Blackout Poetry Workshop series

Blackout poetry is a form of poetry in which the artist erases words from an existing text in order to generate a piece of poetry. 

It's a creative process that allows you to be the creator, by eliminating what you consider unnecessary in a given piece of text in order to focus on what is necessary for your own artistic piece in that moment. The very essence of blackout poetry is that it enables one to see what is hidden in plain sight. But instead of it being a matter of ‘reading between the lines’, it is a matter of ‘reading between the words’. Imagine that a piece of text is a completed puzzle, each word being a puzzle piece. With blackout poetry, you discover that random puzzle pieces fit together, creating a wholly different image. And, of course, they stop looking random anymore.

Blackout poetry is a model which reveals to the creator their own path - the process behind his or her choices, which then fall to create meaning; it allows us to meet our mind, with care.

The workshops are facilitated by Angelos Sofocleous, a final-year PhD researcher in Philosophy at the University of York, UK. His research focuses on the philosophy of depression. He seeks to understand how depression is subjectively experienced, through examining depression accounts in memoirs, autobiographies, and interviews. In particular, he looks at understanding the metaphors that people use to describe their experience of depression, such as isolated, imprisoned, suffocated or ‘living in another world’. Angelos started creating blackout poetry in 2019 as an attempt to overcome his writer’s block, but has now found a new passion within blackout poetry. He has published two poetry collections in Greek, titled On life and death (2013) and Disquiet (2017).

Fri 20 Oct.: Workshop 18:45-20:45

Fri 03 Nov.: Workshop 18:45-20:00 & Poetry Night 20:00-21:30*

*Immediately following the second workshop, creators are invited to participate in a public presentation of their poems, where they will have the opportunity to share with the audience not only the end-result of their work but also their inner-personal creative process. The poetry night will be an intimate interactive gathering of similar-minded people in search of their own understanding of the truth above and beyond the surface. We invite people to come in communion and share their own understanding of suffering and well-being through the art of poetry / word.

Additional info: 99-758094