How to get started with Blackout Poetry at home?

1. Choose a piece of preprinted text. This can be anything you choose copied or scanned text from a book, a piece of newspaper, a magazine, a printed-out article, or even a recipe or printed-out short story. The key is having a piece of printed text.
2. Skim over the text in front of you.
3. Pick words that hold meaning for you. You want to look for an anchor word. An anchor word will help you select your theme.
4. Now read the text in its entirety. You may need to do this a couple of times. You will be creating a new work from this page of text.
5. Go through and choose your words by lightly circling them with a pencil or writing them on a separate sheet of paper.
6. Read your words.
7. Look for words that connect to your page.
8. Finalize your new message by outlining the selected words.
9. Go over the outlined words with Sharpie or a black marker.
10. Black out the unused words or don't. The key is to make the new text pop. Illustrate as you like or just leave it black and white
11. You have now given your page of text a whole new meaning and created a found poem!!

Check out student work from our Blackout Poetry Workshop in the Prestonsburg campus library for English classes last week!

Remember if you are on campus to stop by the Prestonsburg Campus library to pick up a pocket poem.