Blackout Poetry Maker

How to Use the Blackout Poetry Maker

1. 1. Paste a page. Use a page of text that is in the public domain or that you wrote yourself. A page of 300 to 500 words gives you plenty to choose from; the tool takes the first 600 words.
2. 2. Click the words to keep. Read the passage like a field of words rather than a story. Click a word to keep it, click again to let it go, and shift-click a second word to keep the whole stretch between.
3. 3. Check the page. The page below updates as you click: your words in type, a bar over everything else. Pick solid black, dark grey to save ink, or outlines to colour in with a marker.
4. 4. Print or download. Add an optional source line, then print the page (only the page prints), or save it as a PNG or an SVG. Copy the poem on its own if you want the words as plain text.

What Blackout Poetry Is

A blackout poem is a found poem: you begin with someone else's page, keep a handful of its words in their original order, and cover the rest. Nothing is added and nothing is moved, so the poem is already there in the page waiting for you to uncover it. The same idea goes by other names, such as erasure poetry, and it is older than the label. Tom Phillips began altering a Victorian novel into the book A Humument in 1966, and Ronald Johnson's Radi os (1977) erased the first four books of Milton's Paradise Lost.

The marker-on-newspaper version most classrooms use was popularised by Austin Kleon, who has made newspaper blackout poems since 2005, shared them on his blog and collected them in the book Newspaper Blackout (2010). His own advice is to treat the page like a word search rather than read it first, and to start with nouns and verbs. This tool follows the same method on a screen, with one change: your choices are kept as words, so you can undo a decision without a new copy of the page.

A Worked Example

The sample loads the opening of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813), which is in the public domain. Keeping thirteen words, in the order they already stand, gives this:

Line breaks follow the rows of the page, because that is how a printed blackout poem reads. Punctuation stays attached to its word, so keeping acknowledged, keeps the comma too.

Which Texts You Can Use

• Public-domain books. In the United States, books published in 1930 or earlier are in the public domain, and Project Gutenberg offers many in plain text. Copyright terms differ between countries, so check the term where you live.
• Your own writing. An old essay or draft is yours to cover however you like.
• Government documents. Works by the US federal government are not covered by copyright, though other countries' publications often are.
• Permission or a licence. A text under a Creative Commons licence or with a teacher's or author's permission is fine, as long as you follow its terms and credit the source.

Whatever you choose, credit it: the source line prints under the page. Poems made from a modern book, newspaper or magazine may need permission before you publish them. The tool does not check copyright, and this is guidance, not legal advice.

In the Classroom

• Set the rules. Choose the page for the class, or let students bring a public-domain page. Setting a limit, such as no more than 20 words, makes the choices matter.
• Print outlines. Students colour in the bars with a marker, which turns the screen work into the hands-on version.
• Ask for a reason. Have each student say why the words belong together and write a title, which is where the poem's meaning shows.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is blackout poetry?

Blackout poetry is a kind of found poem. You start with an existing page, keep a few words in their original order and black out the rest, so the words left standing make a new poem. It is also called erasure poetry.

How do you make a blackout poem?

Pick a page, scan it for words that catch your eye, and keep them in the order they already appear. Black out everything else. Some people circle the words first. Here, you click the words to keep and the tool covers the rest.

Who invented blackout poetry?

No one person did. Erasure and found poetry go back at least to the 1960s and 1970s, in Tom Phillips's A Humument and Ronald Johnson's Radi os. The newspaper-and-marker form now taught in classrooms was popularised by Austin Kleon, whose book Newspaper Blackout appeared in 2010.

Can I use any book or article?

Only if you are allowed to. Public-domain texts and your own writing are safe choices; for anything else you may need permission, especially if you publish the poem. Credit the source either way. This is general guidance, not legal advice.

Can I print the poem?

Yes. The print button prints only the page, without the controls or the rest of this site. If you print to PDF, you get a clean copy. Outline bars use the least ink.

Is my text saved or uploaded?

No. The page is laid out and drawn in your browser and nothing is sent to a server. Nothing is saved either, so download the poem before you close the tab.

Is the poem written by AI?

No. Honest templates, no AI: the tool lays the page out and covers the words you did not pick. Every word in the poem is a word you chose.