Blackout Poetry Maker: Remix Text Online

Find new words in your favorite pages.

What is a Blackout Poetry Maker?

Most writing asks you to start with a blank page, this is something many find intimidating. This game instead asks you to start with a full one, and break it down in parts!

Deconstructed Poetry (sometimes called Blackout or Erasure Poetry) is a modern form of poetry, a kind of writing game of taking things apart. In fact, the bones might not even remain after you are done.

You take a passage from a book, a poem, or even a song, and you deconstruct and erase the words until only a new meaning remains. It’s not about finding new words; it’s using what you have to make new works. It always feels to me like the idea of the poem remains, but the story is different.

Often blackout poetry is illustrated with pictures and 3-D art materials. Of course we can’t put black paint on our laptops or tablets like the do with the physical form and scratch away paint, but the idea remains the same, take away and see what is left.

For a more traditional blackout poetry tool, try out blackout poetry and prose art tool. This tool allows you to put in text of your choice, black out the back ground, then tilt, enlarge or reduce the remaining words and then put images or sketched art over top.

How to Play the Remix Game

Choose Your Source

Paste in a paragraph from a favorite book, poem, or song. This is your “block of clay.” Try not to have any preconceived ideas about what you will find. I like to put in my favorite poem, I started out with Robert Frosts “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, my favorite poem.

Hunt for Treasure

Look at the word tiles. Don’t read them as sentences. Read them as loose words. Somewhat like tiles scattered about on the table, random. The catch is you can only use what you put in.

Clear the Clutter

Select the words you want to keep and ignore the rest. What is left? Is it a funny message? A tiny poem? A riddle? The nice thing about this form of poetry is that you don’t know what you will think of until it is all laid out.

Why Kids Love Blackout Poetry

For children who say “I don’t know what to write,” this tool is magic. It removes the fear of the blank page. They have a set of related words that they can create with. In real life you can print out the poetry they create and then they can decorate it as they desire.