An Introduction to Found Poems and More! [beyond the lines]

with prompts to write your own found poem!

Hello friends,

This post is the first in a new series I’m starting called beyond the lines, where I’ll be doing a deep dive into topics (like found poetry!), or spotlighting pieces of media, ranging from things I’ve read, to cool photographs I’ve seen, and letting you all know what I observed, interpreted, and learned. I’ll also share links to other resources as I come across them!

I want to create work that learns from, and is in conversation with, other excellent and innovative works, as well as the things that are happening in this big world we live in. As I progress along this journey of learning, reflecting, and applying new knowledge, I want to bring you all with me on this journey too. Let’s learn together!

While sharing my key learnings and insights, I will also share how you might be able to apply these ideas to your own writing craft. Whether you’re a poet, or a storyteller, I’ll make sure to leave you with a unique prompt you can try out!

I’ve mentioned in past posts that I’m in a bit of a rut creatively, and haven’t written an entirely new poem in a while. If you’re in a similar place to me, or just looking for a fun exercise or a new form to try out, I hope this introduction to found poetry can give you something to play with and spark your creativity.

Ideas and techniques related to found poetry have become essential to my creative process, even when I create works that are wholly my own. A lot of my works start out as drafts that are just stream-of-consciousness thought dumps and end up being excessively long, redundant, and tend to meander, so applying found poetry techniques can help me edit things down to what actually needs to stay, and set aside what doesn’t, so it can be revisited in a another project.

Just a heads up, this article ended up encompassing a lot of other ideas, so it’s not just about found poetry. It extends to touch on works that reference other works in general, and I hope you find this useful!

I’m really excited to see how this goes. Now onto the main topic!

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What is Found Poetry?

Found poems are created through a process of curating, and taking from, written works that already exist. This very accessible introduction to found poems, provided by The Academy of American Poets on their site poets.org, very aptly describes the found poem as “The literary equivalent of a collage.”

This collage image was created with elements accessed via Canva Pro

This page goes on to state that: “A pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions.”

As contemporary poets continue to find innovative and exciting ways to update and repurpose forms, I want to let you know that if you choose to write a found poem, you don’t have to worry too much about this notion of what a “pure” found poem is. You can use any combination of your own work, and found items, as you please. But please note, it’s always important to ensure you don’t accidentally plagiarize anyone else’s material, or infringe on their copyright. One way to achieve this is by using works that are within the public domain, and always making sure to appropriately credit your sources.

Similar to found poems, another poetic form you might want to look into is the cento, which is a form that uses entire lines from existing poems and rearranges them into something new.

Examples of Found Poems, and More

Here’s a found poem I made using prompts that

sonja ringo

put together for this month of October! If you scroll down you’ll find them linked with other prompts below. This poem was a lot of fun to make, as I just wanted to create something that felt surreal, like a strange dream.

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Untitled [October 2025]

season of white gowns
season of cold dead hands

the raven told me, we fell in 
love        in a field last night

        kissing, screaming, in a corn maze.

creaky floorboards, 
            creaky 
                   projector

an unopened letter,        embalmed.

the raven told me
          pry it from my cold dead hands 
          the call is coming from inside the house

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Blackout poetry, or erasure poetry, is also a type of found poetry. Most of the blackout poems I’ve seen, like this one by

Austin Kleon

titled “Small requirements,” present a bold visual image as the text that is not used in the poem is totally blacked-out. It’s also important to observe that the writer did not attempt to shift the order of what was already present here, or add any new words in the creation of this piece. We find the words that are used are still in their original setting.

Other poems in this genre look very different. Two examples of poems that are categorized as erasure poetry by The Academy of American Poets, are “Under the Tuscan Sun (2003): A Romance I̶n̶t̶e̶r̶r̶u̶p̶t̶e̶d̶” by Edil Hassan, and “Inside the MRI Machine” by poet

Hala Alyan

.

