Writing Reflection #...Black Out Poetry?

          Well, I must say, I'm a big fan of black out poetry...but I also found it surprisingly difficult. First of all, I love incorporating words, messages, and writing into the artwork I do. So thats why I've enjoyed a lot of the assignments we've had to do so far this year, such as the six word memoirs and now the black out poetry. Also, I do a lot of work with newspaper in my artwork so when I found out we were doing black out poetry I was like....yessss. Interestingly enough, I learned this style of writing a long time ago from Ms. Fernie, but she called it "Found Poetry." We also did another technique where we just blacked out most of the article and kept words that particularly stood out to us or have meaning relating to our piece. I find this writing style really unique because...well...there is so much you can do with the general concept of it and everyones final piece is different in their own way. When our class was looking at other kids examples in the hallway, they all looked so interesting and unique. For example, some words came from the main title of an article, so this word was stressed...or they would make connection to join all their words. Some poems were simple, yet powerful and others were long and meaningful. I liked how a lot sounded kind of cryptic and mysterious. With my poems I wrote generally long ones relating to human rights and freedom. This was a topic that I felt very strongly about so it was easy to think of messages I wanted to get out. However, it was not easy AT ALL to actually make the messages make sense and make a poem out of it with the newspaper. There would be one good word like "freedom" or  "imprisonment" that I knew I had to use...so I actually found it really hard to search for words to make a message with. Its almost as if the words find you while you're searching for them...I think that the first poem I made was a bit hard to follow...but my second one got better...and then my last one was the best, in my opinion at least. After the first one, it became harder to make the poems though because I had to consider the theme found in my first poem and make two more poems relating to that. It was as if on the first poem I started with a blank canvas, then the other poems were adding to it, which is always harder. Through this type of writing, I learned that I like the messages, or poems, that I write about to have meaning. I don't want a sappy love story (although I'm not saying those aren't meaningful in their own way)...I mean that I want it to be powerful and have some kind of impact to our lives and gets people thinking about aspects of their own life. Another thing I learnt about myself as a writer is that I am very...perfectionistic (made up the word, I'm just gonna go with it). Around the class, I saw people writing poems like they were texts. Quick and easy to the. I honestly got one poem done in class. It took my so long to find an article with the right words and then to make my message PERFECT. Each poem took a good 3 hours to do...but I really ended up liking the final outcome! Overall, I really like this writing style and I'll probably end up doing it on my own for art or just for fun.