Found Poems and Creative Editing

This article argues that the creation of found poetry, especially ‘pure’ found poetry is more an act of creative editing than creative writing. Using some practice-based research from a ‘pure’ found poem in my poetry collection Whatsname Street, published by Smokestack Books in 2021, I discuss how dealing with making a poem from another text is an act of creative editing in that it usually aims to keep something coherent and whole about the original text whilst changing it in some form. In the case of the poem under discussion, the changes consider the text’s intentions and they are also acts of translation.