National Poetry Month

Form Focus: Blackout/ Erasure Poetry 

Blackout poems are created using the pages of old books, magazines, or newspaper articles. Blackout poets isolate and then string together single words or short phrases from an existing text to create something new–poems that range from nonsensical to ethereal. The point is they’re fun. While some existing texts might work better than others, blackout poets operate with the belief that a poem lurks in every page. The trick is to find it.

Read more about the history of Blackout Poetry here.

Read some examples here.

Featured Poem & Reading Guide

 “Unemployed”

by Britteney Black Rose Kapri

In this poem, Kapri takes a mutual non-disparagement agreement and revises it into a response to the document. Kapri bends the form by writing over the blacked out portions to make explicit what’s implied in the document. Here she takes a document that is meant to be authoritarian and bends it to her will, creating something that speaks back to both the institution and the agreement as a genre.

Submit your own erasure poetry for possible publication in Edge Effects.

Form Focus: Spoken Word Poetry

Spoken word poetry is an oral poetic practice that features repetition, storytelling, theatre, and music; it is poetry intended for performance and typically includes themes of social justice, community, race, and politics. It is closely related to slam poetry, which is competitive!

Check out this example: Angelica Maria – “The Star Spanglish Banner”.

Featured Poems & Reading Guides

“Rekia Boyd” by Porsha O

Reading Guide Excerpt: “Porsha Olayiwola speaks from the standpoint of Black woman to the condition of a Black woman, which brings a different and in this case more effective critique of how Rekia Boyd’s murder has not been demonstrated.”

“Dear Ursula” by Melissa May

Reading Guide Excerpt: “Melissa May’s “Dear Ursula” is a letter to the villain from The Little Mermaid. This poem is a response to Disney’s ‘Designer Villains’ collection of dolls and products released in 2012, which features numerous female villains in altered appearances. Ursula’s change in appearance is the most drastic, leading Melissa May to a rather sympathetic and insightful piece about a character we are supposed to dislike.”

Find more spoken word poetry videos through Button Poetry.

Form Focus: Pantoum

The western pantoum stems from a form of oral folk poetry from Malaysia dating back to the 15th century (pantun). Pantoums were particularly popular among 19th-century French and British writers. This form consists of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next stanza, creating a pattern of repeated lines. The meanings of each line can shift subtly upon their repetition and revision in subsequent lines.

Check out this example: Donald Justice – “Pantoum of the Great Depression”.

Featured Poem & Reading Guide

“Parent’s Pantoum”

by Carolyn Kizer

The repetition and subtle changes to the repeated lines throughout this poem evoke the passage of time, the aging of children and parents and the cyclical nature of familial care and relationships. Here the children aren’t sure what they will be in the future, but the poem indicates that their parents are their “future mirrors.” The poem reflects the shock of parents at how quickly their children grow up and the shock of children upon growing up.

Form Focus: Manifestos

A manifesto is a statement of beliefs, intentions, or motivations. Thus, manifesto poems express a writer’s beliefs about a particular topic, assert their intentions or understandings about a subject. They can be short or long, and many times they incorporate repetition to reinforce the importance of the topic, to highlight the writer’s take on the subject.

Here’s a fun example, a manifesto about poetry: Missi Rasmussen – “Poetry Manifesto”

Featured Poems & Reading Guides

 “Brown Girl Manifesto: #allpinayeverything”

by Barbara Jane Reyes

“Pinay” is a word used to refer to a woman of Filipino descent, and as such this poem is written from a Brown girl to other Brown girls, and specifically Filipinas. It expresses beliefs about why Brown girls matter, what they manifest, why Brown girls need and deserve a manifesto. It highlights the contradictions and burdens and strengths and celebrations of Brown girls.

Manifesto of the Lyric Selfie

by Becca Klaver

“I wrote ‘Manifesto of the Lyric Selfie’ in 2013—the same year the Oxford English Dictionary chose selfie as its word of the year—to speculate about what was going to happen to the lyric I in the age of the selfie. I’m curious about how technology is changing the ways we relate to ourselves and to one another. Maybe we ‘like’ selfies for the same reason we like certain poems—because to see a familiar face or hear an intimate voice from a faraway place or time can feel like being seen or heard ourselves.” —Becca Klaver (source)