Found Poetry: A Guide

Where to begin a poem? How do you radically change your writing routine? Don't sit down to a blank page. 

Hannah Höch, "Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany,"
1919, collage of pasted papers, 90 x 144 cm, Staatliche Museum, Berlin.

The Academy of American Poets defines found poetry thusly–"Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems"–and presents a nice overview of what found poetry does and who's done it well. They say that found poetry is often made from newspapers, street signs, speeches (and don't we have enough of those nowadays?), letters, graffiti or other poems. 

But why be conventional? Poet Paraic O'Donnell wrote a poem from every entry he submitted to The New Yorker's caption contest. Writers Jeff Parker and Pasha Malla published an entire book (illustrated by Nathan McKee) of poetry written from interviews with athletes from a variety of sports. You are limited only by your ingenuity.

For example, here's a first draft I threw together from a CB2 catalog that landed on my doorstep today:

What does live well mean?

Steeped in tradition

yet utterly modern.

Detail oriented and socially conscious.

A smooth river rock

stopping just short of color. 

Reward: look like you

hired a professional.

So, go find your gas bill. Or the installation instructions for your cable box. Or the words on the posters in your house. We here at Floodmark have prepared a foolproof guide to writing your very own found poem from it:

1. Read your text. Then read it again. Then read it again and again and again. Read it until the words stop existing as sense and start existing as sounds. (This is why it's better to start with a gas bill instead of The Odyssey.)
2. Start playing. You might want to break out the scissors and glue, actually cut words out and arrange them like a puzzle. You might want to just start writing. You might want to play a different way. Leave room for mistakes, erasures, crossings out. Add words if you absolutely have to, but try as hard as you can to work only with the text you chose.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2. The more you play with the words, the more they'll start arranging themselves into poetry.
4. Share below!

Read more work by Rukmini on Floodmark.