What is it:
Erasure poetry begins with an existing piece of text. Letters, words and punctuation are removed—or erased. What is left behind is a new stand-alone poem, one that both complements and gives new meaning to the Erasure Text.
The Erasure Text for the 2022 Geist Erasure Poetry Contest is an excerpt from Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery, published by L.C. Page & Co. in 1908.
How it works:
1. Copy the passage from Anne of Green Gables, posted below, into your word processor. This is your Erasure Text.
2. Erase! The left over words and letters will form your poem. Do this in any way you like and be creative. The remaining words should take on new shapes and meanings.
3. The ONLY RULE is: do not change the order of words or letters. You can combine left over words and letters however you see fit, just as long as they appear in the same order as in the original text.
4. Shape the text however you like. Or, leave it as is. Add punctuation and capitalization if the spirit moves you.
5. Add a title: it does not have to be from the Erasure Text.
6. Submit your entry via Submittable. There is no word limit.
For inspiration, read the First Prize winner of the 5th Occasional Geist Erasure Poetry Contest, "Objects Left Behind" by Ben Bazevski. Visit our Erasure Poetry Contest page for past contest winners and great examples of erasure poetry.
Have any questions? Check out the Erasure Poetry Contest FAQ.
Entry Fee: $20
Includes a one-year subscription to Geist, Canada's favourite literary magazine. International entrants will receive a digital subscription. All additional entries are $5.
PRIZES:
First Prize: $500
Second Prize: $300
Third Prize: $200
All winning entries will be published in Geist and on geist.com. More than one prize per category may be awarded.
DEADLINE: N̶o̶v̶e̶m̶b̶e̶r̶ ̶2̶1̶ December 5, 2022 at 11:59pm PST
How to enter:
We prefer online submissions via submittable.
Mail-in submissions are still accepted, however they must be received before the deadline. Send your poem, with a short cover letter (including name, mailing address, phone number, email and the title of entry) along with the $20 entry fee to:
Geist Erasure Poetry Contest
Suite 210, 111 West Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC V6B 1H4
Entries received without the appropriate information and cover letter will not be accepted. Judging is anonymous—do not include your name on your entry.
Be sure to sign up for the Geist Newsletter to receive important updates and announcements regarding this and other contests.
Good luck and happy erasing!
The Erasure Text: Excerpt from Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery, published by L.C. Page & Co. in 1908.
[START]
One June evening, when the orchards were pink blossomed again, when the frogs were singing silverly sweet in the marshes about the head of the Lake of Shining Waters, and the air was full of the savor of clover fields and balsamic fir woods, Anne was sitting by her gable window. She had been studying her lessons, but it had grown too dark to see the book, so she had fallen into wide-eyed reverie, looking out past the boughs of the Snow Queen, once more bestarred with its tufts of blossom.
In all essential respects the little gable chamber was unchanged. The walls were as white, the pincushion as hard, the chairs as stiffly and yellowly upright as ever. Yet the whole character of the room was altered. It was full of a new vital, pulsing personality that seemed to pervade it and to be quite independent of schoolgirl books and dresses and ribbons, and even of the cracked blue jug full of apple blossoms on the table. It was as if all the dreams, sleeping and waking, of its vivid occupant had taken a visible although unmaterial form and had tapestried the bare room with splendid filmy tissues of rainbow and moonshine. Presently Marilla came briskly in with some of Anne’s freshly ironed school aprons. She hung them over a chair and sat down with a short sigh. She had had one of her headaches that afternoon, and although the pain had gone she felt weak and “tuckered out,” as she expressed it. Anne looked at her with eyes limpid with sympathy.
“I do truly wish I could have had the headache in your place, Marilla. I would have endured it joyfully for your sake.”
“I guess you did your part in attending to the work and letting me rest,” said Marilla. “You seem to have got on fairly well and made fewer mistakes than usual. Of course it wasn’t exactly necessary to starch Matthew’s handkerchiefs! And most people when they put a pie in the oven to warm up for dinner take it out and eat it when it gets hot instead of leaving it to be burned to a crisp. But that doesn’t seem to be your way evidently.”
