some examples of my blackout poetry, which I also pair with artwork: 

RISE

LIMITLESS AND STRONG

WILD FOLK

So how do you go about finding a blackout poem? It can be a little more challenging than you'd believe. I'm going to break it down into simple steps. 

STEP 1: FIND A BOOK

I did say simple, right? 

When I first began creating blackout poetry artwork, I thought I'd go through every single page in the Odyssey and create a poem per page - sort of an epic tribute to a, well... epic poem. :) 

But it quickly became apparent that. not every page holds a poem (or at least not a poem that appeals to me, personally). 

Which brings me to 

STEP 2: FIND AN INTERESTING PHRASE ON A PAGE AND CIRCLE IT LIGHTLY IN PENCIL

I found the phrase "than a woman who imagines" and circled it lightly (more on that later) in pencil. Most of my artwork involves strong, female-centric themes, so I was specifically drawn to that phrase. 

STEP 3: START BUILDING YOUR POEM

Once you have your phrase, start building your poem by looking for other things that might complete the phrase or sentence. It's important as you're looking that you skim over the words and don't read full sentences of the book, or you'll start to get really sidetracked, really fast (at least if you're me). 

As I was building this poem, I thought, for a woman who imagines WHAT? and built "than a woman who imagines herself and all womankind" 

and all womankind WHAT?

Later on the page I found the word "wondrous". 

STEP 4: KEEP ADDING WORDS
AND ERASE WHERE NECESSARY

So. I had the latter part of my poem built "Than a woman who imagines herself and all womankind wondrous" but I had nothing to start my poem. I thought maybe I could build something along the lines of "There is nothing stronger than a woman who imagines herself and all womankind wondrous".

When you're working with a book page, however,
not all the words you're hoping for are going to
magically appear on the page. 

So I came across the words "the voice of" but that didn't pair with "than a woman who". To pair it correctly I need to erase the "than" from my phrase. Now I had something that worked "the voice of a woman who". 

As I searched for verbs that could begin my phrase, I found three and lightly circled them. "raising" "fighting" and "raised". 

Then, I looked for my bridge and found "with" which told me that I knew I needed to go with "fighting" because it was the only word that made sense. 

STEP 5: ERASE ALL UNNECESSARY WORDS AND HEAVILY BOX IN YOUR FINAL POEM

 My final poem reads "Fighting with the voice of a woman who imagines herself and all womankind wondrous". 

Pretty marvelous huh? 

Poems can be short or long. They can span the whole page or just part of it - the creativity is yours. 

For those here who are taking my class and finding this intimidating - have no fear! I will have a selection of poems for you to choose from, if you don't want to create your own. :) 

Happy creating!

Inspiring Blackout Poetry - Visible Image

Do you hear that?
If you listen really closely, no matter where you are in the world, you can hear the sound of my happy dancing. 

Why? Because it's my very first post as an official member of the Visible Image design team and I am over-the-moon excited to show you what I made with their stunning products. 

I've shared my love of blackout poetry a couple of times through my blog, though mostly share these pieces on my Instagram account. 

But when I got my inky hands on the Face It! set from Visible, I couldn't help but to want to make a blackout poetry set. Drawing eyes and mouths are my least favorite thing, so it makes me sooooo happy to finally have a fool-prove face-making method! 

If you're unfamiliar with blackout poetry, let me explain. To create a blackout poem, you find a phrase or "poem" you want to highlight using the words on a book page (in this case, I'm using Homer's "The Odyssey"). Finding the right phrase can be a lot trickier than it looks! 

Once you've identified your words, scribble around them to make them pop out. 

Once I had my poem, I used my Misti to stamp eyes, nose and lips. 

Kind of creepy to have a face staring out at me from my Misti. :) 

Next, I used the Strobes stencil and inked it up with a black pen and outlined where the rest of my drawing would go. 

I sprinkled the sunburst with yellow and orange Ken Oliver Color Burst crystals and used a very, very slightly damp brush to spread the color. You don't want to use too much water because the pages of books are very thin and they will warp easily. 

I painted up an abstract flower hairpiece using a variety of purple paints and white gesso.

I painted her hair with colorburst crystals, and added detailing to the facial features. 

The whole blackout poem reads:

"All that dwelt around were
Fettered
Of Heart
But
She
Threatened to Raise
The Sky"

I hope you love my project today! Make sure to stop by Visible Image's blog for some awesome inspiration from the rest of the VERY talented design team! 

Blackout Poetry Card

I've been playing around with making blackout poetry (I've got a few samples of my work posted to Instagram) and had a custom request to put one of my designs onto a card. So I'm just popping in quickly to share the result with you since I think it's pretty neat. 

If you're not familiar with blackout poetry, it's made by taking a page of a book and finding a "poem" or phrase within the page by blacking out the rest of the letters. 

This poem reads:
"She no longer grappled with the lessons set before her and she yielded to none"

I blacked out the woman's silhouette using a sharpie and the shimmery blue background was made with InkaGold. 

I'm going to link my card up to:
613 Avenue Create - Anything Goes
We Love 2 Create - Anything Creative/Mixed Media Goes