Cut up a poem
Bring a few texts that have nothing to do with each other. Cut them into scraps, keep the ones that speak to you, and glue them into a poem nobody wrote alone.
A collage poem is a kind of found poetry: every word comes from somewhere else. You cut words and phrases out of newspapers, magazines, letters or manuals, spread them on the table, and move them around until some of them start talking to each other. Each scrap keeps a trace of where it came from, a typeface, a paper, a tone of voice, and part of the fun is hearing those voices meet.
The idea is old. In 1920, Tristan Tzara wrote a recipe for a Dadaist poem: cut out the words of a newspaper article, put them in a bag, shake it gently and copy them in the order they come out. Here you have more say than Tzara gave his readers. The scissors are random, but you decide which pieces stay and where they go.
In my workshops, as a facilitator, I usually bring scissors, glue, and a pile of old magazines and newspapers. It works beautifully in groups, too, when several people cut from the same pile and build one poem together. But for a quick digital test, or a workshop that happens online, this little table can be a great place to start.
1 Bring some texts
Paste at least two texts, and up to ten: a recipe, a weather report, a letter, the back of a cereal box. The more different they are, the better. Each one will become scraps with its own typeface and paper.
Your texts stay in your browser. Nothing is uploaded or saved.
2 Glue it together
Pick up the scraps and drop them on the sheet. Only what is on the sheet is part of your poem; the rest can stay on the table. With the keyboard, move a focused scrap with the arrow keys.