Slam poetry is a type of spoken-word poetry that poets perform live at competitions called poetry slams. A slam poem is a performance art piece where speakers engage in powerful self-expression focusing on both content and sound—this can have a rhyme scheme or be unrhymed (free verse) and may contain elements of hip-hop, folk music, or jazz to enhance the rhythmic presentation. Slam poetry performances require participants to memorize their poems, have expressive body language, enunciate, and make eye contact with the audience.
Erasure poetry is a type of found poetry in which the poet takes an existing text and creates their own poem by erasing, redacting, or otherwise obscuring the words in the original text. The resulting text of the final poem can be arranged into lines or stanzas, or it can remain as it appeared on the original page.
Blackout poetry is a subcategory of erasure poetry. In a blackout poem, the poet uses a black marker as a redaction tool, blacking out the original text until a new work is formed. The combination of new meaning derived from the remaining text as well as the aesthetic quality of the redactions create a type of visual poetry. Blackout poets often use old books, newspaper articles, or pieces of paper to make blackout poetry.
