Blood Moon: Blackout Poetry

"Blood Moon"

Don't worry,
another chance,
a stunning event. 
The "blood moon" amazed,
the moon and sun opposite.

A partial eclipse,
twice a year,
a shadow falls.
"Blood moon,"
red when covered by the Earth's shadow.

The moon,
a period of darkness. 

        My blackout poem, "Blood Moon," has been drawn from a newspaper article I found about the lunar eclipse we experienced last night. My goal in writing this piece was to challenge myself by writing a new piece of work within an existing piece. What I hope you can take away from this method of poetry is to read closely and try to be creative when attempting to write your own blackout poetry. It's okay if your piece doesn't make sense to everyone. The goal of this exercise is to find what sticks out to you and make a piece of writing out of it. I thought this process was a little challenging because it was hard at first to imagine the page blacked out with only a few select words remaining. However, as I started blacking out some words, the poem started to come to me the more I read. I thought this was a nice and engaging way to get excited about poetry since it's the one English related topic that I'm not normally interested in. I think this would make a really fun activity in any English classroom!