Blackout Poetry Workshop – create new meanings from old pain.
DATE: Sat. May 21rd, 9am Pacific/12pm Eastern
This workshop is for a range of writers, those who are starting out, those who are stuck and want to get back into writing, or for anyone who hasn’t tried blackout poetry before, and wants to have a go.
Bring along a few pieces of text about your condition, a print-out from a health website, a letter from the hospital or the list of side effects from your medication (something you don’t mind scribbling on).
Blackout poetry is a really good way of warming up your writer’s brain, getting your creativity jump-started after a fallow period or exploring your feelings about something you can’t quite find the words for. It works a little like magic, plucking words from an existing piece of writing to form something new and original.
By the end of this workshop, participants will feel able to:
- use any text as a starting point for a poem.
- take a piece of writing about a topic and find its ‘side effects’.
- use the ‘blackout’ technique to edit and refine their own longform poetry,
- find new ways to approach expressing feelings about their own condition
Your Instructor
Alex (she/her) is a queer writer with a long-term heart condition. She is a former teacher who holds an MA in Creative Writing from Sheffield Hallam University, UK, where she graduated with distinction in 2024. She loves experimenting with form. Her poetry has been published in Anodyne Magazine, The Literary Times, Humana Obscura and in the anthologies Queer Responses to Dante’s Paradiso by Carrion Press and It’s Not Symptomatic It’s Systemic by Sunday Mornings at the River Press.
