Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry

Poetry isn't rocket science. Poetry is about emotions, not about scientific formulae. And yet... and yet.... in poetry there are so many wonderful, weird and wacky techniques, it's very difficult to know about them all, or begin to fathom how you might use them. 

Many poets are happy with the way they write. They stick to their tried and tested styles and techniques and go merrily along their way. But if you're like me, you are constantly looking for new ways to express yourself through your poetry. If you're like me, you're always less than satisfied with the way you write and are always on the lookout for ways to stretch your abilities and skills. 

If you are like me, then this is the blog series you've been looking for. In the next (I don't know how many, I really don't) series of blogs I intend to explore experimental poetry in as many of its many colours as possible. And hopefully, you'll come along with me on that journey and push yourself to your poetic limits. So here's the first experimental technique... it's known as found poetry. I wrote about my own experiments in Found poetry in various blog posts including this one. 

Method 1: Open Books. Open up a few books at random, and lay them all around you. They can be books on any subject, including literature, recipe books, science manuals or magazines. Begin to write, and as you write, keep glancing at random at the open books and grab words, lines or phrases you see, and then incorporate them into your writing. It doesn't need to make any sense. Experiment to see the results.

Method 2: Read Out Loud. Find a magazine or other printed text you can tear up, cut up or otherwise vandalise. Begin reading our words, sentences or phrases at random. Record yourself and then listen back to see what sounds (phonics) have been generated. They don't need to make sense. They just need to make an interesting sound.  

Method 3: Blank Outs. Using the same materials above, blank out with white type correction fluid or colour out with a marker pen, or colour with a highlighter pen at random. Watch to see what patterns of words emerge and incorporate them into your latest poem.

Method 4: Cut Up Poetry. Cut out words, sentences and phrases and glue them onto a blank page and watch to see what patterns emerge, before using them in your latest poem. 

Go for it. There are no rules. Just experimentation and possible masterpieces of random, avant garde writing. 

Steve Wheeler

Photo (cropped) from Wikimedia Commons

Found poetry

In a follow up on a previous post on this blog, I would like to introduce and develop the idea of 'found poetry'.  If you're really strapped for inspiration to write a poem, and your muse seems to have deserted you... try found poetry. 

Yes... found poetry. As the name implies, you need to look for it. It can be hidden anywhere, and it's in plain sight. It's a little like cut-up poetry. Take any text you can find .... it can be an old newspaper or magazine article, or text from a book, or even a restaurant menu. Just about any printed text will do. 

Next, sit down with a highlighter pen, and begin to seek lines, sentences, words and phrases that will constitute your found poem. You can do this with the highlighter, as I have in the photo above... or if you prefer, use a dark marker pen to blot out words you don't want to use. 

In the image above, I used a page from an old university alumni magazine. The resulting poem, I think, is quite pleasing... it has rhythm and rhyme, and it actually makes sense in a quirky kind of way. 

I have written at least half a dozen (no... make that six) poems in this fashion. It doesn't take long once you've mastered the skill of spotting lines and phrases that can fit together. It may not work for you first time, but do persevere and let's see what you can come up with!

I welcome comments as ever, in the comment section below.

Steve Wheeler

Cut-up poetry

Have you heard of the Dada movement? It was an art movement that emanated from Europe back in the early part of the 20th Century. At the heart of Dadaism was the rejection of reason and logic in favour of spontaneity, the enjoyment of nonsense and irrationality. It was anti-art. It was anti-establishment. It was absurd. In short, they were all as crazy as a box of frogs. 

But it sounded like they had a lot of fun in the midst of an otherwise very dull society (in 1915 everything was in black and white).   

In the 1950s, over in the good ol' USA, the Beat Poets movement was just starting. One of the craziest members of this crazy gang of avant-garde poets and writers was William S. Burroughs, author of The Naked Lunch and other works. He rubbed shoulders with the likes of Jack Kerouac, David Bowie and Allen Ginsberg, but was also close friends with Brion Gysin, a British-Canadian painter, performance poet and inventor. 

Together Gysin and Burroughs developed the concept of the cut-up technique, which had its roots in the Dada movement. Cut-up involves taking a fully formed piece of text (or maybe several pieces) and cutting out text randomly, either in sentences, phrases or even single words. The cut-out strips can be assembled into a new piece of text. This can be done at random, or with purpose. 

There are many variations of this method. Someone on the blog yesterday posted a comment about word tiles and how they can inspire poetry. Throw them down and see what emerges. That's a great idea along similar lines to the above approaches. It can generate some powerful inspiration. 

I also developed my own technique around found poetry, which involves a similar method to cut-up but instead of snipping out the words, I use a highlighter pen to randomly select words and sentences within a piece of printed text and then creating a collage from them. This follows the bricolage method espoused by the likes of Claud Levi-Strauss, where you can 'do it yourself' bypassing normal techniques and gaining instant access to random creativity and inspiration. 

Yes, these are very post-modernist methods, but in the event of a road-block to your creativity, they might be just what you are looking for to restart your creative engine. Comments as ever, as most welcome.

Steve Wheeler

Image from Wikimedia Commons