Day 13 - Ready. Steady, Write

Hihghlighter and blackout poetry…

Highlighter or cut-up poetry

Highlighter or cut-up poetry is another kind of ‘found’ poetry. This time you just use text that you find and, instead of using all of it, you select random words and phrases and play around with them until you’ve created something new. 

Try this

For this exercise, you’ll need some text that it’s ok to play around with. You might choose an old newspaper or magazine article or some junk mail that has come through the post. You could also pick a song, poem or story and print it off using a computer. 

Next, get a highlighter pen (or a pair of scissors) and select a random selection of words or phrases. Don’t think too hard about it, just let your subconscious choose the words that appeal.

Now try to write a new poem, using the highlighted or cut out words. If you’ve cut words out, you could rearrange them on a new piece of paper and glue them down when you’re happy with what you’ve written. 

Blackout Poetry

Blackout poetry is kind of the opposite of highlighter poetry. As the name suggests, we create blackout poetry by blacking out a proportion of text, leaving just a few words behind to tell a new story. 

Try this

Find a piece of text that it’s ok to deface and a felt tip pen. it doesn’t have to be a black pen but you need something dark enough to block out the words. You could use a newspaper or magazine article or you could use pages from an old book from a charity shop. 

Take your pen and scrub out the words you don’t want to use and see if you can reveal a poem or story in the words that are left behind. This time you might like to think quite carefully before you begin to make sure your poem makes sense.