A few years ago a friend invited me to contribute to a zine she was compiling, for which she asked people to talk about their idea of god. I was on a tear of making blackout poems at the time so I created a handful of them, this time about god, and sent those to her. Here’s one of them:
I have to thank her for making the prompt, even though I don’t think she’s published the zine, because I ended up being so excited by the poems I made that I have continued to make them. It turned out to be the perfect pairing of subject and medium. I love making blackout poems—found poems of all kinds—but I especially dig making them in the context of looking for god, since to make one of these I begin by literally scanning the pages for the word god, then build on it from there.
I have a pretty expansive idea of what god is, and when I set about responding to the theme of my friend’s zine, I realized that probably more than anything, I think of god as something I’m always searching for. A question I’m always asking. (I also like to think of god as having a sense of humor, or maybe it’s me that does, and that’s why some of the poems come out funny even when I don’t mean for them to.) The truth is, god is probably always right in front of me, but in order to see it I have to get quiet inside myself and remember how to look. That’s one of the things making these poems gives me: a way to look.
I wrote about this project in more detail just about a year ago, and here I am, still plugging away at it. My stack of poems is getting higher. I still have lots more to make. For now I thought I’d share a few.
