Redact to React: Deconstructing Justice with Erasure Poetry

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to consider the philosophy, form and function underpinning erasure poetry. Erasure is a creative practice involving redaction or the striking through of certain words, phrases, or paragraphs in found documents and materials. The poetic form is comprised of what is left behind. The form has grown in popularity in recent years due to the advent of social media and the fact that erasure poems’ pictorial format is easily shared online. This article suggests that the poststructuralist philosophy underpinning the form is also key to its traction insofar as it enables poets to expose the fallacy of justice communicated by official documents such as court transcripts and government reports. In examining traditional conceptions of the page as interface and the authority of inscription, I will explore the extent to which erasure poetry heralds a new collaborative and democratic form of poetics. By conducting a close reading of two erasure texts—M NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! and Nicole Sealey’s ‘Pages 1–4’, an excerpt from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure—I will argue that erasure poetry has the potential to reinvigorate postcolonial studies, drawing parallels between erasure and the censorship of black lives.