How to make blackout poetry
Begin with a page, not a blank
Blackout poetry—often discussed alongside erasure poetry—is made by hiding part of an existing text so that selected words remain as a new poem. The source writer supplies the landscape. You notice and choose a path through it.
Keep These offers a small shelf of verified passages from classic writing. Read one page without rushing to solve it. Notice a word, image, sound or turn of feeling that holds your attention. Keep that word, then look forward through the page for the next. Your poem always follows the source order, but it does not need to repeat the source writer’s meaning.
Let the rest fall away
Select and remove words until the language has the rhythm you want. Undo is always available. When the poem feels ready, let the unkept words fall away and choose ink or graphite for the finished page. You can download an attributed PNG or copy a stateless link. Unfinished work stays in this browser; Keep These has no accounts, analytics or poem uploads.
Stay in conversation with the source
The original work does not disappear from the encounter. Every page names its original author and links back to the source edition. The words you keep—and the poem you find—are yours, while that visible credit preserves the conversation from which they came.
Make the choices yourself
Keep These does not generate a poem or suggest which words belong together. That attention is the creative act. Start with the page that draws you, follow a finite literary path, or let chance place another passage before you.
Keep These was inspired by Andrew Lavers’ Psyche film Reignite your creative fire with blackout poetry, which credits the influence of Austin Kleon. It is an independent project, not an adaptation of the film and not affiliated with or endorsed by Psyche, Andrew Lavers or Austin Kleon.