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For teachers

Blackout poetry is a close-reading exercise: students decide which words carry meaning by keeping them. Every text below is public domain, so you can use them freely in class.

Five prompts to start with

  1. Keep only the nouns. What picture is left?
  2. Keep only the words that feel like a feeling. What mood does the page have?
  3. Black out everything except one sentence. Read it aloud. Does it still make sense?
  4. Keep exactly fourteen words. Make a sonnet-shaped poem.
  5. Black out every word that appears in the first line. What survives?

Texts to start from

Students can make a poem in the browser, then share it with a short code. Nothing needs an account. Ads are non-personalised and never appear on uploaded work or in PDFs.