Found Poetry

Hide Now!

Along the path these kids run

Behind the hedgerow down by the stream

I counted

Awful, awful

Counting slower, slower, counting

Five, four, history runs in numbers

I clench my hands

Three, two, one

Hide now!

Kathryn Cussons

This is an example of a 'found poem' by one of my former students at St Paul's Girls' School using Glyn Maxwell's poem 'Forty Forty' from his 2008 collection Hide Now as her source. Found Poetry uses a similar idea to making sculptures with found objects. You take some or all words, from another poem or a piece of text, and put them together in a different way. It is a great warm up exercise and can lead to some astonishing poetry. It is not unlike playing with fridge magnets or making a collage of words.

Permission to use poem given by the author.