While Kleon’s poem presents an intense visual image with blacked-out text, the poems by Alyan and Hassan appears softer on the page in contrast. Alyan’s work incorporates blank spaces left between selected words and phrases, and in Hassan’s piece, the poet uses strikethrough words and phrases which leaves an interesting effect on us as the readers, as we can still read all the words and consider how the piece would function with and without their presence.

Alyan’s and Hassan’s pieces also differ from Kleon’s, as Kleon’s blackout poem is presented as still anchored within the original source material, whereas Alyan’s and Hassan’s pieces are composed in such a way that the poets can control where all words and phrases appear, and where they would like to have blank spaces or instances of enjambment. Because of this difference, I feel that the erasure occurring in Alyan’s and Hassan’s pieces appears to be moreso conceptual in comparison to Kleon’s piece.

Another poet I’d like to highlight here is Madhur Anand, who holds a PhD in theoretical ecology. According to an article written by professor and author Adam Sol, a poem titled “Especially in a Time” from Anand’s poetry collection A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes is a piece that takes from scientific articles that Professor Anand has contributed to. If you’d like to read the poem and read more about her work, it’s available here with the essay.

One more example of a piece that incorporates other sources is the poem “Broken Ghazal, Before Balfour” written by Palestinian American poet

George Abraham

. This piece incorporates some elements of the ghazal form, and also uses text from a historical source, The Balfour Declaration. If you’d like to learn more about The Balfour Declaration, here’s a video on it by Al Jazeera that explains how it relates to what's happening in Palestine today.

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Where to look for inspiration

One source I’m taking advantage of right now as I work on a found poem is The New York Public Library Digital Collections website. It doesn’t seem like everything on here is public domain though, so if you use this site, please be careful to filter your searches appropriately and look carefully at anything you intend to use.

I thought this was a great resource for those just getting into found poetry as a quick search of a key word can lead to a wide variety of materials in the public domain, like illustrations, photographs, maps, menus, and manuscripts. It’s definitely worth clicking around on all of these, as even primarily visual items like photographs can have captions and other text that can be used for found poetry, or you can take an approach that's more in line with ekphrastic poetry, and write some lines vividly describing something cool that you came across.

There are plenty of other organizations that feature public domain works too! Another great site I found was The Public Domain Review, which highlights interesting stuff in the public domain, and also links to a tonne of other collections where you might also find archived materials that are now in the public domain.

Wherever you choose to look for found poetry material, please do your part to ensure you actually have the rights to use whatever it is you’ve found, and if necessary, that this extends to having the right to use something for commercial gain if you ever decide to make money off of your creative endeavours. I don’t want to see any of you get into trouble over this kind of thing.

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On Respecting Your Sources

We’ve already touched on the topic of being careful not to infringe on anyone’s copyright, and appropriately credit our sources, but there’s still a bit more to consider in regards to making sure we really respect the works we’re inspired by.

Considering When To Preserve Context

Sometimes when a line or phrase is divorced from it’s original source, its meaning can change when it stands on its own. Depending on what you intend to create, that might actually be okay (see the found poem I created above!), but it’s important to reflect on whether or not any harm is being done when context is lost.

Considering When To Leave Something Alone

It’s also important to assess if a work should be sourced at all. Some public domain works contain information about marginalized communities, and while the works might technically within the public domain, community members may not have initially consented to having particular information recorded or released for all of us to access in the first place.

Furthermore, even if it’s okay to take from a source, it’s still important to consider if the way you’re intending to use the source would be considered inappropriate or disrespectful to the original creator, or to any specific community. It’s important to acknowledge where harm has already been done and avoid further perpetuating it.

I’m definitely not the first person to bring attention to these issues, and a writer I’d like to highlight here is Palestinian-American writer Fargo Tbakhi, whose work titled Unarcheology: Anticolonial Aesthetics and Putting Things Back in the Ground has recently been published as a chapter of a book titled Decentered Playwriting: Alternative Techniques for the Stage.

