Found Poetry: How to Write a Found Poem

A found poem is a form of poetry that comprises borrowed text from different sources. Poets borrow words, phrases, or passages from sources like novels and news articles for found poems. Assembling the sourced texts brings a new meaning unique from the words or phrases’ original context.

Poets have created found poetry in various ways across artistic movements and history:

• The cento: The cento, which originated in the third century, may have been the original found poem. A cento poem is a work of poetry that is composed of various lines taken from different poems. The word “cento” is derived from a Latin word meaning “patchwork garment”—and a cento poem is just that—patchwork poetry (also known as a “collage poem”). With cento poems, a writer can pay homage to another poet, or use lines from another work for satire purposes.
• Dadaism: In the 1900s, visual and literary artists brought new meaning to source materials and pre-existing texts. The popularity of found poetry mirrored the Dada movement. Dadaist Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 work Fountain was a readymade sculpture that was simply a porcelain urinal. Outside of its original context, the work invited a new perspective and interpretation. During this time and in a similar artistic vein, poets like William Burroughs began experimenting with cut-up poetry, rearranging words in new order.
• Modernists: In the twentieth century, poets like T.S. Eliot, Brian Gysin, and Ezra Pound included found text from various source materials in some of their works.
• Media: Today, poets can create found poetry using digital sources and share works on social media platforms. For example, best-selling author Kate Baer creates found poetry by redacting comments on her social media pages.

There are three main types of found poetry:

1. 1. Blackout poetry: Blackout poetry is a form of found poetry in which the poet takes an existing work—an article, a short story, or even another poem—and uses a pen or marker to black out certain lines, words, or phrases to reinterpret the original work.
2. 2. Erasure poetry: Similarly, erasure poetry involves using whiteout to cover certain words. In both forms, poets create new text to celebrate or subvert the intention of the original work in some way. Graffiti that covers up words on buildings or signs may be a kind of erasure poem.
3. 3. Cut-up poetry: Cut-up poetry involves cutting words out of source materials and rearranging them to create new meaning.

A found poem involves a poet taking pre-existing language and reworking it into a new artwork. Consider the following examples of found poetry:

1. 1. Book compilations: American poet Bern Porter published multiple volumes of found poetry, including Found Poems (1972).
2. 2. Sarcastic poems: The humorists Hart Seely and Tom Peyer wrote “The Man in the Moon” (1979), reworking lines spoken by New York Yankees announcer Phil Rizzuto to reflect on the death of Yankees catcher Thurmon Munson.
3. 3. Literary magazine: The poetic form even sparked its own literary magazine, The Found Poetry Review, in print from 2011 to 2016.
4. 4. Blackout poetry: he New York Times bestselling author Austin Kleon has popularized the blackout form in his book Newspaper Blackout (2010), in which he redacts newspaper articles in permanent marker.

You can create found poetry using books, magazines, or digital sources:

1. 1. Craft a haiku. For those new to this type of poetry, creating a haiku works as an introductory writing prompt. A haiku, a Japanese poem, has three lines: the first has five syllables, the second has seven, and the third has five. To create your poems, try the cut-up method: Find words or phrases that total the syllables in each line and arrange them in a way that elicits new meaning from the found text.
2. 2. Gather physical text sources. Cut out hardcopy sources like a book or magazine, then paste the words together to create found poetry.
3. 3. Find digital sources. You can create a found poem from existing texts online. Write out a new poem by hand, or copy and paste words on your computer into a document.
4. 4. Write in free form. Because the individual source materials will likely have their own rhythms and vocabularies, found poetry is usually written in free form; spacing and line breaks are at the poet’s discretion.
5. 5. Create a blackout poem. To try a blackout poem, read an article and decide how you’d want to reimagine its text. Then, using a marker, black out specific headings, phrases, and paragraphs, leaving behind words so as to create a new work from the source text.

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