Found Inspiration

Hi there, Opus readers! My name is Stephanie Emanuele, and I’m one of the poetry co-editors for Opus. Perhaps some of you have heard about this relatively new form of poetry that has been taking the literary world by storm – “found” poetry (also sometimes referred to as “blackout” poetry.) For anyone who is new to this exciting mash-up of art and writing, essentially you take a piece of writing (ex. An old book, a newspaper, a magazine article) and black out certain words to create a brand new poem. The wonderful thing about this medium is that you have endless combinations of words and thus a whole variety of poems that you can make within one single text. I’d like to point you all to one of my all-time favorite blogs: www.newspaperblackout.com that hosts a variety of submissions in the blackout genre. Here are some of my recent favorites:

One aspect of found poetry that makes it exceptionally unique is how the poem can act not only as written art, but as visual art too! Depending on how you choose to black out the surrounding words, you can give the entire poem a worn-out fee, or you can do colorful illustrations and designs that enhance the text (see our own fabulous Erika Schlenker’s piece in last semester’s Opus). I highly encourage everyone to give found poetry a shot — you never know what you might create!