Found Poetry Collages by Mary Bast: PoMoSco (Poetry Month Scouts)

Thursday, March 3, 2016

During National Poetry Month, April 2015, I was among 213 poets representing 43 states and 12 countries in The Found Poetry Review's project PoMoSco (Poetry Month Scouts), working toward 30 found poetry merit badges. "These aren't your childhood merit badges! PoMoSco participants had the chance to earn up to 30 badges in April by completing poetry challenges in five categories: remixing, erasure, out and about, conceptual and chance operations."

Click on these posts to see my poem for each badge:

Remixing
Pick & Mix: "the world's continuous coming-into-being"
Interrogator: "Did You Understand a Word?"
Haiku Anew: "Haiku Roku"
Pinch An Inch: "the instinct of mountains"
Blender: "The Eye Perceives"
First in Line: "The Days Have Done With You"

Erasure
Open Book: "A Handmade Card"
White Out: "powerful visions"
Redacted: "frustration"
Click Trick: "A Good First Line"
Picture It: "How to Abide"
Cut It Out: "So Ordinary"

Out and About
All Ears: "I've Learned Enough For This Lifetime"
Order's Up: "Fundido"
Interloper: "Is Paris Wise?"
Off the Shelf: "Beneath Their Canopies"
Crowdsource: "How Yin and Yang"
As Advertised: "Extravaganza"

Conceptual
On Demand: "new route to old roots"
Substitute Texter: "Smoking the Modern Coyote"
Survey Says: "Something Else is Here"
X:Y: "torn by terrible conflict"
Quiet on Set: "Do We Understand Each Other?"
Best Laid Plan: "Anti-Marriage Rally"

Chance Operation
Shake It Up: "the glare of the serpent-haired sun"
Roll the Dice: "An Armadillo-Leprosy Link Had Long Been Suspected"
Chance Walk: "Center for Sports Jones"
Spaced Out: "the films of Woo"
Spelling B: "The Martian Mauna"
Dialed In: "Undercover"

About Me

Former Editor at Bacopa Literary Review, I write poetry, found poetry, and memoir. When my hands aren't on computer keys they're creating art.

The Found Poetry Review's 2015 PoMoSco (Poetry Month Scouts) project especially intrigued me -- the chance to experiment with a variety of found poetry structures.

Those exercises also enhanced my under-standing of poetry and writing in general. For example, the "First in Line" badge required creating a poem from first lines in one poet's collection.

My resulting poem, "The Days Have Done With You" (from Nina Bogin's collection In the North) made me much more aware of the way a poem's first line can either set up what's going to happen or drop us right into action, much the same as the start of a good novel.

Some Forms of Found Poetry

Found poetry is created by taking words or phrases from other sources and changing spacing and lines, adding or deleting text, thus imparting new meaning. Any poetic form can be used with found poetry.

There's also the cento—made up of lines from other poems. The sources may be poems of a single poet, or many poets, or even many different languages.

Erasure poems eliminate everything from a page or pages except the words that make up the poem. The "erasure" may be accomplished by white-out, correction tape (of various colors), lightening a photo and writing the poem's words over the original text, and many other variations.

Called blackout poems when covered with black tape (often refers to newspaper articles blacked out except for the words of the poem).

Ekphrasis usually refers to poetry inspired by visual art; I've extended the term to include art inspired by poetry.

Illustrated poetry describes poems and art side by side.

Haiga traditionally incorporated an ink-brush or watercolor painting, a haiku poem, and calligraphy. Modern poets stretch these boundaries, superimposing haiku on photos, for example.

Thursday, March 3, 2016

PoMoSco (Poetry Month Scouts)

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