This March, The New City Library and Mrs. Basciano hosted a Blackout Poetry workshop. Mrs. Basciano hosts these events as a way to give students opportunities and resources to make their own blackout poems for the Blackout Poetry contest. It was available to all North students who signed up before the second week of March at the New City Library website, and took place in March to coincide with the due date for the Blackout Poetry contest. Many students of all grades (around 7-8 students per day) came to check out the event, and of course, create their own blackout poetry.  

What is blackout poetry?

Blackout poetry is a form of poetry in which poets take existing literary materials, and create a new awe-inspiring work from it by highlighting specific words or phrases in a passage or page. Blackout poetry often also fills two types art forms, since the poets often create their own unique poem and then draw a picture from the remaining parts of the passage. This usually giving a visual on the idea or image represented in poem.

The Event

 The event lasted two days. In this event students were able to use the library’s vast collection of books as sources for their poem.The first day of the event was used as a way to discover the perfect book, and the perfect page for a blackout poetry.  The books were of course supplied by the library, and featured various genres such as horror, fantasy, and sci-fi. Thus it really gave students a huge pool of sources of writing to take from.

The second day, students focused on drawing a visual representation of the their poems. Students would outline the parts included in their poem and then draw a visual representation with the rest of the canvas. The students were given markers, colored pencils, and other drawing tools to accomplish this. After creating their poems, on the final day students would also present their poem to the rest of the attendees. All poems were a success!