Found & Blackout
Poetry
How-To
Blackout & Found Poetry
 Found poetry is a type of poetry created by
taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole
passages from other sources and reframing them
as poetry (a literary equivalent of a collage) by
making changes in spacing and lines, or by
adding or deleting text, thus imparting new
meaning.
 A blackout poem is when a poet takes a marker
(usually black marker) to already established
text–like in a newspaper–and starts redacting
words until a poem is formed.
 You will choose ONE to create for your portfolio.
Assignment:
 Look for several sources you might use for your
found or blackout poem.
 Photocopy any books you cannot deconstruct.
 Found Poetry will require you to cut out words.
Look for photos, bockgrounds, colors, or images
that can help add meaning to your poem,
 Blackout Poetry will require you to use the text to
create a visual poem or illustrations. Think about
colors or markers and patterns you could create,
as well as positive and negative space.
Found Poetry: A Language
Collage
 Writing found poetry is like creating a visual
collage of language, the way a visual artist might
use scraps of paper, cloth, feather, and other
objects to create something new.
 Your poem MUST express one central theme or
idea.
Potential Sources for Found
Poetry:
 Instruction books; recipes
 Horoscopes; fortune cookies
 Bulletin boards flyers
 Copies of Math, Science or Social Studies textbooks
 Dictionaries
 Magazine or newspaper pages
 Pieces of letters, e-mails, post cards, or notes that
you have written or received
Rules for Found Poetry:
 Keep track of where you get your words do you can give
your sources credit.
 Off-Limits Sources: poetry, song lyrics, commercial
advertising, and anything else that is already “artistically
arranged.”
 Use the words in the sequence you found them.
 Cut out anything unnecessary or dull.
 Adding your own words is OFF-LIMITS to this form of poetry,
but for the sake of your sanity, you my add no more than
two words of your own to clarify or make meaning.
 Also, you may make minor changes in tenses, possessives,
plurals, punctuation, and capitalization, as necessary.
Blackout Poetry
 Taking published works in the form of newspaper articles,
novels, and even horoscopes, this style of "blackout
poetry" reveals only carefully selected words to create a
new, shorter composition of expression. Often, the poems
produced offer a sense of hope and inspiration. At times,
they can be depressing but thought-provoking.
Blackout Poetry Rules:
 Blackout words in a story or article to leave behind the
general gist of the piece.
 Given any written piece (newspaper, something from
online, etc.) as a source of words, black out words to
create an understanding of independent reading
material.
 Blackout words from the newspaper et. al. to
demonstrate a feeling or theme or understanding of a
class novel (chapter, unit, whole piece).
 Play around with words to create something new.
 Play around with parts of speech to create a poem,
maybe using specific parts of speech.
Artistic Examples
Artistic Examples
Artistic Examples