April is National Poetry Month! Introduced in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets, National Poetry Month is an opportunity to highlight an underappreciated literary artform and a celebration of the craft. Here at Caldwell Public Library, we're marking the occasion by encouraging our patrons to participate in Erasure Poetry.
Erasure Poetry, also known as Blackout Poetry, is a form of found poetry where a poem is created by taking an existing text and blacking out or eliminating words. By selectively blacking out parts of the text a poem is formed with the remaining words. Our staff took damaged and discarded items no longer suitable for circulation and placed their pages next to our poetry book display along with a submission box and black sharpie. Patrons are free to select a page and create their own blackout poem that staff will sort and display next month. A similar submission station is set up in the
Kids and Family section of the library.
We had a ton of fun creating our own poems which we used to decorate the submission boxes. In fact, we made more than we needed and decided to display them in our staff area! We're excited to see what our patrons create and look forward to reading and sharing your poems.
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