Library Blackout Poetry

One of the teen activities we have planned for this spring is blackout poetry - this is a simple activity that doesn't require much material or preparation in advance. We're going to do this in April since it's National Poetry Month. I've seen several examples of blackout poetry online, and I decided to try it out myself and share my first attempt at it. 

You can use newspaper articles, book pages, or magazine/journal pages. Since February is Library Lovers Month, I decided I wanted to do a library themed blackout poem, so I picked up an old edition of College & Research Libraries News that I had in my office and opened it to a random page. 

Then I went through the page and underlined or circled words that I wanted to use to make a poem. 

Then I used a black marker to color in the rest of the page, leaving only the words in my poem visible. 

Since the words are difficult to read in the picture (I took it with my phone so the quality isn't great), I'll share my blackout poem here with a little added punctuation: 

Come to the library!

Our job - 

Value our patrons

Guide to resources, books

Promote content

Select

Ask questions

Provide information

Envision

Proceed

Explore

Think

Librarians: We're significant.

Ok, so it's a little cheesy, but I had fun doing it. A twist on the blackout poetry is to turn it into a work of art with color and designs. Here is one example that I found on Pinterest:

How cool is that? I would definitely frame this and hang it on my wall. 

Have you ever tried blackout poetry?