A Found Poem

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted on this blog. My dear friend Issy who is a person of many talents (she has two fantastic blogs – this horsey one  and also  this arty one) wrote me a very kind email a couple of days ago. She gave me suggestions on how to reduce the discomfort of my head cold (that I’d been complaining about to her).

I’ve ended up making a “found” poem from the words she wrote me. And I added  a photo of a pot of parsley on our back deck. And I started playing with Photoshop Elements.

I must apologize to Issy because I didn’t expect the slightly sinister turn the shaping of the poem took – I’ll blame it all on the mention of those mushrooms.  And maybe that one of my sisters hates green peppers (but I love them). Or maybe I’ll blame it on an online poetry course from the Poetry School that I’m  currently taking (tutor Sarah Jackson) …. we’re being encouraged to “see” where our unconscious might take us and surprise us …if we close our eyes… and just start writing, without knowing where we’ll end up.

Found poems interest me.

For example: look how these disturbing and challenging words from Rachel Carson take on perhaps even added significance when shaped as a poem. Or perhaps it’s simply that finding this found poem gives me an opportunity to reconnect with her again. It’s been many years since I’ve read Silent Spring. There are many ways, of course, to make found poems. I like how the role of the found-poem-maker is designated, so we can follow the stream..how one person’s work leads to something new in another person’s hand; and both sources get credit:

Taken from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 1962), p 12. Submitted by Wesley Brown.

So here are two sites featuring found poetry to explore (I intend to start submitting  something … sometime soon…)

• http://verbatimpoetry.blogspot.ca/
• http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/

There’s something fascinating about about all of this. It also (connects in my mind) with the role of the translator in poetry – from one language to another…or someone who makes their own version… or responds in some way to an original poem…or to a translation…or to a version… But that’s all stuff for another post…

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