Blacking Out in the #MeToo Movement 

Many blackout poetry projects have emerged because of a poet’s obsession or frustration with specific documents whether that be newspapers, inauguration speeches, or Victorian novels. Blackout poet Isobel O’Hare turned their frustration with apology statements during the #MeToo movement into one such project. 

Though the phrase was first used in 2006 on Myspace in 2006, the #MeToo movement gained traction in 2017 when Alyssa Milano, an American actress, posted on Twitter, "If all the women who have ever been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too.’ as a status, then we give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem," and people began responding by not only tweeting #MeToo but also publicly calling out their abusers. After the callouts came the apologies. In a 2019 interview with The Rumpus, O’Hare describes it as “every day there was some guy being accused of sexual assault or harassment and coming out with a statement.” Their roommate noticed that many of the statements were “remarkably similar,” something that frustrated O’Hare and many others, as it appeared these men were not actually apologetic, only apologetic that they got caught. This frustration turned them to blackout poetry:

O’Hare had created blackouts before, but only as a “playful, fun thing, or something I did in order to have a conversation with other people’s work in a reverent way.” However, the frustration they felt at these apologies manifested a different kind of blackout, one that was “like an angry redaction style “ according to O’Hare. Previously when making blackouts, they had only used source material they respected, but in this project, “The text was [their] enemy.” 

In a 2018 interview with Luna Luna Magazine, O’Hare has described stated they connected with the experience of those in the #MeToo movement: “I know that I will never receive any kind of apology or redemption from the authority figures who have wronged me...Many of these experiences of abuse are universal. So many of us have been hurt by people more powerful than us.”  O’Hare created these poems as a way of processing the anger and frustration they and others were feeling as they watched statement after statement be read. They described the experience of creating the poems as “cathartic,” as they allowed O’Hare to highlight things in the apology statements they thought were “dishonest or concealing the truth” while also “mutat[ing] the original messages of the statements into my own version of the truth behind them.” 

In creating these pieces, O’Hare gave a voice to those who were feeling stifled by the repetitive apologies. In an email interview with Mashable, they stated this was purposeful, “I hope that the form of erasure itself draws attention to the fact that these men have in fact erased the voices of their victims, for many years, some deliberately and litigiously.” Many poets turned towards erasure as a way of exposing the truth within a text or highlighting a voice not being heard, particularly in the tumultuous political climate of the United States in the late 2010s. Nonpoets, however, did the same. The form and genre is relatively accessible, as it does not rely on overly academic language or rules. Anyone can simply pick up a marker and strike through words to create a piece that speaks to the truth they know or see within the source text. The accessibility of the form combined with people’s connection with the material and the timeliness of the project brought a lot of attention to O’Hare’s work.

They soon began receiving book deals as a result of all the attention. Their experience is similar to that of popular blackout poet Austin Kleon, who also posted his works online and received a book deal due to his digital sharing from HarperCollins. However, unlike Kleon, O’Hare turned down an offer from a major publisher. According to their 2019 interview with The Rumpus, they did so because they felt as if they “had to make a choice: either I can be like Rupi Kaur and be this “poet influencer” because it was being pitched to me that I was a new Instagram poet...It would be my brand, and all of that was just totally making me feel horrible.” They could not stomach much less imagine continuously creating erasures and blackout poems for the sole purpose of posting them online. 

While it is likely their book would have reached more people had they published with a larger publisher, their choice to not is almost symbolic. One of O’Hare’s major concerns with the #MeToo movement was that “the most prominent voices are the voices of white, cis-gendered, mostly hetero women. And you know it’s very glamorous people: wealthy, comfortable people. When there are all these other stories that are not getting that much attention.” Even in a movement that was meant to allow all victims of abuse to voice their experiences, only certain voices were being listened to. O’Hare is queer and non binary, but they are “still a white person with a tremendous amount of privilege,” and their book is representative of that privilege to an extent. By choosing to not publish with a major publisher and thus place their book and poems in the role of the dominant narrative of erasing #MeToo statements, they are opening space for other writers. This is something that is important to them, they even encourage readers of their book in the introduction to “read things beyond me and things beyond the dominant narratives of that movement.” 

Rather going through a larger publisher, O’Hare chose to publish with University of Hell Press based out of Seattle, WA. They compiled the poems into a 196 page collection titled all this can be yours after an alleged statement made by one of the accused abusers when he exposed himself to his victim at a party. Furthermore, in the book’s introduction, O’Hare mentions that "this experience of being daily assaulted and sexualized is already ours. All of ours. We are all suffering from this sickness." The collection was released in March 2018 to high acclaim. The hardcover edition featuring artwork by Susannah Kelly sold out of its initial print run of 300 copies soon after release and the publisher has yet to run another printing of it. The paperback copy remains available for purchase, however.