Lockdown and Black Out

Thursday, April 10, 2025, the Freshmen ended their poetry unit with a bang and a lockdown drill.

Recycling words like paper, blackout poetry is a type of found poetry that uses existing magazine or book pages. By isolating certain words or phrases, writers can create new works of literature without writing/typing. Blackout pieces typically use visual elements that match the imagery or symbolism present in the poem.

Below are some blackout poems I’ve made over the years.

Watercolored piece made over quarantine, 2020

Text reads: “In a corner, Sara was lost in a picture of faces like beings in a dream. She was dragged back suddenly from losing the feeling over a moment. It makes me remember sliding across, falling down, and hurting.”

From the book The Diamond-mines, page 61

Crayon sketched piece for a portfolio, 2022 

Text reads: “She covers her eyes in despair. She leans to lie and lower my voice altogether. A fallen future has no life. She closes her eyes, I’ve tossed her lies to get the boy. Whisper in her tongue, I smile. She clicks her tongue. I will not make that mistake again.” 

From ???

Library activity open to the public, 2022

Text reads: “First our impulses heard better days. We had once got noble flesh that had secrets: ‘you don’t live anywhere,’ ‘you are extinct.’ Chronicles call extinct ‘gone down’--gone where we lie. Mansions and estates, neither one in abundance was yours. Shall we ever come into our own again? I can tell.” 

From the book Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Phase the First: The Maiden), page 13

In Usborne’s Write Your Own Poems, 2022

Text reads: “My mind colors blue, marigold, lilac, and pink. From jagged edges, Rosy plants everything pink called rose. My mind is in the past. I’m in my mind, old–older than the colors that time muted, without the vibrancy of off-tones full of inspiration. I admire the floral tones: dusty peaches, mauve, gray, and dusky lavenders, but the redecoration of fun lies in the layers of the blue-sky space or realities.”

From a gardening magazine

“(High)light-up” instead of “blackout”, 2023

Text reads: “Voices in the back. Looking back, he straightened his issues. Strangers at bars shared love, yet incompatible language.” 

From ???

Blackout poetry allows for expression within limits. Like a prompt, writers must stick within the parameters of someone else’s page but have the freedom to choose which tools they’ll use. As an INFJ, the J in me plans my poems with thought-out structures and workshopped rhymes. Blackout poetry doesn’t give me the freedom to write the next words, only choose them. There is a balance of impulse and control.

It’s a fun activity that anyone, poet or not, can try! It doesn’t have to rhyme or make sense, just play around with the words until you whip something up. Happy highlighting!