finding poetry

FOUND POETRY

Keep an eye out - and do subscribe to my blog posts - i am thinking through a few workshops and ideas on the type of work i do and it seems as i start to think on one thing it leads to another and another etc.

Currently in draft form I have exercises in Found Poetry, how to haiku without writing haiku, collage, found art and much more. Writing them out, connecting them and thinking them through takes time, so over time, they will come into the blog. Meantime I am also working on videos in my arts practice as well as the lifestyle, Tasmania, country living. Already many videos currently up on you tube. check out the playlists which will bring together particular subjects.

"The found poem became prominent in the twentieth-century, along with Pop Art, such as Andy Warhol's soup cans or Marcel Duchamp's bicycle wheels and urinals.

The writer Annie Dillard has said that turning a text into a poem doubles that poem's context. "The original meaning remains intact," she writes, "but now it swings between two poles." (1)

What i enjoy about a found poem is :

A found poem is to find meaningful, interesting (to you) language using words, phrases or quotes that have been selected and rearranged from another text. Take existing texts and refashion or reorder them to present as your poem.

A found poem is a word collage and can be made with newspaper articles, speeches, letters and even other poems.

Writing found poems is a structured way to play with poetry forms and ideas. This may be seen in the different types of found poetry. Create the boundaries for yourself when choosing to write a found poem.

A PURE FOUND POEM is where the new poem retains the words of the poem exactly as they were found, with few additions or omissions. The form of the poem remains with you, the poet.
SNIPPETS of found texts (more than one text) are rearranged into larger poems.
FREE VERSE - it does not use consistent meter patterns, or rhyme. It tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech
A REMIX appropriates and changes other material. A remix can be a song, a piece of artwork, book, poem or photograph where the media is taken, altered by changing, adding, removing parts of the item.
ERASURE is where you take a particular text erasing words to create a result on the page that is reframed as a poem.
A CENTO is where you take verses or passages from other authors creating a poetical work.
the CUT-UP TECHNIQUE where you take a written text (or more than one) and cut it up to rearrange into a new work. this concept can be traced back to the Dadaists in the 1920's and popularised by William S Burroughs in the 1950s.

Examples of my own found poetry, the steps I took to finalising the poem and how it looks during the 'find' below. Section A&B are available in the resources page as a downloadable PDF.

A) I show the original found text and how it evolved to a 'found poem' that becomes my own.

Text from page 50. Of Virginia Woolf (page below)

The Rule: BEGIN

no more than 3 words
line by line
create the story as you go
it may be that whole line(s) are left unused.
The title is taken from a line in the piece.
adding words is kept to bare minimum ... became – was added /created to support the flow

"became'" was written in the sidelines and then later dropped in the editing process.

The poem :

A load on the back of her neck

Far from the cold fog

she began

crossing the stream

her hands clutched her head

while she waited

at last

the evening

much as usual

but she slept strange

stiff and cold

he snored

but remained perfectly still

a vision of

there

they sat

grown old

B) The final poem was written and won a trophy in a competition .... here it is.

C) another one below ... the first page sets up the rules for myself.

the second page shows the redacted lines.

The poem now reads :

DISCOVER THE PROCESS

the peculiarity it creates

may give the illusion of a particular

concern

a luxury in space

becomes a sensation

occupied by

the quality

of its mass

as a distinct entity

a notion

of discrimination

and chaotic experience

FOUND POETRY PDF

constructs this

observed reality

More on poetry tips and hints at the 'Learn With Me' Page

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(1) found poem examples on poets.org.

Many poets have also chosen to incorporate snippets of found texts into larger poems, most significantly Ezra Pound. His Cantos includes letters written by presidents and popes, as well as an array of official documents from governments and banks. (1) found poem examples on poets.org.

The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot, uses many different texts, including Wagnerian opera, Shakespearian theater, and Greek mythology. Other poets who combined found elements with their poetry are William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, and Louis Zukofsky. (1) found poem examples on poets.org.