Fun Ways to Create Poetry This Summer (Or Anytime, Really)

Looking for something fun and poetry-related to spice up your summer? Why not try writing some poetry? Now, before you sigh in exasperation with a sarcastic why didn’t I think of that? – hear me out.

Writing poetry doesn’t always have to involve putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and just going at it. There are some really entertaining ways of writing poetry out there. Here are three that I’ve enjoyed:

Found Poetry
This is probably the easiest of the three I’m going to mention. It requires a few more materials than the usual pen and paper, but you most likely have all of the materials already in your house. The aforementioned materials are newspapers or magazines that you don’t mind cutting up, scissors, paper, and glue (or tape, if you prefer).

Start by looking through the magazines or newspapers and cutting out words that catch your eye. If you really want to challenge yourself, set limits, such as each cut-out has to be at least three words long, or you have to use the full word – no chopping them up to fit the poem.

Then, start arranging the words you’ve cut out to form a poem. Once you’re happy with the configuration, glue or tape the words to the page.

And voila! You are now a poet (and perhaps you didn’t even know it).

Blackout/Whiteout Poetry
In its simplest form, this method of creating poetry only needs two things: a marker and a page of text written by someone else. It can be a page that’s fallen out of an old discarded book, or it can be a scan/photocopy of a page from your favourite novel. Personally, I prefer the latter – you can make several drafts before you decide what the final version of your poem will look like (or, if you’re like me, have several backups in case you mess up).

The most basic way to create poetry with these materials is to use the marker to black out any words you won’t be using in your poem. Alternatively, you can use whiteout instead of a marker. Or really anything that can cover up words, for that matter.

Some people decide to get even more creative and add an artistic aspect – a design or relevant illustration – to the page rather than just blacking out the unused words.

First Line/Last Line Poetry
I don’t actually know what this type of poetry is called, but it was a fun assignment when we did it in one of my creative writing classes.

First, find a novel you enjoy. Take the last line of the novel, and use it as the first line of your poem. Then take the first line of the novel and use it as the last line of your poem. Fill in the rest of the poem to connect the two lines. If you really want to challenge yourself, try to make the poem completely unrelated to what the novel is about.

If you decide to try any of these, I hope you have fun!

Until next time,

Kathleen

a.k.a. the girl who kind of wants to go write some poetry now (but unfortunately has other things that need to be done)