Found Poetry?

There comes a time in every book’s life—every book that has been loved—that is, where decomposition becomes inevitable. And more frequent is the case when you own a classroom library where hordes of seventh graders teeming with pent up, book-destroying energy pillage and plunder because they don’t have access to many books at home, they’re too lazy to go to the library by themselves, or I just happen to have shelves of freaking awesome books. Remorsefully, I have to “put down” several books each year. And unfortunately, those put out to pasture are, more often than not, those that are in highest demand.

Most teachers would tearfully bury each work in the recycle bin, sigh, and mope for a day or two until the next book orders arrive. Not me. I like to make use of the remnants of the shredded pages. I use them to teach with: lessons on voice, imagery, dialogue; the list goes on. Recently, one of the ways I have used these adulterated pages is through found poetry. I first discovered found poetry in a teaching reading methods class several years ago (Thanks, Dr. G) and used it frequently when I first started teaching. Then someone (or lots of someones) in the lower grades abused this awesome technique until my students had been beaten to death with it (along with haiku, PowerPoint, DOL, etc.).

But found poetry is a chance for students to play. And I like to play. With words.

So, for those of you unfamiliar with this technique, let me quickly explain the steps.

1. Give the students a block of text from something already published. Novels with beautiful similes, metaphors, personification, and other rhetorical devices work wondrously well. I let them use a page from a novel (front and back).

2. Have them circle any and all cool words or phrases that stand out to them. They don’t have to be big words, just ones that pop off the page at them. Hint: pages with a lot of names are more difficult to use, as are tables of contents or other copyright pages.

3. Rewrite the list on a separate sheet of paper.

4. Rearrange the words and phrases to construct a poem with new meaning. Key: the new poem does NOT have to be similar to the content of the original page. In fact, it’s better if it doesn’t.

5. You can add small words, change tense or number, delete parts, whatever. Get the students to manipulate the words to make sense. Have them play with punctuation and form.

6. Add a thought-provoking title.

7. Share. Publish.

Below is an example I did in front of my 7^th grade students yesterday. My words were found in Louis Sachar’s Holes (pgs. 85-86).

Original word list:

laughed

from a can

come to him next

didn’t even want it

trouble

sure to come back

unclear

spilled

after

it all happened very fast

sorry

approaching

wrong place

wrong time

bury

unthinkable

flies

unearthed

empty

stole

Here is what came from my excavation:

“Repentance”

it all

happened

fast—

wrong place,

wrong time—

unthinkable moment

approaching

sorry.

don’t

want trouble

to come back

thirsty

I’d like to see what you can do. Use my word list, or come up with one of your own. You don’t even have to obliterate a book to do it. Attach your creation here so I can share and you can say that you’ve published a poem. Maybe there will be prizes!