What is found poetry, anyway?Found poetry is a great way to make your creative poetic writing a bit easier. It will make people intent on reading and listening to your work, as it will flow smoothly and read well. Click for Free Writer's Block Help E-Zine and Free E-Book The idea behind found poetry is intriguing. You take words, phrases, and sometimes even paragraphs, or other large pieces of writing, and you "find" poems. The concept is a poem starter itself. You must start off by browsing through magazines, books, and other written works to find these words and phrases, and then combine them all into found poems. You can change the spacing (move words from the end of one line to the end of another, for example), the sequence of the lines, or even add in parts of various written works, putting them in-between other pieces in order to make your own version of creative poetic writing. Many people think it is quite difficult to learn how to write poems. They may have trouble with the idea of writing in verse, in stanza form, or something else entirely. However, for those of us that understand poetry, and have found poetry useful in our writing lives, writing found poems should make our poetic writing lives all that much easier. Found poems can be visually, as well as mentally, stimulating. Often, what people do as they write their found poetry is to cut out snippets from a variety of magazines and combine the words and phrases into a certain sequence and form that projects a profound, creative nature of writing that is unique to the individual author. If the same words and phrases were given to another person, the likelihood of the same poem resulting would not be too high. That is the greatness of found poetry. The same words, phrases, and expressions can hold different meanings and result in different takes on the poetic form.
Remember, also, that if you would rather not use books, magazines, and other writing arenas to take your words and phrases from, take a cue from our poetry by numbers page. Think up your own words, phrases, and poem ideas to enliven your found poetry in new and unique ways. On to the list: Inspiring Ways (words on the cover of "O" magazine) Here is my attempt at a poem from this list. See if you can vary it up for your own found poem. I have included a few extra words here and there, and deleted one or two to make the flow of the poem smoother: Expand your universe You see how the added words and phrases increased the readability of the poem? Had I not added them in, and formulated the found poetry in a different way, the poem would still have read well, but this was the best way to combine all the words and phrases in a well-structured way for my purposes. You may play with these words and phrases, or others, just as much as you would like until you find your creative poetic genius. Have fun and find some poetry!
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Found poetry is the perfect outlet to allow you to express your creative self. Take this list of words and phrases below and combine them into a found poem of your own. See how many different combinations you can come up with using these same words and phrases. You do not have to take a whole phrase. If one or two words in a five-word phrase catch your eye, focus solely on those. Do not feel compelled to use everything you see.