What is erasure?
What I love about erasure is the collaborative nature of interpreting and creating. The words are not yours but you have stamped yourself into the work and made something new while honoring or making a statement about the original text. This might be called up-cycling.
Blackout/erasure poetry is a collaboration between the text and the poet/artist. Both depend on each other to exist. Instead of generating words themselves, the author picks and chooses words and makes a poem out of them. The result might look colorful or dull, intricate or simple, beautiful, hideous, or all of the above. Sometimes poets lift the words and place them in their own order to create a whole new poem.
Why do it?
It can be fun, and you might discover something along the way. You might learn about your habits, what you steer toward, what you avoid. An erasure can be a reclamation of one’s freedom, a reinstatement of people erased from history. An erasure might just be relaxing. One motivation for me is to prevent a book from going into the trash, which, where I work, is common.
“Rules”
Cite your source. Even if you use a little bit, you should acknowledge your sources. It is respectful and fair. Sometimes, the source is important to know. I’m open to debate.
You might have strict or loose rules that guide you to the words that you end up with. You might have none. Try a variety, see where it takes you.
