The winner of the August contest was Alison Conlon of Canton, MA, for her poem, “Roach Stain”:

Alison’s poem did everything I think a great blackout poem should do: it totally transforms the original article into a vivid image, it reads cleanly from left to right, top to bottom, and best of all, it has a sense of humor. She was innovative with the text: dig the way she combined “struggle-ing” and “m-y.” (“Cheats” I use all the time!) Also dig the way she drew geometric shapes around the words—everything’s either a floating triangle, a circle, or a rectangle. Something worth stealing!

I asked Alison to write a little something about herself, and here’s what she sent me:

I live in the Boston area with my husband, 1 yr old son and 2 dogs. I have a long train ride to and from work everyday, and I have found that the Newspaper Blackout Poems are a great way to pass the time (though also an easy way to miss my stop!). When I first read through the August article, the task of writing a poem seemed more than a little daunting. It is one thing to use your own words, but when you have to work within the confines of pre-existing words and order it is something else entirely! After many reads I selected a few images that I thought I could work with. Once I saw that “crushed,” “roach,” and and “kitchen” were all there, my direction was set. I then just looked for the right words to pull it all together. I love that Blackout Poems are more than just a written piece of art. Because of the location of the words and how you choose to select or link them, they can also be a piece of visual art as well.

Too cool!

The also-excellent runner-ups were Josh Whitcomb of St. Paul, MN, Mark Larson of Atlanta, GA, and Tim Bakke of Minneapolis, MN. You’ll be able to see their poems, along with Alison’s, in the book!

Congrats to Alison, Josh, Mark, and Tim: y’all will get your free books next September!

And BIG THANKS to everybody who entered the contest. It was a rough article, so if you didn’t win, try this month’s! You have less than two weeks left to get your entries in: they’re due September 21, 2008 (5:00 P.M. EST).

ENTER THE SEPTEMBER NEWSPAPER BLACKOUT POEMS CONTEST