It’s even more hilarious given the fact I am currently teaching poetry, right now, to eager creative writing students looking to explore different genres.

So here is a poem carved from a newspaper this Monday. My students tried there hands at blackout poetry and I could help doing the same myself.

“Water Budget”

Translated from my rather sloppy blackout work, the poem follows as such:

70% of water 
exhausted

3 billion people
are in decline 

excessive pumping of
major aquifers

worsens the
risk

water bankruptcy is
like financial bankruptcy

manage your
budget

Again, with regards to Ian James of the LA Times.

Blackout Poetry and Influences

Blackout poetry is very fun because as long as you can scribble and have a pool of words from a sheet of paper, you can create a blackout poem. It can emerge from a newspaper, a page from a book, or an office memo, for example.

When I think of blackout poetry I think of two people.

First is Austin Kleon, who did a TEDx Talk that I use in my English C1000 classes to introduce the concept of stealing like an artist. It is a valuable lesson for my students and they seem to largely enjoy the video.

The other person I think of is my former professor at CSUSM, Francesco Levato. He was newly hired to CSUSM when I approached him to serve as my thesis chair for my M.A., but he took to the task readily and I learned a lot from working with him.

One of the kindnesses he did for me after I had graduated was provide me with an opportunity to review his book Arsenal/Sin Documentos for a literary mag that sadly has vanished off the web. It was quite a great experience, and I wish I had saved a copy of the webpage.

In any case, Levato’s book is a fantastic work of blackout poetry with particular relevance to today:

Arsenal/Sin Documentos is a documentary poetics project that examines the criminalization of Latin American bodies through U.S. policy. It consists of a series of linked documentary poems composed of appropriated language from U.S. government documents, such as: the Immigration and Nationality Act; the U.S. patent for Taser hand-held stun guns; materials from the Office of English Language Programs designed to instruct immigrants on assimilation into U.S. culture; and the U.S. Customs and Border

From the CLASH Books publication listing for Arsenal/Sin Documentos

So I guess in a small way this little blackout poem reflects the kind of work he was doing in his collection, just not nearly as skillfully. Please check out his work over at his website while you’re here.

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