Found Poetry is a form of poetry created from existing texts or literature.
Words or phrases are taken out, refashioned, reordered, and presented as poems with new meanings.
Similar to a collage, poetry can be made from newspaper articles, magazines, letters, street signs, speeches, poems, or even textbooks.
Creating found poems can support interdisciplinary learning depending on the vocabulary or topic/theme being explored. We’ll look at two forms of found poetry here: Book Spine Poetry and Blackout Poetry.
Book Spine Poetry
- Choose some of your interesting books, or go to the library and choose a few books of interest from a bookshelf, or choose a recommended reading list by a friend.
- Arrange the books into stacks (or write down the titles on pieces of paper).
- Read the titles on the book spine (the edge of the book)
- Start ordering the books in a way that creates the lines of a poem
- You might search for more books in your library to fit the theme you are writing on and arrange them in a suitable order to make a flow
- Finally, take a photo and share it with your class
There are some interesting examples of book spine poems available online!
Blackout poetry
Blackout poetry is a form of poetry where you select interesting words from an existing text, and block out the rest, creating a new meaning!
With as minimum as one page, you could create a black-out poem!
Simple Steps
- Grab a book, newspaper, magazine or novel, or any already existing text
- Scan the page first, looking for interesting words.
- Using a marker, blackout or redact the words that you would like to eliminate, or another way of doing it, circle the words that strike you or catch your interest, and blackout the rest.
- You could add drawings or patterns on the blacked-out area, creating an interesting or outline, or poster.
- Check out this website by Austin Kleon for examples of blackout poems.
- Wanted to do it virtually without spoiling your new books? Check out this video to learn more about creating blackout poetry through google slides, by changing the background color.
Make your blackout poem come to life: Using a micro-controller like the makey makey and scratch coding, you can even make your blackout poem ‘speak’!
Virtual Platforms for sharing & creation
Nearpod is an interactive online platform for sharing multimedia content with students and collecting students’ responses.
Using Nearpod, you might create and upload your own poetry lessons. The possibilities for exploring various aspects of poetry in a way that many students find approachable and engaging are high with found poems. One might explore mood, structure, poetic devices and more.
Using a collaborative online whiteboard for Student-Paced Lessons, students can post texts and images of their book spine poems and blackout poems, in response to your prompts or questions or based on their own questions or provocations. Teachers and students can also share their feedback depending on the sharing tool selected.
Guest Post: Nashwa Khedr, EDCP graduate student, project assistant 2020
In Fall 2020, project assistant and undergrad student Maryam Begzada shared her passion for poetry with Education students. Maryam integrated poetry from her native land with the found poetry technique in a unique workshop:
Are you looking for an opportunity be heard and listen to others? We are offering a poetry workshop by Maryam on Friday, Oct 23rd, where you listen and speak with your heart. The workshop will start with a poem by Mawlana Jalaluddin Mohammad Balkhi AKA Rumi, the 13th century poet born in Balkh, Afghanistan – the country’s most celebrated literacy figure. His poems cover themes of Sufism, love and acceptance in Persian poetry read around the world. After discussing Rumi’s “Who Says Words With My Mouth?” poem, you will write your own poem (blackout poem)! This workshop will build upon an idea from a workshop we did last year called Blackout Poetry, which is a form of found poetry where you create your own poem selecting interesting words you find from an existing text, and black out the rest. A great way to repurpose old, weeded books and texts in your own library or your school library. You do not want to miss this!
