Sharing With You About Found And Visual Poetry

My attempt at blackout poetry. Words from Study Guide, Sex: A Personal Perspective, U of M Continuing Education and Extension, Duluth, MN, Iver Bogen, Ph.D., Kay Slack, RN, and Karen Sussman, BSN

When I first registered to attend this class, I put the date and time in my calendar. I looked at central time, which was central European time, not central USA time. That is so American of me. Everything revolves around this country and why wouldn’t a poetry class.

There were three of us that did the same thing. We were in the zoom meeting together wondering why so few were there and where was the teacher? Finally, we started to get it! They were nice enough to send the PowerPoint slides. So, this is me trying to learn what I missed without the class!

When looking at the slides, I think I can figure it out, but maybe not!

The actual page above looks much better with every word blacked out. I would probably touch it up more if I were going to display it somewhere. Sorry, I guess here doesn’t count! It reminded me of a time a friend of mine, who was gay accused me of having gaydar.

Like a radar or a gay detection system that is built-in. She said I was one person she didn’t have to come out to as I always seemed to know who was and who wasn’t gay.

This could be the same as blackout poetry if I went over all of the rest with paint and just left what I wanted to say. I guess the picture could stay and that is probably what makes it erasure rather than a blackout poem, as most of the erasure examples have a picture, although some were just words on white paper.

I much prefer the picture and words and if I were an artist I would make the erasure into a white, fluffy cloud and the blue into a whale or a boat. I’ll bet you couldn’t tell that is what I was going for!

Cut-up poetry is what this is referred to. You can find the words anywhere, cut them out and place them on a photo, picture, blank paper, etc. A Dadaist poem.

I was in training where we made cards from others’ words. We turned in 14 words that meant something to us. We were then told to pick 14 other words, not our own. When we finished picking the words we were given materials to make a card. It was difficult but fun. I made two cards.

We were asked to pick the words before we knew we would be making cards. Doesn’t appear very poetic to me, but what do I know? I haven’t sent it to anyone and probably will not send it out. The card itself feels flimsy.

Book spine poetry is more than a mere list of book titles. It should flow as does poetry. I enjoy hearing our anishinabemowin and consider it poetry. It is only recently that these books were printed all in the Ojibwe language. I have nieces and cousins becoming fluent in the Ojibwe language now.

Ojibwe is one of the more difficult languages to learn. I was told that our ancestors placed everything we would need to know in the language, never realizing that our language would be taken away as it was with the boarding school.

We have very few fluent Ojibwe language speakers, where Ojibwe was their first language. There are always attempts to change this with immersion schools and language camps.

So, overall, I think I learned a few things and it was definitely worth the fifteen dollars spent. And I had a fun Sunday morning putting this together!

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First published by Mercury Press in Medium.