April is National Poetry Month!
Stop by the Norman Williams Public Library and try your hand at “Pruned Poetry” a local variety of Found Poetry.
prune, verb: to reduce especially by eliminating superfluous matter; to clip, crop, cut back, and weed out
Otherwise known as Redacted or Blackout Poetry, Pruned Poetry is created by removing words from an existing printed page – any newspaper or book page will work. Judiciously remove words by masking them with marker or crayon to create a poem. Your new creation can echo the original text, posit an opposing theme, or not relate at all.
Play with words and phrases. Change your mind. Add a drawing. Make it rhyme or not, long or short, serious or funny. It’s your poem! We have newspapers and pages from damaged books for you to experiment with. If you wish to share your Pruned Poems, we will display them by the big clock on the first floor and in the window of the children’s room.
This kind of found poetry goes back over 250 years to Benjamin Franklin’s neighbor, Caleb Whiteford, who redacted words and phrases in newspapers to create puns that he published in a broadside. More recently, it was popularized by Austin Kleon who turned to words on a newspaper page when facing writer’s block.
Poets of all ages can find inspiration to construct a found poem through the deconstruction of another’s text!
(Also published in the Vermont Standard 4.4.24)