Erasure Poetics
Amaranth Borsuk
@amaranthborsuk
amaranthborsuk.com
Tom Phillips: A Humument
Whispering Galleries
Amaranth Borsuk & Brad Bouse
amaranthborsuk.com
whisperinggalleries.com
WHISPERING GALLERIES
as we know
Amaranth Borsuk & Andy Fitch
The Deletionist
Artisic techniques
- Pen or marker: scratch out / draw over words
- Paint, white out
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Stickers
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Crayon, charcoal, cray-pas, watercolor
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Scissors/ x-acto knife
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Collage
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Erase or blackout
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Highlighter
- Is there some relationship between the artistic technique and your content?
Ronald Johnson: Radi Os
Jen Bervin's Nets
Jen Bervin: The Desert
mary Ruefle: A Little White shadow
Jonathan Safran Foer: Tree of Codes
Jordan Abel: The Place of Scraps
Jordan Abel: The Place of Scraps
travis macdonald: The o mission repo
yedda morrison: darkness
doris cross: embassador 2
potential approaches
- Find a voice within the page—a new and different speaker—an "I."
- Find yourself within the text and use these words to say something personal.
- Subvert the original's intent.
- Say something pithy.
- Look for a single crystalline image or juxtapose two images to create a haiku.
- Read down the margin or look for "stacks" of words.
- Use a poetic technique like assonance or alliteration to create a chain of sounds.
suggested techniques
- Start with a pencil.
- Read or skim the page and underline lightly words that leap out at you for whatever reason.
- Read your underlined words. Where might they be going. Is there a tone they create? An image? Is there something you want them to say?
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Look for other words you can add to make meaning.
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Doesn't have to be grammatically correct, and you don't have to use whole words or even English words.
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Now you get to decide what the poem is. Keep only those words that let you say what you want to say (or what the page seems to want to say).
additional resources
- Under Erasure exhibition website.
- The Forest and the Trees Blog
- An interview with 6 erasure poets in Kenyon Review
- Tom Phillips & A Humument
- Wave Books Erasures.
- Mary Ruefle artist website
- Jen Bervin artist website
- Erasure poetry reading at the Walker Art Center
- Evening Will Come Erasure Issue
- The Found Poetry Review
- Ange Malade: For Young Women with Questions
as we know
as-we-know.com
Erasure Poetics
By Amaranth Borsuk
Erasure Poetics
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