The Poetry Dictionary, by John Drury, defines a found poem as “Text discovered in some nonpoetic setting (an advertisement, for example), removed from its context and presented as a poem.”

Yikes! That makes me a little nervous about copyright. But I think of found poems in an entirely different way, based on writing exercises I remember doing in elementary school and junior high. So, let’s dive in and see if we can avoid getting handcuffs slapped on us for plagiarism.

Here’s my definition of a found poem: Individual words drawn from a larger text, rearranged to create an entirely new work.

A found poem is not a form, really. There are no precise rules about lines, syllable, or format on the page. Instead, the term describes a process for writing poems. From the end result, though, a reader would never know it was a found poem. Unless you tell them. It’s simply a way of generating a poem. And it’s a way I really enjoy!

Let me give you an example.

I receive a magazine called Minnesota Conservation Volunteer. It’s put out by the DNR and if full of conservation and wildlife news. One issue contained an interesting article in the Young Naturalists section by Tom Anderson about how different animals find their way home.? The day I read the article, I needed to write my daily poem and I my poetry tank was on empty. So I decided to write a found poem. I concentrated on one excerpt from the article:

Wolf Ways
The largest member of the wild dog family in Minnesota is the gray wolf, or timber wolf. Wolves live in packs and do not migrate, but their home territories sometimes cover hundreds of square miles. Just as you learn your way around your neighborhood, wolves learn how to get around their vast home ground to find food and shelter.

Wolves in Minnesota follow moose or white-tailed deer to hunt them. Then the wolves somehow find their way back home. They return home by instinct, or by a sense of home that is part of the brain and nervous system.

Good Noses
Wolves depend on their sense of smell to find the boundaries of their large home ranges. Like your pet dog, the wolf urinates to mark its scent on stumps, rocks, or shrubs. Other wolves pass by and “read” these scent posts — they find out who claims the territory.

Wolves howl to communicate within a pack. If a wolf gets separated from its pack, howling can help it reunite with the pack and its home territory.

How I Write Found Poems

1.    I always need a hard copy of whatever source material I′m drawing from.

2.   I grab a highlighter. Then I go through and highlight all the interesting words. The concrete ones. The specific nouns and verbs. Any words I find evocative.

Wolf Ways
The largest member of the wild dog family in Minnesota is the gray wolf, or timber wolf. Wolves live in packs and do not migrate, but their home territories sometimes cover hundreds of square miles. Just as you learn your way around your neighborhood, wolves learn how to get around their vast home ground to find food and shelter.
Wolves in Minnesota follow moose or white-tailed deer to hunt them. Then the wolves somehow find their way back home. They return home by instinct, or by a sense of home that is part of the brain and nervous system.

Good Noses
Wolves depend on their sense of smell to find the boundaries of their large home ranges. Like your pet dog, the wolf urinates to mark its scent on stumps, rocks, or shrubs. Other wolves pass by and “read” these scent posts — they find out who claims the territory.
   Wolves howl to communicate within a pack. If a wolf gets separated from its pack, howling can help it reunite with the pack and its home territory.

3.   I read the highlighted words out loud several times. I go through them forward, backward, and in random order. This helps me absorb the words while losing some of the structure of the original piece.
4.   I think about what meaning those words have for me. That might be the same or totally different from their meaning in the original work.
5.   I start writing my own poem (usually free verse, meaning unrhymed and no particular line count, syllable count, etc.)

Finding Home

gray territories
cover vast miles

do not
migrate

hunt your
boundaries

learn your way
home

claim

howl
—Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

6.  You′ll notice that I used some small words that aren’t highlighted. I start out with only words from the poem, but as I need little words, I search for them in the article before using them.

OK, that’s one example, but it reads more like an adult poem, or at least a teen poem. So I′m going to try to write one that’s more definitely a children’s poem.

I have a book I love called The Beginning, by Peter Ackroyd. In it, he describes the history of Earth in fabulous language. So I decided to work with one small sidebar about the formation of the moon. You can look at page 9 here to see what I′m talking about. And here it is again:

The list of words I highlighted from this passage is:

You′ll see there is some repetition on the list because I don’t keep track as I highlight. I just mark whichever words strike me.

Now, I don’t usually write found poems as rhyming poems, but Earth and birth immediately catch my attention. So I look for other rhymes. Smashed and splashing are close, and so are born and formed. So I′m going to use forms of these words and try a bit of rhyme.

Here’s my first effort:

A Moon Is Born

after our orbiting planet formed
a hurtling rocky object smashed
    into Earth

in nearby space the moon was born
when crust and mantle knocked and splashed
    satellite birth

Not happy with that. Decided to try shorter:

Moon Is Born

planet forms
object smashes
     into Earth moon is born
as mantle splashes:
     space-rock birth

Not happy with the order of things. Trying again.

Moon Is Born

object smashes—
rocky form
impacts Earth

mantle splashes
moon is born:
space-rock birth

–Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved

OK, so I′m not saying that’s a genius poem! But I do kind of like it, and it was fun to play with.

Why Write Found Poems?

I use found poems in several ways and for several reasons.

1.   They′re great for getting rid of lots of useless words from poems. Because you have to find each small word like a or the in the original piece, it makes you think about whether that word is really necessary.

2.   It′s a stepladder to a poem. Sometimes, I’ll start out with a found poem and then discover the poem wants to be something else, something that uses words not in the original work. And that’s fine! In that case, the found poem is simply a way for me to start writing something!

3.   When you′re reading a piece of writing of any kind that you find wonderful, writing a found poem is a way of processing that original work, just like you might write a poem based on a terrific painting that you see.

4.   Found poems get you using words you wouldn’t necessarily think of on your own. The restricted vocabulary is both a cage and a gift.

Your Turn

Choose a source work of your own writing, and write a found poem from it. Note: If you can’t find plenty of concrete, interesting words to highlight, that’s a sign that the original work might need livening up, too—at least, that’s what I’ve discovered when trying to write a poem based on my own work! Or find a nonfiction article in a magazine or newspaper and write a found poem from that. You can base found poems on anything, of course. But I find that great nonfiction writing often offers the best raw material. Have fun!