Erasure poetry—it’s one of the best ways to get almost anyone to try creating a poem. All you’ve gotta do is black out some words and leave others. Simple right? Well yes. Simple, but not easy. Erasure poetry, also known as blackout poetry, isn’t burdened by many rules but it’s no small feat to turn a text saying one thing into a poem saying something different.

Elena Bentley (MA English, University of Toronto) is a multi-genre writer and proud Métis aunty. Her recent poetry chapbook, taliped (845 Press), was a finalist in the 2022 Vallum Chapbook Award. And the poetry is all erasure.

We welcome her to our Power Q & A series today to talk with us about choosing erasure poetry for this project.

Q: What was it about this particular project that inspired you to use erasure poetry?

A: I read Randolph Bourne’s essay, “The Handicapped—by One of Them,” which was originally published anonymously in 1911 in The Atlantic Monthly, years ago when I was an undergrad researching for my Honours Thesis.

In his essay, Bourne muses on life with a disability as it relates to work, school, friendship, and relationships. After I read it, I was, to be honest, very shocked. This essay was published over one hundred years earlier, yet I felt that I could’ve written it. How could this man have captured, so accurately, my experience of disabled life when more than a century separated us? My shock turned to sadness. I felt, and still feel, saddened to know things have changed very little for those with disabilities.

Having rather masochistically thrown myself into grad school, I didn’t have time for anything extra, so I pinned Bourne’s essay as a piece of writing to return to in the future. Fast forward and cue the pandemic. Anxiety doesn’t often leave room for creative thoughts, at least in my case, so I figured I’d revisit my three-ring, five-inch-thick, papers-falling-out-because-it’s-so-full-of-honours-thesis-research-notes, binder for inspiration. And there was Bourne’s essay. I thought, I have to do something with this.

I’d been wanting to try my hand at erasure poetry, and his essay seemed like the perfect source text. After I’d finished taliped and sent it out for consideration, an editor told me that taliped didn’t stray far enough away from the source text. My intention wasn’t to write in opposition to Bourne—I wanted to stay close. To be in conversation with him. To locate my individual experience of disability within his individual experience, and to show that while our diseases may be different, the country and time period may be different, we also have a collective, shared experience. Erasure allowed me to do what I set out to do.

That’s not to say we, meaning Bourne and I, feel and think the same. No, we certainly don’t. Where my long poem and Bourne’s essay differ the most is in our internalized beliefs about ableism and disability. Bourne can “see the way to happiness,” and believes any future misfortunes aren’t a direct result of his disability. Sorry, Bourne, I don’t buy it. I’m much more glass-half-empty in taliped. Though I hope to one day see my way to happiness, too.

Elena Bentley (MA English, University of Toronto) is a multi-genre writer and proud Métis aunty. Her poetry chapbook, taliped, was a finalist in the 2022 Vallum Chapbook Award and was recently published by 845 Press. Her poems can be found in literary journals like Arc Poetry, Room, The Malahat Review, PRISM international, and Grain. She received an Honourable Mention in Grain’s 2022 Short Grain Contest (poetry category), and in 2021 she was a finalist for CV2’s 2-Day Poem Contest. In addition, she is the author of the children’s picture book The Pickle in Grandma’s Fridge, and she was shortlisted for CANSCAIP’s 2023 Writing for Children Competition (Young Adult category). She is the Interim Editor for Grain Magazine. elenabentley.com | @_elenabentley_