Prompt Fourteen – Text Prompt

Redacting is the act of censoring or obscuring part of a text. Sometimes it is done by the author themselves, and more often it is done by someone else.

I want you to write a poem and then during or after writing the poem choose at least one, or ideally five or more words to redact from the poem. How is the poem changed by this simple act? This is not the same as a “black out” or erasure poem”. The words you are using are your own, and well over 50% of them should be visible.

When writing on physical paper, you can do this easily with a marker, ideally a black sharpie. If you are writing your poem in a Word document, you can use the highlight feature and set the highlight colour to black, this creates a black box over the word or words. Or you can just write the word redacted in place of the word you wanted to use.

 

Redaction, not reduction

A strange new style to use.

I take on the REDACT, cannot refuse.

I continue to cruise,

bleary eyed, weary sighs

Demanding the REDACT of my muse

I stare at the blank screen.

There’s nothing to lose,

Go on, redact away!

But first, say what you need to say.

At this REDACT hour

When even hardened nightclubbers

Have lain down to rest.

We soldier on.

Rolling stiff shoulders on.

Propping each other up

on REDACT.

But then, all it took,

was a generous REDACT

from a fellow writer.

Her words were different,

But what she was really saying

‘Go on, continue playing’.

We can do this – REDACT on!