Obliterations

Every day we are forced to integrate the world’s news into our personal lives; we all have to decide what parts of the flood of news resonate with us and what we need to turn away from, out of necessity or sensitivity.Obliterations—a collection of erasure poems that use The New York Times as their source texts—springs from that seemingly immediate process of personalizing news information. By cutting, synthesizing and arranging existing news items into new poems, the erasure process creates a link between the authors’ poetic sensibilities and the supposedly more “objective” view of the newsmakers. Each author used the same articles but wrote separate erasures without seeing the other’s versions, highlighting the wonderful similarities and differences that arise when two works—or any two people with individual tastes and lenses—share the same stories.

Jessica Piazza is the author of two poetry collections: Interrobang (Red Hen Press, 2013), which won the 2013 Balcones Poetry Prize, and the chapbookThis is not a sky (Black Lawrence Press). She curates the Poetry Has Value blog, which explores the intersection of poetry, money and worth. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, she holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University, an M.A. in Creative Writing from UT Austin, and holds a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California, where she currently teaches Writing & Rhetoric. She is the Poetry Editor ofSouthern Pacific Review, co-founded Bat City Review and Gold Line Press, was a contributing editor atThe Offending Adam and has blogged for The Best American Poetry andBarrelhouse. Among other places, her work has appeared in Agni, Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, National Poetry Review, The Missouri Review, Rattle, Hobart and Forklift, Ohio. Jessica’s volunteer work includes mentoring underserved elementary school students and teaching creative writing to teenagers impacted by HIV.

Heather Aimee O’Neill teaches creative writing at CUNY Hunter College and is the Assistant Director of the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop. Her poetry chapbook, Memory Future, won the University of Southern California’s Gold Line Press Award, chosen by judge Carol Muske-Dukes. An excerpt from her novel When The Lights Go On Again was published as a chapbook by Shrinking Violet Press. Her work has been shortlisted for the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner-Wisdom Award and has appeared in numerous literary journals. She is a freelance writer for publications such as Time Out New York, Parents Magazine and Salon.com. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and two sons.