I "Found" Poems!

Found poems are a really stellar form of writing. You can make them using text from just about anything. While I personally like using cut-out words from magazines, you can also use the page from an old novel, or just about anything in print. I like using words I find in magazines because I can cut out lots of options (nouns, verbs, prepositions), and then put them together into the phrases that I like. Using a page from a novel is more challenging, in my opinion, because the author of the poem should go in order of the text on the page, choosing just the words they want to write the new poem. While there are some general guidelines for the various versions of found poetry (see here and here), there is a ton of freedom to create. I had my students write found poems in class this semester, and I was so inspired that I wrote a couple of my own. One for a dear friend having a baby, one for my husband for Valentine's Day, and one for a single mom. I really like how they all turned out. Go try one yourself!!