Blackout / Erasure

Perhaps one of the most satisfying forms of reading and writing may be found in what's known as blackout or erasure poetry, in which we reimagine existing texts through practices of subtraction, often by simply taking a black Sharpie to a text and blacking out words to leave behind only key phrases.

Sometimes we reveal what’s really present in the text, as in Nina Pollari’s erasures of the N-400 naturalization form . Sometimes, we erase to find what we wish had been there, as in Jennifer Tomayo’s attack on the work of Carl Andre . She says, “I couldn’t find Ana Mendieta so I dug her up from a language that had worked hard to obscure her.” I think also of of M. NourbesePhilip’s Zong! and the mutilation of the text as an intentionally violent response to the erasure of black languages and cultures. And of course, there are beautiful erasures - Jen Bervin’s The Desert, or Tom Phillips’ A Humument … If you prefer thinking about this in relation to film, look what Naomi Uman did to piece porn footage in Removed  using some carefully applied nail polish, or view the haunting Rose Hobart by Joseph Cornell, in which Cornell removed every shot from the 1931 film East of Borneo that did not feature the actress Rose Hobart, leaving 19 minutes of lyric imagery...

So, the June prompt is to engage in blackout/erasure poetry. Whether for beauty or politics, take a text that's been haunting you in some way and re-view it, renew it, erase it and thereby remake it. You can erase existing words; cover them up with drawings or objects; cross them out; or perhaps physically cut the words from paper pages. Whatever form you choose, you might start by circling the words to keep, and revising until you have a sequence that you like; then engage in the erasure or revision... I tend to be nervous, so I make a few copies of the text, practice, then do the formal erasure or drawing when I feel good about what I have...