Assignment Overview
I want you to write 2 poems for this task. All of the poems you write must be new poems. Do not use anything you wrote in the past.
Poetry Writing Technique 3: Found Poems
Writing these last poems will take a bit more work than the first two types. For this poem, I want you to go out exploring. Our world is full of poems, but we often don’t recognize this language as poems. For this poem, you will have to become a kind of poetry detective, searching the world for the poems it contains. So, go for a walk and look for words or search your room or explore a friend’s house. The key is to look until you find a poem. When you find the right words, right them down as a poem.
Here’s an example. I might take a walk around Indiana, PA, and notice that there are a lot of words on street signs. I might see one sign that says “Stop” and another sign that says “Yield” and a third that say “No Parking.” At first, these are just random words. But, if I write the words down, I can create what poets call a “found poem.” So I might write this poem:
Walking
by Gian Pagnucci
Stop
Wrong Way
Push to Walk
Eat at Joe’s
Smile
I saw most of these signs just walking around. But, the last word, “Smile” I did not find. I just added that in, to help make the poem more complete. So that’s the trick, look for a poem, it could be a sign or the side of a box or a list or a couple sheets of paper or whatever. Copy the word or words you need down, move things around, make a few minor changes if you have to, and before long, you’ll have found a poem.
Oh yes, you do not have to look for street signs. Anything can be a found poem. Your job as the poet is to tell us it is a found poem. Once you write it down, the words you found become the poem. So anything will work. BUT, I do not want 20 traffic sign poems, ok? Look in other places, wherever you can find some words. You might also try writing down words from people talking. That could be a poem too.
Billy Collin’s poem “Victoria’s Secret” is an example of a found poem because he took a lot of the language for the poem right out of that lingerie catalog. However, he also added some additional lines beyond the language he borrowed to help make his point about the models in the catalog.
Almost any language/words will work in a found poem. The key is to look for words and phrases that, when brought to our notice, become art. Best of all, once you find one poem in your everyday world, hopefully you’ll notice that the world is full of all kinds poems.
Poetry Format
To make sure your poems will be readable, please do the following:
- give each poem a title (a title that means something, not just “object poem”)
- put your name after the title
- type the poems
- single space your poems
- leave a blank line between each stanza
- do not indent lines
- write 2 poems total
- your poems should all be new work
- a lot of good poems are short, often less than 1 page (you don’t have to write 10 pages to have a good poem–in fact, shorter tends to be better)
- your poem does not have to rhyme (in fact, most good poems don’t rhyme)
- print out your two poems to hand in
Don’t Panic!
Even if your poems don’t turn out to be masterpieces, don’t worry. You will still learn a lot about how poetry works through this activity. Your main goals should be to try to be creative and to have some fun. You don’t have to write perfect poems. Just write poems that you think are interesting. I don’t expect anyone to become a brilliant poet overnight. All I expect is for you to try your best.