'Blackout Poetry,' Making Poetry From Newspaper Articles

My poem Monster Mash (printed below) was inspired by employing a unique technique I first heard about after viewing a video profile of Austin Kelon, a Texas-based poet, writer and illustrator.

Stumped by writer's block, Kleon created an entire book’s worth of poetry while scouring the newspaper for words he could craft into his own.

After taking a hiatus from writing following college, Kleon, then working by day as a web designer, eventually returned to composing prose and poetry and quickly discovered that writing the next Great American Novel was not going to be as easy as he had envisioned.

His words had left him, he said in a 2010 interview with the Poetry Foundation. He was stymied by writer’s block.

“I thought I just don’t have any words,” he said. “I kinda looked over at the recycle bin next to my desk and it was piled full of newspapers. I thought, I don’t have any words and right over there are millions of them.”

With black marker in hand, Kleon began “deleting words from the paper and letting some just float there.”

Austin Kleon's collection of
"blackout poetry."

The results were some stunning pieces of poetry, though Kleon didn’t recognize it as such at first.

He wasn’t trying to create poetry, rather he thought of it was a writing exercise to prime the pump of creativity that would lead to “bigger writing,” like a short story, or a novel or even a comic strip. It was his wife who convinced him that he was actually creating textual art and poetry from the newspaper articles.

Kleon began focusing his spare time on the poetry project which was later made into a book, Newspaper Blackout, a collection of his newspaper poetry. He wrote the entire book while scouring newspaper articles during daily commutes on the bus to and from work and in the basement at the office during lunch breaks.

He says he treats the newspaper like a blank canvas and scans articles like a word search puzzle, looking for words and phrases that are eventually shaped into a poem. He approaches each article/poem differently, either totally transforming the article into an unrecognizable piece of poetry or twisting the article to mean something entirely different.

The art, he says, comes from transforming news articles into pieces of poetry that resonate with personal meaning.

Says Kleon: “Transforming this non-fictional journalistic artifact, taking that and turning it into something very personal that’s mine that I feel could have come out of me … that’s the real joy.”

Making Monster Mash

The idea of testing out Kleon’s method for creating poetry has been lying dormant for several years, but on a whim one recent Sunday morning, I scooped up the freebie newspaper off the driveway and brought it inside to attempt to create poetry from a news article.

I scanned the front page of the community section and was immediately arrested by the lede: “It’s all in the accessories; tiaras, wands, wigs, witches hats, capes and pirate eye patches.”

Glancing over the article, I saw words like monster, anger, beauty queens, parade and more. I knew I had struck gold.

First, I started by simply underlying words and phrases of interest and began compiling in my head some sort of sense of the various words. They soon branched out in a multitude of directions so I began jotting them down.

My original list of words as I tried to make order of the imagery

Actually, the article was quite colorful and provided a ton of images. Almost too many; it was hard to focus on just one thread until suddenly a voice came through the clutter. The voice of an erstwhile beauty queen whose superficiality belies the hurt, anger and loneliness that resides inside. Miss Cupcake – all smiles outside but an angry monster beneath the tiara. But not really a monster – just a regular person hurt and alone and desperate for human contact.  

The result is Monster Mash.

Monster Mash

By Donald G. Redman

Tiaras, wands

And eye patches.

I am our monster.

Anger at a young age;

Hours a day,

Eating.

Please call.

Monster masks
for Beauty Queens.

A regal parade
led by

Miss Cupcake,

Riding full-face to the zoo.

Call the Monster.

Call.

Not too shabby for a first attempt. I found the exercise quite stimulating and engaging and look forward to creating more "blackout poetry." I strongly encourage you to give it a try, too.

Austin Kleon is the New York Times bestselling author of three illustrated books: Steal Like An Artist, a manifesto for creativity in the digital age; Show Your Work! a guide to sharing creativity and getting discovered; and Newspaper Blackout,  a collection of poetry made by redacting words from newspaper articles with a permanent marker.

In previous lives, he worked as a librarian, a web designer, and an advertising copywriter.

Learn more about Kleon on his website.

View the 2010 Poetry Foundation video interview here.

Monster Mash, copyright 2014 Donald G. Redman. All rights reserved.