Celebrating National Poetry Month with Blackout Poetry
In honor of April’s National Poetry Month, my students created Blackout Poetry for the New York Times Annual Spring Poetry contest.
To introduce the task, I first shared Austin Kleon’s “How to Make A Newspaper Blackout Poem” video, and then shared the New York Times contest website and rules. Lastly, we searched for inspiration on Twitter, looking up the hashtags #newspaperblackout and #blackoutpoetry and finding countless student examples. For many students, looking at mentor texts generated some healthy, competitive energy.
The activity fit perfectly into our modern and postmodern fiction course— students noticed the “fragmented” nature of the found poetry exercise, and also commented on the modern feel of their short but powerful poems. I also timed our poetry writing day to coincide with state testing, so the exercise itself brought a welcome change of pace.
Here’s an example of a poem we read for inspiration:

When all three of my classes had completed their poems (and submitted photographs of their work to the New York Times contest), one class suggested that we create a hallway display. That class worked together to first mount the poems against white paper, and then arrange them on a large bulletin board in a high-traffic hallway.

Here are some fantastic student examples (shared with permission):






How did you celebrate April’s National Poetry Month? It’s not too late to get your students involved in this contest! All entries must be received by Thursday, May 9.
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