Responsibility, a poem

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to

I usually post on Mondays and Fridays, but I want to try a bit of experimenting. And decided to post on a Wednesday today and with a poem I wrote.

Today’s poem was a How Writers Write Poetry, a The Writing University Open Course program, assignment. Exercise 7 of the course was to make an erasure poem. Erase words from an existing text and frame it as a poem.

One can argue if erasure is really a poem since you’re using someone else’s words. That it lacks originality. An argument mentioned by the instructor from a past student. But, one also has to remember that poetry is all around us. Everywhere and in everything.:


a plan for

following the fire

and skimming areas

began activity


by day’s end,

in our power,

well and remotely,

assisting in

recovery capacity,

the effects of the

extensive oil spill

in required response.


go ahead.

standby for their use

with supplies of

storage, flotilla of vessels

and determined to do

everything in sinking

a boom.

© July 28, 2014


17 thoughts on “Responsibility, a poem

    • Thanks Claudine. It was my first time writing an erasure poem. Wasn’t sure if I could craft a poem out of the words left. But in the end, I did.


  1. I think the idea of this one is pretty cool and creative! I would think that erasure is a form of poetry because although you do use someone else’s words, you are choosing the ones to keep and making them a new meaning. Nearly every word you use in other poems have been used as well by others and labelled theirs before too ^^


    • Thank for stopping by. And you’re right, it’s a good prompt when you’re ‘stuck.’ It also makes you fully realized the power of words, their meaning, and representation, all dependent on how a writer chooses to use them in a sentence. Or in my case, a poem.


  2. Pingback: How to Write an Erasure Poem | Paving My Author's Road

Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Google+ photo


Connecting to %s