Time for Poetry: Summer Camp Found Poetry

During the second half of June, one of my friends and I conducted a creative writing camp for teens as part of our work with the North Star of Texas Writing Project.  We decided to attempt the found poetry exercise that I used earlier this year with my creative writing course at school (“Time for Poetry: Found Poems”).

I used my news magazines again, simply because I had a lot of those lying around.  However, this activity can be done with any type of text: other magazines, textbooks, novels, cookbooks, menus, labels. . .really, anything that isn’t already poetry.

Here are some samples of the poems we produced.

An article about product placement in entertainment:

An article about texting and driving:

An article about young people getting tattoos to memorialize their families’ suffering in the Holocaust:

An article about tension in Korea:

An article about child soldiers:

And here are our poems on display:

Another view of the display table:

Let me know if you try found poetry in your classroom (or summer camp)!