Printable Blackout poem worksheet for Years 9–10

Take the printed page below. Circle words that pull at you, then black out everything else. The surviving words, in order, are the poem. You may not add or reorder words.

Blackout poetry (also called erasure) starts from somebody else's page. Students circle words that pull at them, then black out everything else; the surviving words, in their original order, are the poem. Nothing may be added or rearranged. That strictness is exactly why it works in a classroom: the blank page problem disappears, and every decision is a reading decision. Before any marker touches paper, teach annotation — verbs in one colour, images in another — so students read the page as writers, hunting what it can be made to say. Rule of the first lesson: pencil first, marker second, because the poem changes as you black out and early commitments are usually wrong. Expect the first attempts to keep too much. The editing conversation is the curriculum: each further blackout is a revision, and students can defend every survivor. Source pages matter. Start with plain prose — a textbook page, a news article — and move to a public-domain classic later, where keeping one of the author's lines intact inside a new poem teaches quotation better than any worksheet on referencing.

Teaching this at Years 9–10

What changes at this level: Sixteen writing lines, public-domain classic as source, one authorial line must survive intact. Editing is subtraction only, and every cut needs an initialled reason.

Years 9–10 should work on a paragraph of Dickens or a Dickinson poem printed as prose, where the source pushes back. The intact-line rule creates intertextuality students can actually point to. Run lesson five of any unit as editors' pairs: editors may only propose further blackouts, never additions, and authors accept or reject in writing. Assess the margin notes as much as the poem — they are a record of revision decisions, which is what senior marking rubrics reward.

Worked example: From a page about tides

the moon
keeps accounts
of every shore —
nothing
is forgiven,
everything
returns

Seven kept phrases from a science page, re-lineated. The source explained tides; the poem is about debt and forgiveness. Show students that 'in order' is the only rule that survived — line breaks, which cost nothing, did all the poetic work.

What a worksheet looks like

Theme drawn for this sample: sport and games. 16 writing lines. Tasks, in the order this sample drew them:

Find a poem of exactly seven words hiding in the page.
Make a second poem from the same page by choosing different words.
Keep at least one verb and one image from the page.

Your download draws a new theme and task order, so no two students need get the same sheet.

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