Highlights of Teaching - G10 ESL :Blackout poetry

Blackout poetry is a type of found poem that encourages students to create poetry from larger texts. It works by students carefully selecting words and phrases from given texts ranging from newspapers, magazines, novels, and other printed texts to create a poem. Then, they black the rest of the text out. The poems they create should emphasize a theme or emotion in the original text or take on a whole new meaning.

Doing blackout poetry is a unique opportunity to get students thinking about popular poetic devices as they need to carefully select words from the page. Blackout poetry gets them looking at the words with a more critical and creative eye. As they determine which words they’ll use in their poem, they must consider diction, tone, theme, and imagery. They were also encouraged to employ poetic devices such as figurative language, symbolism metaphors, similes, hyperbole, and rhythm.

Some students turned their blackout poetry into a piece of poetic and visual art. Some enjoyed finding the poems “hidden” on the page. Others were glad they don’t have to come up with the words themselves. They were all pleasantly surprised with their final product.

Blackout poetry is far more than selecting random words on a page and ignoring the rest. This poetic form requires students to interact closely with the text and derive new meaning. It is a unique opportunity for students to explore and express poetry.