I’ve been making blackout poems for several years now. I was inspired by Austin Kleon to explore the practice: his first book was a collection of blackout poetry he created from newspaper columns.
My go-to source is old secondhand books that I think nobody will miss, which is why observers may note a yellow-ish quality to the pages at times when I post them here or on Instagram. I just choose one off a shelf of books declared free to take and slowly work through them with a large black Sharpie marker.
Kleon’s approach to creating these poems is a little more precise and careful than mine. He circles or underlines words and phrases that he finds interesting and then finds connections between them. I rarely circle or underline, preferring instead to just eyeball things that stand out and follow where they might lead. Sometimes it ends up being a pretty straightforward sentence, and at other times the result is more indirect, quirky, or playful.
I usually just post one at a time on here, but this time I decided to just share a whole bunch of recent creations. Maybe they’ll inspire you to give this a try as well.
Jeffrey A. Nelson 