Writing Found Poems
I sometimes include Found Poetry in my Creative
Writing Workshops and (Creative) Academic Writing Retreats. Found
poetry/poems is a great way to pay with existing texts and the source can come
from anywhere; newspaper articles, letters, books, online sites, research data and more. In my
sessions I sometimes ask participants to go back to something that they have
written earlier in the session with me to create a poem or two.
Others who advocate the practice consider the Found Poem to be the literary equivalent of a collage and some poets have incorporated snippets of found texts into larger poems. Poets well known for writing Found Poetry include Charles Reznikoff, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Click on the link below to read an interesting example of a Found Poem focusing on patient experience. Created by Fiona Hamilton the text is taken from quotes from qualitative interviews https://bjgp.org/content/72/724/538
The twelve word Found Poem is one of my favourites. I am grateful to Professor Ceri Morgan (a researcher-practitioner who works on literary geographies, place-writing and participatory arts) who introduced me to this at a creative writing workshop she led at a conference I attended at Keele University. Prof Morgan devised this version for Ben Anderson's AHRC-funded project, 'Planned Creativity'. The format goes:
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD WORD
WORD
WORD WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
Here are a couple of my own. The first is written from one
of three conference papers I gave in the summer the title of which was Sociable
Solitude: exploring some alternative ways of being and moving with others:
Solitude,
not loneliness.
Connections,
relationships, networks
kindness,
care, love.
Creativity,
freedom.
Imaginations.
And the second from a paper entitled The
Self and Sensation: some thoughts on older women and masturbation (I’m
nothing if not eclectic). I cheated a bit with this one and made it thirteen
words (but why not).
Taboo.
(To) avoid intimacy?
Substitute? Transgressive?
Unruly?
Satisfaction. Pleasure.
Healthy.
Positive images.
Real.
Why not have a go at writing some of your own Found Poetry, either from other pieces you have written or from the back of a cereal packet or a train ticket, or ….