Headaches always left Marilla somewhat sarcastic.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Anne penitently. “I never thought about that pie from the moment I put it in the oven till now, although I felt instinctively that there was something missing on the dinner table. I was firmly resolved, when you left me in charge this morning, not to imagine anything, but keep my thoughts on facts. I did pretty well until I put the pie in, and then an irresistible temptation came to me to imagine I was an enchanted princess shut up in a lonely tower with a handsome knight riding to my rescue on a coal-black steed. So that is how I came to forget the pie. I didn’t know I starched the handkerchiefs. All the time I was ironing I was trying to think of a name for a new island Diana and I have discovered up the brook. It’s the most ravishing spot, Marilla. There are two maple trees on it and the brook flows right around it. At last it struck me that it would be splendid to call it Victoria Island because we found it on the Queen’s birthday. Both Diana and I are very loyal. But I’m sorry about that pie and the handkerchiefs. I wanted to be extra good today because it’s an anniversary. Do you remember what happened this day last year, Marilla?”
“No, I can’t think of anything special.”
“Oh, Marilla, it was the day I came to Green Gables. I shall never forget it. It was the turning point in my life. Of course it wouldn’t seem so important to you. I’ve been here for a year and I’ve been so happy. Of course, I’ve had my troubles, but one can live down troubles. Are you sorry you kept me, Marilla?”
“No, I can’t say I’m sorry,” said Marilla, who sometimes wondered how she could have lived before Anne came to Green Gables, “no, not exactly sorry. If you’ve finished your lessons, Anne, I want you to run over and ask Mrs. Barry if she’ll lend me Diana’s apron pattern.”
“Oh—it’s—it’s too dark,” cried Anne.
“Too dark? Why, it’s only twilight. And goodness knows you’ve gone over often enough after dark.”
“I’ll go over early in the morning,” said Anne eagerly. “I’ll get up at sunrise and go over, Marilla.”
“What has got into your head now, Anne Shirley? I want that pattern to cut out your new apron this evening. Go at once and be smart too.”
“I’ll have to go around by the road, then,” said Anne, taking up her hat reluctantly.
“Go by the road and waste half an hour! I’d like to catch you!”
“I can’t go through the Haunted Wood, Marilla,” cried Anne desperately.
Marilla stared.
“The Haunted Wood! Are you crazy? What under the canopy is the Haunted Wood?”
“The spruce wood over the brook,” said Anne in a whisper.
“Fiddlesticks! There is no such thing as a haunted wood anywhere. Who has been telling you such stuff?”
“Nobody,” confessed Anne. “Diana and I just imagined the wood was haunted. All the places around here are so—so—commonplace. We just got this up for our own amusement. We began it in April. A haunted wood is so very romantic, Marilla. We chose the spruce grove because it’s so gloomy. Oh, we have imagined the most harrowing things. There’s a white lady walks along the brook just about this time of the night and wrings her hands and utters wailing cries. She appears when there is to be a death in the family. And the ghost of a little murdered child haunts the corner up by Idlewild; it creeps up behind you and lays its cold fingers on your hand—so. Oh, Marilla, it gives me a shudder to think of it. And there’s a headless man stalks up and down the path and skeletons glower at you between the boughs. Oh, Marilla, I wouldn’t go through the Haunted Wood after dark now for anything. I’d be sure that white things would reach out from behind the trees and grab me.”
“Did ever anyone hear the like!” ejaculated Marilla, who had listened in dumb amazement. “Anne Shirley, do you mean to tell me you believe all that wicked nonsense of your own imagination?”
“Not believe exactly,” faltered Anne. “At least, I don’t believe it in daylight. But after dark, Marilla, it’s different. That is when ghosts walk.”
“There are no such things as ghosts, Anne.”
“Oh, but there are, Marilla,” cried Anne eagerly. “I know people who have seen them. And they are respectable people. Charlie Sloane says that his grandmother saw his grandfather driving home the cows one night after he’d been buried for a year. You know Charlie Sloane’s grandmother wouldn’t tell a story for anything. She’s a very religious woman. And Mrs. Thomas’s father was pursued home one night by a lamb of fire with its head cut off hanging by a strip of skin. He said he knew it was the spirit of his brother and that it was a warning he would die within nine days. He didn’t, but he died two years after, so you see it was really true. And Ruby Gillis says—”
“Anne Shirley,” interrupted Marilla firmly, “I never want to hear you talking in this fashion again. I’ve had my doubts about that imagination of yours right along, and if this is going to be the outcome of it, I won’t countenance any such doings. You’ll go right over to Barry’s, and you’ll go through that spruce grove, just for a lesson and a warning to you. And never let me hear a word out of your head about haunted woods again.”
[END]
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