Erasure
general journal junk
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idealog
You will need:
- source texts - books, magazines, newspapers, etc.
- a notebook - digital or paper
- pens
Do:
- Choose source text.
- Reading through the piece, identify and highlight words or phrases within the text that impact you or that you find interesting - single words, pairs, or entire phrases.
- Remove or block out the unmarked text.
- Arrange the remaining words or phrases to create your poem.
You could also find a way to gamify the process of selection to try a more random selection.
- You could try setting constraints, such as using only words of a certain length, focusing on a particular theme or emotion, making use of only every other line of text, or arranging the words in a specific form.
- Use a longer source text and reduce it in size through multiple rounds of erasure. In each, create a new poem using only the words that remain from the previous round.
- Create a list of themes or prompts on separate pieces of paper. Choose one at random to govern how you proceed with the next step of your erasure or word selection.
- Use a dice roll to make editing decisions during the creation process, such as which words to keep or remove from the source text, by assigning rules of your choosing to each number on a die.