andrew mitchell

I’ve been wondering what my blackout poems are really trying to say. On the surface, they’re simple: a black marker, a paperback page, and the slow excavation of meaning.

But beneath that, something deeper is happening. I think they’re speaking to me—more than I’d realised.

Today’s poem read:

care about your future the walls of the office have you manipulated

I didn’t set out to write something that questioned my work life. Yet those are the words my eyes landed on. There’s a pattern emerging. Despite my choice of pages being completely random, from completely different books, what I choose, the phrases I circle, the words surviving erasure.

i was overwhelmed

by it all finally

i could hear

‘are you okay?’

and

i tried so hard

but slowly

i found myself

more and more alone

i am so sorry

And one that really hits.

it sounded like

the perfect distraction

and now

it was a pain in the ass

I started this a deliberate creative outlet; tactile but quick, deliberate but easy. It’s helped to regulate my thoughts, helped with the doomscroll. Sitting down with a page and searching for meaning brings a type of mindfulness I’ve struggled to find elsewhere.

And it’s not super performative. Unlike my Working Men’s Club project, where I was trying, several times a day, to conjure up a fictional world, a riduclous narrative arc, and semblance of social commentary, all at once. This feels far less full on.

After a year of creating only to explain Emma's illness, this is starting to bring me back. But these fragments, rinsed from someone else’s story, keep echoing my own thoughts and feelings. It’s as if my subconscious is curating the poems and leaving me breadcrumbs in ink.

After long stretches away from work over the past twelve months, caring for Emma through her illness and surgery, I’ve felt out of step with my role. What once felt creative now feels procedural. I know I'm not fulfilled, but seeing these words stark on the page, feels like someone, something else stepping in, and saying what I can’t.

Perhaps this erasure project isn’t just about removing, but revealing.

And what’s being revealed is a call for change.