Poetry Pals - Week 14 - Blackout Poetry

Making a poem out of prewritten text by blacking out words not needed

Hello people,

This week over at

Poetry Pals

Nelly had us looking at blackout poetry. And I think I’m beginning to dislike her 😂 . It was far too difficult. So

Nelly Bryce

my existential angst this week is all your fault 😜.

Our task…

Your writing prompt for this week: is to write a blackout or erasure poem.

Now yes, and that all sounded nice and simple and I really fancied trying some art work in conjunction too. Did that happen? No, it bloody didn’t. I spent hours looking for a text I could use. Nothing sparked interest. I had an old copy of The Water Babies falling apart and in need of repurposing, beautiful pictures but not an ounce of spark. No joy at all. I looked at some classics. Raided my Kindle stash, looked at Alice Walker, Jane Austin, even botanical texts. Nada. Not a sausage. I thought it would be simple task, oh but life decided I needed taking down a peg or two. “Get back to worrying about whether you are capable of being a poet or writer.”

It took days and days, and normally by this late on a Thursday I’ve written 3 or 4 poems, even if some of them are rubbish, and had this post all lined up and scheduled to publish tomorrow morning sometime. I’ve only just finished this one. And this is the only one I managed.

I did actually print out the page and use a sharpie to black out the words and then blackened the black in photoshop as too many of the words were bleeding through.

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On being Autistic

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Maybe this Sunday’s task will be more to my liking.

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