Found Poetry & Blackout Poetry Day 17 Uh… yeah, we skipped some days… Found Poetry & Blackout Poetry

Today: Goals Focus Questions To learn about the poetic forms of Found Poetry and Blackout poetry To write our own poem using both forms What poetic forms and devices do poets use?

What is Found Poetry? You know when you find something, like a dollar bill. It’s nothing new, you’ve seen one before, but finding it in a park, or in the bathroom, or somewhere makes the moment… well special. Found poetry is similar to that. Or… Think of it like a collage- in art, you take a bunch of pictures and put them together to make your own picture.

What is Found Poetry? There are many different types of collages, just as there are many different “types” of found poems. Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as new poems. Found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems.

What is Found Poetry? A pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet.

Things to remember when you’re writing any poem… Poems are the shortest form of storytelling that you can possibly think of, so…. They don’t need to be complete sentences, so don’t waste your time with boring words. THEY DON’T NEED TO RHYME! Seriously. They really don’t. Rules of grammar (like those pesky capitalization rules) don’t apply. Don’t tell your short story because it might get jealous

To write a found poem… 1. Select the printed material that you would like to do a found poem about. 2. Pick a focus. You can focus on a feeling or idea that is present in what you read. 3. Read the text again. As you read it, underline details, examples and phrases (no longer than ten words) that you think are really powerful and support your focus. 4. Write these down on a separate sheet of paper.

And then… 5. Look over your words and phrases. Get rid of boring lines, words or descriptions that you think don’t fit so well anymore. 6. Now it’s time to play with these words! You can…. Mix up the order of the words and phrases Get rid of words you don’t need Change the way the lines are spaced out or broken up– it’s okay to squish words together or just leave one word on a line with poetry!

Last thing… 7. Read it aloud to make sure it sounds good, pausing where you start a new line. 8. Make sure to explain where the words from your poem came from at the bottom of the page. You need to say where you got it from and who wrote it, so you don’t get in trouble for plagiarism.

What is Blackout Poetry? Popularized in recent years by writer and artist Austin Kleon, Blackout poetry encourages readers to create poems by redacting or removing words from ordinary texts Where Found Poetry takes things together that aren’t together originally, Blackout Poetry removes things and only leaves us with “what’s left” to be the new poem. Some blackout poems only focus on selecting key words Other blackout poems focus on creating an image that highlights the words

How to create blackout poetry Choose something that interests you. Using a marker or colored pencil, select key words you wish to keep. Then scribble out the rest

Suggestion: Don’t just start marking out things: really choose your words first. They have to go in order of how you would read it, so this takes some time. Read the passage a few times before choosing with things to keep.

Your assignment: Read and Answer the questions about the found poem. (turn in when finished) Create your own Found poem using any of the books/ literature from the classroom. NOT from the worksheet/handout. Create a Blackout poem from the newspapers and photocopies of book pages. See me for a photocopied page you can write on. When creating a found poem, you can use any variety of different media to put together your work BUT you must list them, so keep track of all of your sources. When creating a blackout poem, be sure to make a poem, not just a list of words. Feel free to use color or draw a picture or design (I’m sorry, I’m low on black markers… but be sure they don’t bleed onto the desks!)