If you want to really write and feel good about your creative process—rather than find yourself staring at a blank screen, I’ve got two pieces of advice for you:
Read (good, quality writing preferably in books and that YOU like).
Engage in creative reading exercises to keep you unstuck and keep your words flowing (like blackout poetry, collage poetry and ‘found’ poems).
Why use experimental techniques like blackout and collage?
On the most basic level, blackout poetry and collage turn your reading into writing.
It’s a chance to let your subconscious mind wander and travel, play with associations. This is great for your writing in any of your languages.
If you’re writing in a language you already speak, write and read in with some mastery? These techniques will help your words form, it will help you find melody and rhythm…and it can expand your vocabulary too.
And if you’re writing in a language you’re hoping to make your own…and wondering how to get those beautiful words that you hear and see on the page to come out of your mouth and off the tip of your pen?
Blackout, collage and found poems are great ways to turn those expressions into something you can remember and actually use…not just understand.
In short, it’s a beautiful way to go from passive to active mode in your reading and writing.
In this particular collage, I used my own words cut and pasted…but you can cut and paste from literally any source of reading.
Blackout and collage poems are really fun, satisfying and analog
Meaning that if you’ve got your page printed out, or a piece of a book lying around in the evening, you can sit with your markers, pencils, scissors and glue and play with the words. Without turning your computer back on after a long day of teaching, reporting, translating or ‘Zooming’…if you see what I mean.
How do I do Blackout Poetry, Collage Poetry etc—am I doing it right!?!?
Here’s the thing—this is an experimental form. It asks you to break boundaries and rules to play with language and access your creative subconscious.
The only rule I’d suggest to you is to give credit to the authors whose pages you snipped cut and blacked out—so that we can see what you are reading these days! So keep a note in your journal…or in your story if you decide to publish…
Otherwise, take the rules and chuck them. Instead, here are some invitations:
For blackout poetry:
grab some pages of anything you enjoy or find intriguing—newspaper clippings, pages of books, magazines, cut-paste-printed online materials.
take a pencil and skim the material until you find a sentence or tiny suggestion of a poem on that page…circle the words and black out around…
you have a blackout poem.
A blackout poem I made from a page of the book Gold, Fame, Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins—it’s a chance to revel in the imagery of this wonderful writing…
For collage poems the process is similar:
grab some pages of anything you enjoy or find intriguing—newspaper clippings, pages of books, magazines, cut-paste-printed online materials.
instead of circling the words you like and blacking everything out, simply cut out the words you chose and paste them onto another surface…with images you’ve found, cut, and pasted…or created.
you have a collage poem.
A collage poem that formed as a re-read Another Brooklyn..our book club pick for July 2020.
What are you reading these days? And how are you helping your words flow?
Let me know in the comments. I love to hear from you.