The Found Poem (Draft)

The Playwrights' Festival is opening and closing tonight. Please support the department and attend the production tonight at 7:00 in the Ensemble Theater. Tickets are $4 and available at the door.

We have written nature poems, political poems, monologue poems, stole lines from other poems, considered metaphor and imagery, wrote quick poems, wrote short poems, used sound devices, wrote ephrastic poetry, revised old poems, wrote pattern poems or form poems, wrote free verse, wrote, wrote, wrote. If you haven't completed your previous draft (see post below) please complete that.

Otherwise, let me introduce you to the FOUND POEM.

Read about the found poem here.

Write your own found poem. To do this on your own, try the following:

1. Choose an alternative text. This text could be from another poem, a short story or novel, a non-fiction essay, a newspaper article, or any text piece found on the internet. Look absolutely anywhere to begin your found poem.

2. Take the existing text(s) and refashion the words--reorder them, and present them as new shiny original poems.

Here's a few examples:

Enhancing a Poetry Unit with American Memory

Found Poem from Chapter 4 of Frankenstein.

Here's a website devoted to the form.

Your own found poem draft is due at the end of class.

HOMEWORK: None. If you didn't complete these exercises, please do so and turn in Monday, but alas, they will be late.