found poetry
Literature from scraps
Found poetry is verse created by taking existing text—from newspapers, signs, advertisements, speeches, or other sources—and rearranging or reframing it as poetry.
The poet discovers rather than invents the language, finding poetic qualities in material not originally intended as art: She made found poetry from her grandmother's grocery lists.
The technique highlights how context shapes meaning.
- source textOrigin of quoted content
- newspaper clippingsSaved excerpts from periodicals
- newspapersPrinted daily publications
- erasureAct of wiping away
- extractingPulling out from within
intertextuality · juxtaposition · recontextualizing · Dadaism · advertisements · junk mail · street signs · everyday language · bricolage · sampling · collage · appropriation · defamiliarization · fragmented narrative · Tristan Tzara · William Burroughs · remix culture · public domain
- poetry activitiesreciting, verse writing, rhyming, composing, spoken word
- poetry formshaiku, sonnet, sonnets, tanka, limerick
- poetry typeshaiku, sonnet, limerick, ballad, ode
- experimental poetryfragmentation, parataxis, discontinuity, nonlinear narrative, non-linear narratives
- found textappropriation, redacted text
- Modernist PoetryEzra Pound, T.S. Eliot, free verse, The Waste Land, fragmentation
found poetryoriginal composition
Freshly created artistic piece
self-expression · traditional poetry · lyric poetry · creative writing · confessional poetry
found, poetry, find, finder, finding, findings, founded, founder, founding