The Distance Fragments: A Free Poetry Writing Experience for Blackout & Erasure Poetry
Some writing prompts ask you to begin immediately. To fill the page. To decide. To explain.
The Distance Fragments was created for a different kind of writing — slower, quieter, and less certain.
It’s a free poetry writing experience built around the idea of distance: physical distance, emotional distance, temporal distance, and the space that opens up between what was once close and what no longer is.
Rather than offering instructions or outcomes, this collection offers fragments — images, prose, words, and lines — designed to be returned to, altered, erased, and re-seen.
The Distance Fragments is a free poetry writing experience and a taster of a new series of fragment-led poetry prompt collections. Keep reading to download the free fragments and explore how they can be used.
What are The Distance Fragments?
The Distance Fragments is a free digital poetry resource designed for blackout poetry, erasure poetry, and fragment-led writing.
It isn’t a worksheet or a step-by-step lesson. Instead, it’s a collection of carefully curated materials that invite writers to slow down and work indirectly — through removal, selection, and repetition.
The fragments can be used individually or combined. They can be revisited days or weeks later. There is no correct order, no single interpretation, and no finished version.
This makes the resource particularly suited to:
blackout poetry and erasure poetry
reflective or contemplative writing
classroom use where discussion and exploration matter more than outcomes
writers who struggle with blank-page paralysis
What’s included in the download?
The Distance Fragments is made up of four simple files:
◆ Read Me First – a short guide explaining how the fragments work
◆ The Distance Fragments Prompt Card – a conceptual starting point
◆ The Distance Fragments (PDF) – the main collection of poetry materials
◆ Thank You Card
Inside the main PDF, you’ll find:
◆ Image Pages – visual prompts for poetic response or reflection
◆ Prose Fragments – designed specifically for blackout poetry and erasure
◆ Word Banks – curated language connected to distance and separation
◆ Short Lines – standalone fragments for poetic development
◆ Titles – to use before, during, or after writing
◆ Single-Word Pages – minimalist pauses for planning, free writing, or shape poetry
All of the materials are intentionally open-ended. Nothing needs to be used all at once.
To receive the free Distance Fragments download, enter your email below and the full collection will be sent directly to your inbox.
How can the fragments be used?
The Distance Fragments supports a wide range of writing approaches, particularly those that benefit from limitation rather than expansion.
Writers might:
create blackout poems by erasing prose fragments
cut out lines and rearrange them into new poems
respond to image pages through description, memory, or metaphor
build poems from a single word or title
combine fragments across pages to create layered or fragmented work
Teachers often use the resource to:
introduce blackout or erasure poetry
support reluctant writers
encourage close reading and selective language choices
model how meaning can emerge through removal
Because the resource is digital, pages can be printed, annotated, cut up, or returned to multiple times.
Why distance?
Distance is rarely dramatic when it first appears.
It accumulates.
It stretches.
It settles into places we don’t immediately notice.
This collection was built around that idea — that writing doesn’t always come from intensity or urgency, but from noticing what remains after time has passed.
The fragments are deliberately restrained. They don’t rush the writer toward meaning. They leave space for uncertainty, silence, and return.
Is The Distance Fragments really free?
Yes. The Distance Fragments is a free download.
It’s intended as a creative offering — something teachers and writers can use without pressure, commitment, or expectation.
Teachers may display the materials in class, but digital files should not be redistributed. Full licensing details are included in the download.
Final Thoughts
The Distance Fragments isn’t designed to produce finished poems quickly. It’s designed to create space — for erasure, for restraint, and for writing that unfolds slowly over time.
If this way of working resonates, more collections in the same series are coming soon. The Dream Fragments, The Dark Fragments, The Loneliness Fragments, The Liminal Fragments, and The Heartbreak Fragments will be available on my website shortly, each exploring a different emotional or conceptual space through the same fragment-led approach.
