by Kylie Berry ’26
As an English Creative Writing major that is a Poetry Editor and writer for Open Field, I know how hard it is to actually sit down and write sometimes. That’s why generative poetry and prose workshops are extremely helpful for writers—they get you to sit down and create.
On February 12th, BOOM Literary Magazine and Professor Sagal hosted a blackout poetry workshop in Zamora’s Lounge. For the workshop, we were given a plethora of magazines ranging from science articles to art, and some excerpts of popular poetry. While the event was for blackout poetry, a few of us also did collage poetry. For my collage poetry, my options were limited to science magazines. While it was challenging to only use formal scientific writing, I was able to produce some (at times nonsensical, but nevertheless interesting) phrases that I never would have thought of if I had used a magazine of another subject.
Personally, this workshop was a good creative experience for me in looking at word choice. I always love learning new and unfamiliar words, because I like to use them to inspire and incorporate into my poetry. This event reminded me of the importance of exploring language—and though I found it really hard to create new meaning from the words that differed enough from the written text at times in the blackout poetry, it was still a useful exercise for viewing new perspectives in language and its composition. I think what makes blackout poetry and word collages so useful is their restriction; it forced me to create new meanings from a predetermined collection of words. Despite the restriction of blackout poetry, there is also structure, making it a great tool for people with writer’s block.
Some events I’m looking forward to attending this semester are more BOOM meetings and creative workshops, both of which have been great opportunities for me to generate poetry content. If I can find some magazines of my own, I might also try word and art collages.
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