Update: June 3 | Winners have been announced!
It’s been a long, cold winter, but there is no more reliable sign of spring on The Learning Network than our annual found poem contest.
Created in April 2010 to celebrate National Poetry Month, the contest is our oldest blog tradition, and one we’re thrilled to see teachers across the curriculum embrace.
So, students, celebrate the new season by putting on some floaty fabrics, smelling some local flowers and finding some verse — in whatever section of The New York Times interests you most.
Below, an F.A.Q. with this year’s rules, some tips and a great idea from a middle-school teacher.
FAQ: Rules and Tips
What’s a found poem?
A good nutshell description would be “poems that are composed from words and phrases found in another text.” A New York Times found poem, then, uses words and phrases taken from one or more Times articles, past or present — and since the paper has been publishing since 1851, choosing which Times article(s) to use is often the hardest part.
You can mix and combine these words and phrases into a new piece, or you might simply “find” some Times writing that you think is already poetic, as Alan Feuer does with Craigslist and its “Missed Connections” posts.
For more detail about found poetry and its history and classroom uses, we suggest an article from English Journal, “Found Poems and Headline Poems.” (PDF)
What are the rules for the contest?
Each poem must be 14 or fewer lines.
You may give it your own original title if you like.
New 2014 rule: You may use no more than two New York Times articles as source material.
The poem itself should use no more than two of your own words. The rest of the words and phrases can be mixed up any way you like, but should come from any Times article or articles, past or present. (Note: We check.)
You might choose to write in a traditional poetic form, or not.
One poem per person, and no group submissions, please.
You must be between 13 and 19 years of age but can come from anywhere in the world.
Don’t include your last name: Our privacy rules apply to every student contest on the blog. Although if you win, you can have your last name included in the announcement.
Post your poem to our comments section below by 5 p.m. Eastern time on April 29.
At the bottom of your found-poem post, please provide us with the URL(s) of the article(s) you used.
Note: Our commenting system doesn’t recognize fancy spacing, so using words to create interesting shapes is, unfortunately, not an option.
Update: Though via our Text to Text and Poetry Pairing features, The Learning Network often publishes excerpts from literary and historical works on our blog, those are off-limits for this contest. The Times articles they are paired with are, of course, fair game.
What makes a great found poem? How do you choose the winners?
You can scroll through the work of all 43 students who have won so far here. Our criteria this year will be the same as always, so keep in mind what we said in the first “Reflections” post.
And remember, too, that in a poem, every word, line break and mark of punctuation carries meaning, so have fun experimenting with repetition of words, alliteration, assonance or anything else that enhances what you would like to say.
Here is an interactive tool you might use to play with the words of your poem before you submit it: ReadWriteThink’s Word Mover.
Any ideas for teaching with this contest?
Lots. See the question below about teaching it across the curriculum.
But we also want to highlight an ingenious idea sent to us by Missy Provost, a teacher at Portsmouth Middle School in New Hampshire, who wrote to us after the contest ended last year to explain how she used the work of the artist and writer Austin Kleon to inspire her students.
In the video above, Mr. Kleon describes how he creates what he calls Newspaper Blackout Poetry. Though our contest allows you to mix the words up and his method does not, we couldn’t describe better ourselves what we’re hoping for in a great found poem.
Here is how Mr. Kleon puts it in the video:
My joy when I’m making them is to somehow really play off that article. To either completely transform the raw material of the article into my own poem so that the poem doesn’t even resemble the original article, or to in some way kind of parody the article, or twist the article into a different meaning.
But it’s really about the transformation of the material. If I was taking the article and just summarizing it into a poem, that wouldn’t be very interesting. But it’s the transformation of this thing — this nonfictional, journalistic artifact — taking that and turning it into something very personal that’s mine, that I feel like could have come out of me.
That’s the real play of the activity, and that’s the real joy.