I’ve just finished reading it, and it’s been eye-opening. I really appreciated Tbakhi’s comments on Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton on page 182 of the book, as Tbakhi highlights that the musical retells historical events “…in ways that obscure the violence upon which that history rests…” and on the same page he also goes on to state that:

“Rather than choose to tell the stories of the people of color who already existed within the historical period of the show, Hamilton rhetorically slips the very figures who orchestrated vast and long-lasting systems of oppression and domination into those stories and pretends there is no difference.”

This left me with a lot to think about, as I’ve made it a habit to reflect on how I might accidentally be perpetuating harm in the works I produce.

I would encourage you all to read this chapter as well. I haven’t actually watched Hamilton yet, but I’m grateful to have Tbakhi’s perspective so that I can keep it in mind whenever I do get around to watching the show, and also while appreciating other works that might be making the same mistake.

The “After” Poem

The last point I want to bring up here is that if you feel especially inspired by someone else’s work, it’s often appropriate to mention that your work is “after” theirs, even if you didn’t use any of their words. This is especially important if they have done something unique, and your work emulates it somehow in it’s form, imagery, or vocabulary. I know that’s a bit vague, and to read more about this, here's an article on the topic that I revisit from time to time titled Happily Ever After Poem by

Ginger Ayla

.

I like how in depth this article goes as it also discusses intertextuality, and further links to readings on plagiarism in poetry at the end.

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Write Your Own Found Poem! Or Something Else!

1. Just as I did in my attempt above, try to make a found poem (or anything else you feel like making) using these spooky prompts that

   sonja ringo
   put together for this month! Check out the note below, and ensure to appropriately credit anything that inspires you.

2. Blackout poetry! I found this short tutorial created by the author

   Austin Kleon
   , using newspaper for a found poem! In 2010, his book Newspaper Blackout was published, so I trust his expertise. You can follow along the steps here in the video below. It’s on my to do list for sure!

3. The First New Year (George Warwick,1885): Related to the last prompt, here’s a poem I found for you on the The Public Domain Review’s website. You can try to make a blackout poem and cover up any text you don’t want to use, or you can start afresh with a blank piece of paper (or word doc) and pick out words and phrases you want to remix, rearrange, or combine with other things. Try to have fun and create something you feel excited about!

4. Related what I’ve shared about my creative process, revisit an old work of yours like a poem, an essay, or a blog post, and try found poetry techniques to see what you can do with it. You might just find some words or phrases stand out, and this could become an important stage in your editing process as you bring the work closer to completion, or this could even be the start of your next piece as you find ways to give old work new life.

5. If you’re looking for an opportunity to try out any new poetic devices you’ve learned, look for a public domain text you can use, and then try out the new device! It could be anything ranging from attempting some intense alliteration, trying out a new poetic form, like an acrostic poem.

6. Following from the last prompt- storytellers, find a story in the public domain and play around with it! change the order of events, or add to or take things away from the narrative you found. You can even try to totally rewrite it in your own style and switch up the genre.

7. On a more serious note, there are so many tragic situations ongoing right now all over the world. If you find yourself in a position like my own, where you want to help bring attention to the struggles of marginalized communities that you might not be a member of, perhaps creating works using found poetry techniques is an avenue for you to try to bring more attention to those who are suffering.

8. Last, but not least, if you want to bring more attention to the climate crisis, maybe look for a scientific work you can get the rights to use, and use storytelling or found poetry techniques to bring attention to what’s going on.

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If this post helped you, or if you ended up using any of these prompts, please let me know in the comments below! Please also let me know if there is anything you think I’ve missed, or if there’s anything relevant you’d like to share that I could learn from too!

If you’d like to support this work and help me continue doing this for free, it would help me out a tonne if you took a few seconds to share this with anyone you know who might be interested in it!

Thanks for sticking with me so far, and for giving this your time.

I. S. Bashirah

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I. S. Bashirah is a multi-award-winning poet, and an alumna of the University of Waterloo. She was awarded the English Society Creative Writing Award for Poetry, as well as an Honourable Mention for the Albert Shaw Poetry Award, at the University of Waterloo Department of English Language and Literature Awards Ceremony in 2023. In 2024, she was also awarded the Albert Shaw Poetry Prize.