found poetry |

Gwynn Scheltema

Last week, Ruth blogged about Anna Swanson’s “The Garbage Poems” inspired by words on garbage Anna picked up at favourite swimming spots. That reminded me of the fun I’ve had over the years writing “Found Poetry.”

What is a found poem?

I like to think of found poems as word collages. That is not to say I actually cut out the words and paste them (although you can if you wish). I create found poems by recording existing text that I, well,—find.

Like Anna, I could find them on garbage, or on all manner of other things like newspaper articles, graffiti, ads, menus, posters, billboards, brochures, letters, book pages, or even other poems. Charles Reznikoff in his book Testimony, created his poetry from actual criminal law reports! His poems spoke about human violence and suffering in a time generally considered peaceful.

The found poem became popular around the same time as Andy Warhol’s Pop Art and similarly it uses and makes a statement about the everyday text all around us.

Writer Annie Dillard says, “Turning a text into a poem doubles that poem’s context. The original meaning remains intact, but now it swings between two poles.” In more recent times, “Blackout poetry” has embraced the text aspect of found poetry with art. (And it’s fun to do).

What makes a found poem a found poem?

I don’t know if there are “official rules” for writing found poetry, but the rules I impose on myself are:

consists exclusively of found text, in whole or in part
the words of the poem remain as they were found (same order and syntax)
omissions allowed but NO additions
form, line breaks and punctuation are left to the poet
the poem as a whole should make a statement about the source it was extracted from

For me the last point is the most important. It’s not just a case of putting pretty words together, but of recognizing where they originated.

The creation process

My found poem “J.T. Winik, “Lovers” oil on canvas” won first place in a contest some years ago. I used a December issue of The Condo Guide Magazine, one of those free ones that you pick up from newspaper boxes at the street corner or at the GO Station. The poem is printed below and here is how I created it:

I flipped through the magazine and wrote out snippets of interesting phrases from the ads and the articles, and the cover. I ended up with about three pages of “bits.” Most of them were to do with “uptown” or “downtown” and the overarching theme was how condo living was the ultimate way to live. (Not surprising). My poem therefore—according to my self-imposed rules—needed to make a statement about condo living.

One ad/article spoke about renting original artwork from galleries for condos. “Where the Art is” (I used that line) had a photo of Canadian artist J.T. Winik’s painting, “The Lovers”, as one of the illustrations. I ended up using that as my title. Next I noticed that in my list I had the phrases “Uptown girl” and “Downtown queen,” and realized that the phrase “Where the Art is” could be used for its implied meaning of “Where the [he]art is.” I thought perhaps I could contrast the two “women” and their lifestyles and in the process make my statement on condo living.

With this in mind I chose the phrases that best fit the theme I was building and discarded the rest. I arranged and re-arranged; I joined some phrases together, or used only half phrases, to give new meanings. I played with punctuation and line breaks. For example, “Moonlight washes a glow over snow-blanketed streets” and “Artfully ILLUMINATING” (a title for a piece on light fixtures) became “Moonlight washes, artfully illuminating.” I made sure there were absolutely no added words, and I hadn’t rephrased or reordered any of the snippets.

The final result:

“THE LOVERS” OIL ON CANVAS
Found Poetry in the December issue of THE CONDO GUIDE

Right downtown urbanation looks at
Where the Art is
A rather windy November evening
Moonlight washes artfully illuminating
Bohemian city nights in winter – Luna vista?

Uptown girl: Silent nights
Live in the glasshouse
Finding ways to hide the light
A perfectly proportioned concrete shade
This is your world
Small, unobtrusive; melody
Bending and refracting
Keyless, virtual
Do you daydream green or grey?
Cool is the underlying theme.

Downtown queen
Heady mix of the creative—SOHO
Rent original art steps from the Art Gallery
Celebration of the urban life on the edge of the moment
Connecting them
The dust of everyday life; Garden in Red #7
Bliss coming soon; Navy blu
Mixed media

What surrounds you?
Metal and concrete like islands
Niches and unused spaces—intimate
Drawn in by the buzz; late-nighters and
Out-of-towners; Quick move-ins
Dip in the infinity pool; massage rooms?

Desire this palette?
Purchase price does not include parking
If you think you’ve seen it all, think again
Perfection consists of doing ordinary things
What are you in the mood for?

Ruth E. Walker

I love old sayings. They’re like echoes of little stories, scenes that happened long ago and stuck around like a cautionary whisper through the ages.

A stitch in time saves nine. Somebody procrastinated into a real mess and the deadline for that edited version is at midnight..

A change is as good as a rest. When you can’t take a vacation, move your computer desk to the opposite wall.

There’s an old chestnut I really like: One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. And it has never been more true when it is trash that finds its way into poetry and visual art.

I recently attended a poetry reading and artist talk at the Haliburton Highlands Museum. A poet and an artist were coming to Halls Island Artist Residency and the program was part of their community engagement for the residency.

The poet was Anna Swanson, an award-winning Newfoundland poet and the visual artist was April White, also an award-winner from Newfoundland whose watercolours have been shown nationally and internationally. Both Anna and April live in St. John’s, and in 2016 joined forces for a collaborative work about garbage.

Anna Swanson wrote The Garbage Poems, inspired by a swimming hole in Flatrock, Newfoundland. She loves being in the water — as someone with a chronic illness, she said moving in water gives her physical and emotional freedom. Anna also cares about nature, so she started picking up garbage left behind by other visitors to that swimming hole. Sorting the garbage at home gave her a chance to look more closely at the trash. Beer cans. Fast food wrappers. Chip bags.

Lo and behold, that garbage was covered in words. Expected words like drink vitamin antioxidant burgers soda fresh and so on. But the unexpected words were intriguing to Anna: festival, dream, promise, stormbrewing…she even found the word trigonometry.

Well, that did it. She realized she just might have the making of some found poetry, using only the words on the trash. Anna ended up with a poem series titled The Garbage Poems. But she knew there could be more to this series than words on the page.

In 2016, she teamed up with artist April White after seeing her stunning exhibition “A Day in the Life.” Watercolours, drawings and texts chronicled one full day in April’s life.

Their collaboration became the perfect match of poet and visual artist. April created watercolour images for the poem-inspiring trash (and subsequent bags of trash as Anna continued to visit various swimming spots.)

Finally, Matthew Howlett, writer, artist and web designer, created an interactive website that invites visitors to create their own poems using the words found on Anna’s trash. April’s renditions of each piece of garbage can be viewed individually. Click on the image and all of the words on that piece of trash appear below for you to take them to create poetry of your own. You can even choose the entire set of all the garbage words, in both official languages, and see where that takes you.

If Anna’s trashy treasures don’t inspire you, the website has a copy and paste option, where you can take a piece of random text and then by deleting, rearranging or repeating, you can create your own found poetry. Here’s the first two lines of a poem I’m working on from the words of an 1860s book on etiquette:

The true language of a heart

may not enter a crowd gracefully…

Okay. Not yet genius. But it was fun and perhaps the start of an idea for me to work on.

So now it’s your turn. Visit The Garbage Poems website and read Anna’s poetry, view April’s images and see if you can turn trash into treasure.