And here is an example of Mr. Kleon’s work, created from a page of The New York Times. It is titled “Overheard on the Titanic”:
Missy Provost was inspired by newspaper blackout poetry, and created her own classroom-friendly version to walk her middle-school students through the process. Here is what she did:
I read “The Art of Being Still”, an essay by Silas House from the “Draft” series. We used this piece of text for both the inspiration of its content as well as to create a bank of words for the Found Poetry Contest.
First, I read the text and divided it up into manageable chunks for my students. I then printed the piece and put it inside sheet protectors. Next, students used dri-erase markers to “black out” portions of the text, the way Austin Kleon does, and focused on leaving words that would create an interesting found poem. Using the dri-erase markers made it very easy for them to edit during the drafting process.
After my students decided on their final versions, I did one of two things. I gave some classes a clean copy of the text to black out with a marker to create a final found poem. Other classes I challenged to take the “found” words and lines and rework them into new poems, which they then submitted to the contest.
Students found success by creating poems without having to add their own words to paper, and for many this was a liberating exercise. They were so proud and impressed with what was left on the paper after they practiced “blacking out” the text.
How do I find a focus for my poem with the entire New York Times to choose from?
It’s true you can choose any Times article ever published for this challenge, and one of our favorites the first year used an article from 1892. But the nine others we liked best that year chose much more recent work, and that’s fine, too.
Your poem can be on any topic or theme you like. It can be about something as broad as food or as specific as the Cronut.
It can focus on something currently in the news, or you can use the Times archives or On This Day in History to write about the past.
You can explore a trend you’ve read about in The Times, or you might simply collect words and phrases from different articles around a theme like identity, loss or joy.
How and when do I post my poem?
Between today, March 27, and Tuesday, April 29, at 5 p.m. Eastern time, use the comment area below to send in your found poem. We’ll choose winners to be featured on the blog as soon as we can thereafter.
How do I participate in this contest if I don’t have a digital subscription to NYTimes.com?
NYTimes.com’s digital subscription system gives readers free access to 10 articles each month. If you exceed that limit, you will be asked to become a digital subscriber.
One thing you should know, however, is that The Learning Network and all its posts, as well as all Times articles linked from them, are accessible without a digital subscription. That means that if you use any of the articles we have linked to on this blog for your found-poem project, they will not count as part of the 10-article limit.
In addition, keep in mind that you need only one great Times article to create a great found poem.
I’m not an English teacher. Can this contest help me address the Common Core Standards in my subject area?
Yes!
The process of creating a found poem entails closely reading sophisticated nonfiction writing in order to first identify salient words and details, then recombine those words to create something that summarizes, reacts to or comments on the topic.
So, if you’re studying climate change in your science classroom, for example, having students work with one or more articles from the related Times Topics page can be a creative way of having them “determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development and summarize the key supporting details and ideas” or “analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics.”
Creating the poem itself, by deciding what to say and how to say it, might then satisfy the standard that asks that students “apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style.”
Last year we got many science-themed poems, on topics from the human brain to dragonflies, the “God particle,” and the origins of the universe. And judging by the many history-themed poems we receive every year, social studies teachers need little convincing that the contest can be a useful way to spur close reading of primary sources. For instance, 2012 was the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, and that year we received many poems that used both historic and current Times reporting on the event.
Here are some other ways we’ve suggested using found poetry in our social studies-themed lesson plans:
- “Words of War: Comparing Veterans’ Experiences With War Poetry”
- “He’s the Bomb: Learning About the Creation and Detonation of the Atom Bomb in 1945″
- “The Dream Continued: Creating Found Poems From Martin Luther King Jr.’s New York Times Obituary”
- “Campus Catastrophe: Writing Found Poetry to Respond to the Virginia Tech Tragedy”
I have to prove to my teacher that I did this assignment. How do I find my entry?
We apologize in advance: It’s not easy to search the comments on this blog. Please look for your submission online within 24 hours of sending it to us, then either take a screen shot, or note the unique URL for your post. That can be found by clicking the time stamp next to your name. (Because of the expected volume of submissions, if you wait longer than 24 hours it will be much harder to find.)
Good luck, and please post any questions you might have below. We’ll answer them there.
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