How To Connect With Your Intuition Through Blackout Poetry

Mar 26

Photo of path weaving through grassy mountains. — Creative blackout poetry ideas for journaling to connect with your intuition

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Directions for blackout poetry creation!

Disconnection from yourself can create a feeling of meaninglessness and discontent. But ironically, the pressure to connect with your inner voice can create noise that prevents you from hearing yourself. Blackout poetry puts the focus on creating a piece of art and takes away the noise. Creating blackout poetry is a fun exercise for developing your intuition.

You don’t need to be a writer, a poet, or an artist to create blackout poetry. You don’t even need to know anything about poetry. If you’ve heard of found poetry, erasure poetry, redacted poetry, or altered book poetry, blackout poetry is pretty much the same thing.

To create blackout poetry all you need is a pen, pencil, or marker, and a book page you don’t mind ruining. Or, check out the free blackout poetry book page printables to give it a try.

Here’s an example of a blackout poem I created from Charles Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit.

Dreaming,
thinking the strange thing.
Here kinds of wanting come together.
Here is a temporary difficulty;
and in the very next here is another!
Here is a possessing who wants to come and live
an airy bedroom walk.
Even those who are away and being come back,
relinquishing a thoughtful making known
as if they found it a comfort.

In the days leading up to creating this blackout poem, I was reflecting on how helpful paying attention to my dreams is. Yet, when I started finding this blackout poem on the page, I had no idea what the blackout poem was going to be about. I’m usually surprised by the blackout poem I end up with when I use this method of intuitive journaling! Once I’ve created my blackout poem I like to give it a title and copy it into my journal alongside the date. Then I journal about why I think the particular words I chose and the poem I created stood out to me.

Here’s how I created the blackout poem above.

photo of book page from Charles Dicken's Martin Chuzzlewit as start of blackout poetry example — Like all my blackout poems, this blackout poem started out with a book page.

Book page with a few words crossed off in black marker a blackout poem example — To get in the flow, I like to cross out words I know I won’t use, like character names and geographic locations.

Book page with a number of words crossed off in black marker. as blackout poetry example — Next, I scan the page without reading it closely, and cross off a few words that aren’t appealing to me at the moment. I avoid crossing off punctuation marks so I have them if I want them.

Book page with a number of words crossed off in black marker; a purple arrow is pointing to the word dreaming as blackout poetry example — By now, the word “Dreaming” has caught my eye. I’m considering using this as the first word of the blackout poem. I’m still not sure what this blackout poem is about, though, so I cross off a few more words, reading more closely this time.

book page with words crossed off as blackout poetry example — I’ve decided to go with “Dreaming” as the first word of the blackout poem, and quickly the first few lines come together.

I’m not sure about the next line, so I move down the page. Here I find a line I like, even though I’m not sure how they fit together.
Now that I have a better sense of what this blackout poem is about, I move to the bottom of the page and cross out more words that don’t fit with the poem.

Image of book page with words crossed off to create blackout poetry. — I move back to the beginning of the blackout poem and find a line to put in between what I’ve already created. I’m still not sure how this blackout poem is going to end!

Book page with most of the words crossed off in black marker. White text with purple background shows lines from a blackout poem; an arrow points to the location of those words on the book page as blackout poetry example — I go to the bottom of the page and the ending of the blackout poem comes together.
I re-read the blackout poem and clean up punctuation marks.

Photo of a book page with most words crossed off in black marker. Purple watercolor highlights the remaining words which form a blackout poem as blackout poetry example — I use watercolors to highlight the words that make up my blackout poem.

I like to keep my blackout poems in a poetry journal. When I write the blackout poems in my journal, I add line breaks to make the blackout poem sound right to me, I give it a title, and I journal about what the blackout poem means to me and why my intuition created the poem it did.

Try it out with a free blackout poem book page printable!