Every week, Kelly Jensen rounds up the Censorship News stories of the moment — which, having covered for her a few times, I can definitely say is soul-draining work. It’s hard to overstate the hateful, ignorant, and outright ridiculous things being said in school board and library board meetings across the country (and beyond), especially in favor of banning books.
So, today, I decided to make some poetry with those news stories. Blackout poetry uses existing text to make poetry by blacking out the unused words. If you haven’t seen it before, definitely check out some other examples before mine — I don’t want to be representing the whole format here! This is just a way to channel some anger about these stories into creativity and commentary.
I’ll give you a little context for each, and I’ll link the news story so you can see the original in full. Without further ado, here are five blackout poems made from stories about book bans.
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