How to Write Found Poetry

When you are blocked and want to write a poem, give found poetry a try to stimulate creativity and formulate new ideas.

I have been creating stories since I can remember, whether they were told or just kept in my head. Once I learned to express myself on paper I began writing them down in notebooks. I never had trouble coming up with ideas for short stories, as I always had a very creative and fertile imagination. Never, at least, until the last several years.

This was a huge frustration for me, which got worse the more I tried to force an idea. I attempted to use some of the standard techniques for getting over writer’s block like “just write anything and keep writing until you’ve written yourself out of it.” These techniques never worked for me since once I was already distressed over my inability to write, writing a bunch of garbage just served to further convince me I had no talent and no ability.

This is a common phenomenon in writers called impostor syndrome. It meant that I never felt like a “real writer” since “real writers,” could find a way out of being blocked, or their block only lasted for hours or possibly as long as a day at a time. Sometimes I had periods when I was completely blocked or couldn’t come up with anything I thought was particularly good that…