Happy Valentine’s Day – Write Your Own Blackout Poetry for Your Love

I like the look of blackout poetry, and in light of Valentine’s Day I decided to make a Valentine’s Day card.

Black out poetry is fun because you can create a unique hidden poem out of the ordinary or even the deliberately written text.

It is fun, but a bit messy in real life, so I started making tools to play around with digital forms. The first tool I made was my deconstructed poetry blackout tool, using the lovely words shuffled to reveal the poems possible within. I also like taking older common domain poems and using the lines to make new modern poetry.

If you are looking for an art-based card, I made a Kobayashi matrix Valentine’s Day card tool as well.

For this tool, I added the ability to use prose and poetry passages and have line structure maintained. I also wanted to preserve the ability to manipulate words by making controls that tilt, and enlarge or reduce the size of the selected words. I think it gives a more traditional look to the final text. Lastly, I added a way to add downloaded images and artwork added with an included sketch tool. I have some more ideas and might add them at a later day.

Here I am taking the most romantic passage I know, from Charles Dickens book Our Mutual Friend who was indeed rejected after speaking these words.

You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me. But if you would return a favourable answer to my offer of myself in marriage, you could draw me to any good – every good – with equal force.” 

Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens

My quick creation from this passage is below.