FOBA 2026 - Genevieve Kaplan - Altered Pages and Blackout Poems: Working with Text

Focus on Book Arts 2026

Genevieve Kaplan
Altered Pages and Blackout Poems: Working with Text - Friday, June 26, 2026

Read more about FOBA 2026 on their website!
https://focusonbookarts.org/2026-foba-conference/

Workshop Description:

In this hands-on creative workshop, we will find our inspiration by excavating texts already written. Using pages torn from discarded books as our starting point, we will explore various physical and intellectual approaches to altering pages. From strike-through to pattern-making, black-out to collage, we’ll cover up, obscure, and reveal existing language to forge new
ways of creating, experiencing, and reading. In this class, we will view and consider exciting examples of altered books and erasure poetry, getting inspiration from published works while we try our own hands at the techniques shown.

The emphasis of this course will be on learning techniques to alter pages of texts to expose new messages, stories, poems, or ideas. Participants will explore the following methods: strike-through, doodle, drawing or painting, pattern-making, collage, stitching, and obscuring vs. revealing. Our experiments will allow us to create a number of single-page samples to take home and inspire future work.

Materials/equipment to be provided by students:

• Metal ruler
• X-Acto knife or cutting blade
• Cutting mat
• Pencil (preferably mechanical)
• Ballpoint gel pen (recommended: Pentel Energel metal tip .7mm, black)
• Embroidery or other needle
• Embroidery or other thread, 2 colors
• PVA or glue stick
• Brush (for PVA, if using)
• Mark making tools like crayons, markers, colored pencils, stamps, or acrylic paints (whatever students typically enjoy using)

Optional:

• Tweezers
• Scissors or snips
• Hole punch (any size, shape)
• Miscellaneous collage supplies (i.e., photos, sequins, patterned paper, other paper bits, etc.)