Found Poetry

"Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems." - poets.org

"The literary equivalent of a collage..." This is such a great description for the process and art of found poetry. It's exactly what I do when I cut out words and phrases from old books and put them together to make poetry.

I even have a little kit that makes putting together a found poem easier. It includes a photo box to hold everything, an x-acto knife, tweezers, and small blank pages. I used to keep my glue stick in here, but I had a few too many incidents of the words getting stuck in clumps and becoming unusable. I keep it separate, but handy.

When it's all packed away, it's compact enough to throw in my bag or take to wherever I happen to be creating around the house.

To my knowledge there is no one "right" way to put together a found poem, but there are a few habits I find myself repeating.

start with a single compelling phrase and build around it
make sure the tenses of my words agree (past, present, future tense)
create several short poems, then see if any work together to make a larger poem
understand that sometimes I don't have to use a lot of words to create a complete poem