Blackout Poetry Project

This community project offers a chance to interact with and reinterpret Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Participants will engage with this iconic work using new media and visual expression to say something entirely new. After each stunning, idiosyncratic, vibrant, haunting, or hilarious page is made, we will gather them into a new collection of poetry and art that could only have been made by our community.

Collectively, our community will respond to this iconic work.

What

This is a project where we’ll be making blackout poems directly on the pages of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. A blackout poem in its simplest form needs only a page and a marking tool (pencil, marker, correction pen, etc.) You hide some words to make a poem out of what is left behind. You can stop there, or you can take it further and add some art!

How

Take one of the pages from our piles in the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center or the Design Thinking Initiative. We’ll have some art supplies in the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center (Wright Hall), or visit the Design Thinking Initiative (Capen Annex) and explore their trove of materials!

Who

Everyone is welcome to participate! Whether you're a student, faculty, staff, an alum, or just stopping in, we'd love for you to contribute to this project! Are you far away, but would still like to participate? Send us an email at jblackbu@smith.edu with the subject line “Holmes Improvement” and we’ll send you a page. By participating in this project, participants agree to allow their work to be posted on BDPC social media, and later assembled into a collection that will be housed in the Mortimer Rare Books collection at the library.

When

We’ll be collecting these all year, through June 1, 2027!

Holmes Improvement

The character of Sherlock Holmes is iconic. Timeless. Dare we say, elementary. London fog, deerstalker cap, comically large pipe, violin—some building blocks of the stories are instantly recognizable, but creators keep returning to Arthur Conan Doyle’s work to bring their own versions to life. Holmes was among the first characters to make the leap from page to screen. (Who’s your favorite? Benedict Cumberbatch? Data? Wishbone?) What we’re saying is, these stories have been around for over 100 years, and they can withstand a few little renovations…Now it’s your turn.

The Process

The Boutelle-Day Poetry Center and the Design Thinking Initiative will have stations with pages from Frankenstein and a variety of materials available for creating your own responses. We plan to display them outside of the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center in Wright Hall (and occasionally feature them on Instagram), and when everything is done, put the pages back together to create a whole new document.

This project is open to all, including the Smith community, alums, and visitors to the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center.

Guidelines

  • Choose one side of the page to hold your primary design.
  • By participating in this project, participants agree to allow their work to be posted on social media, and assembled into an object that will be housed in the Mortimer Rare Books collection at the library.
  • If you wish to be credited, please write your name legibly on the back. (If you want us to tag you on instagram, please include your IG handle!)
  • What you do to alter the text is up to you! Here are some strategies to get you thinking: Cover words or blank space with whiteout pen or tape, marker, colored pencil, cut/torn paper, fabric, washi tape, images from books or magazines, string, embroidery, photos or film negatives, buttons, beads, dried and sealed plant material.
  • Please take no more than 2 pages; we want to have enough for everyone!
  • When finished, put completed pages on the paper tray or windowsill in the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center so we can collect them.

Explore Previous Submissions

Erased Land (2024–25) PostEmily (2023–24) Emily Dashes (2022–23) CTRL+WALT+DELETE (Spring 2022) Monster Mash (2025–26)

Project Examples

Check out some examples of submissions from the Erased Land blackout poetry project.