Journal Erasures I & II

From the Artist: Erasures, also called blackout poetry, is the act of creating new text from an existing text by either erasing portions of the existing text or blackening it out. It is often considered to be a form of found poetry. Erasures are one of my favorite exercises in poetry. It stimulates the brain much like doing a word search or solving a puzzle. The text emerging from the erasure is often surprising, and fragments of such may find their way into other poems. Erasures can be simply textual or become pieces of visual art.

The Covid-19 Journal Erasures are from two pages of my late spring 2020 journal recapping the lockdown and my two and a half month struggle with the virus. The visual component is simple blackout using watercolor overlaid with white acrylic dots. This is done in a way to let some of the previously existing text phantom through to encourage enough curiosity without letting the observer discover the complete text. The emerging text documents a more universal experience with COVID-19 using the abundant language that was already there. There is ample space in this piece, more so than in my past erasures. It could be said that these erasures have space to breathe, unlike how I struggled through my illness and with post-Covid symptoms. Anyone who’s worked from home since Covid may appreciate that the cat was very helpful in creating these erasures, evident by the toe-marks at the edge of the pages.