Each April and October, Azia participates in The Poeming: A Found Poetry Project, where groups of poets reimagine an author’s catalogue, a shared novel, or another unique theme by crafting erasure poems.
Erasure poetry is a form of found poetry in which the poet begins with an existing text: a book page, article, or other written work, and selectively removes words to reveal a new voice within the original. By blackening, obscuring, or omitting text, the poet uncovers unexpected connections, shaping fresh meaning while allowing echoes of the source to remain.
The result is both literary and visual: a piece that transforms the familiar into something wholly new, evoking emotion, sparking reflection, and highlighting hidden layers within the original work.
For Azia, this practice is a natural extension of her love for blending visual art with the written word. Through erasure, she explores the dialogue between source material and artistic intent, inviting viewers to encounter language in a fresh and imaginative way.
Here are Azia’s most recent projects:
A Farewell to Arms & Poems : 30 Poems from A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Stepford Stanzas : 31 Erasure Poems from The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
Fang Girling : Poems from Dracula by Bram Stoker
The April Wheeler Poems
Since 2014, Azia has been shaping The April Wheeler Poems, a hybrid collection of erasure and original poetry drawn from Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road. In these works, April Wheeler appears as both muse and alter ego, a haunting voice through which Azia explores the quiet annihilation of self within motherhood and marriage. The poems linger in the shadows of domestic life, questioning the very nature of modern womanhood and whether, beneath it all, anything still matters. While individual poems have appeared in journals over the years, the collection as a whole will remain an intimate passion project, bound by the constraints of copyright.