(pre)possessed: an erasure sequence

‘(pre)possessed’ is a sequence of six erasure poems created using found text. The work explores the concept of hidden messages as a form of possession, where apparently unbiased newspaper coverage and banal magazine columns contain the seeds of other–darker–ideas exposed through erasure. Riffing on the urban legend of satanic messages buried in song lyrics using ‘backmasking’ and the practice of subliminal advertising, ‘(pre)possessed’ demonstrates how creative erasure can ‘uncover’ the demonic apparently hiding in plain sight. The found text used in the work was drawn randomly from a collection of British print media gathered over five months.