Lizards in the Leaves


Apr 28, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 28

PoMoSco-Day 28
Badge: Cut It Out

Directive: Poetry by Exacto knife - cut out unwanted text from source.

My poem:
The Two Kinds of Space

PoMoSco-Day 27

PoMoSco-Day 27
Badge: Spaced Out

Directive: Roll dice to determine words to erase in each line of source text. Continue until you are pleased with the poem that results.  Use space, illustration, etc. in final poem.

My poem:
Increasingly Restless

Apr 26, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 26

PoMoSco-Day 26
Badge: Order's Up

Directive: Using only the words found on a menu, craft a poem

My poem: 
Live-Often and Well

PoMoSco - Day 25

PoMoSco-Day 25
Badge: Crowdsource

Directive: Go sit somewhere with a sign with a word on it and ask passersby to give a definition, thought, etc. Craft a poem using only those words and don't use the source word in the poem.

My poem:
dandelions and cannabis

PoMoSco-Day 24

PoMoSco - Day 24
Badge: Best Laid Plan

Directive: Remove something throughout source text. Keeping as much of the remaining text intact as possible, create your poem from results.

My poem:
The Circular Ruins

Apr 23, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 23

Badge: Click Trick

Directives: Using PhotoShop tools, create an erasure poem from source text.

My poem:
Solar Plexus

Apr 22, 2015


PoMoSco-Day 22
Badge: Dialed In

Directive: Write all the digits in a phone number. Choose what they will correspond to in your source text (a page number, line number or number of word in a line) and use this constraint to choose words and phrases for your poem.

My poem:
The Happiness of Inhabiting

Apr 21, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 21

PoMoSco-Day 21
Badge: Interrogator

Directives: Compose a poem made only of questions found in source text.
This one was FUN! I used Jorge Luis Borges' questions.

My poem:
What Have You Done With It?

Apr 20, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 20

PoMoSco-Day 20
Badge: Off the Shelf

Directives: Notice something on your way to the library. Choose 5 books about that subject, create a poem of words and phrases found on the first five pages of the books, excluding front matter.

My Poem:

Apr 19, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 19

PoMoSco-Day 19
Badge: Quiet On Set

Directive: Listen to TV show, podcast, etc. at least 30 minutes. No stopping, rewinding, etc. Note words and phrases, use them as source text - deletions can be made, but you must retain the order in which they were heard.

My Poem:
Ask Permission To Enter The Forest

Apr 18, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 18

PoMoSco - Day 18
Badge: Open Book


My Source Text: Gaston Bachelard. The Poetics of Space


My poem:
And All The Spaces Of Our Past

Apr 17, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 17

PoMoSco - Day 17
Badge: Spelling B

Directive: Using a "seed phrase" and a source text, put them into the "Diastic Poem Generator" - which chooses words from the source text based on the letters of the seed phrase. Poems must be found by deleting words - remaining words must be used in order.

My poem:
Over The Heart Always Through

Apr 16, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 16

PoMoSco - Day 16

Badge: Blender



My poem:
The Body Can Flourish In This Unlikely Place

Apr 15, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 15

PoMoSco -Day 15
Badge: As Advertised

Directives: Find a public bulletin board and create a poem using only words found on postings. Take a picture of the bulletin board & post with poem.

Used the board at Tater 'n' Joe's Cafe, where we have our monthly poetry readings.

My poem:

Apr 14, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 14

PoMoSco-Day 14
Badge: Survey Says

Directive: Create a 5-10 question survey and distribute it. Craft a poem using only the words in the answers
My survey was about fear.

My poem:
Sometimes The Dark

Apr 13, 2015

PoMoSco - Days 11, 12, 13

PoMoSco - Day 11
Badge: Haiku Anew

Directives: Choose a haiku and using the Haiku Discombobulator ,  create another.

My source: an Issa haiku

My discombobulated haiku:
Twilight Woman


PoMoSco - Day 12
Badge: Pinch an Inch

Directives: Draw an inch-wide column down a page or pages of source text, either left, right or down the middle. Create a word bank using only words found in that inch. Craft a poem from them.

My source: Plant Healer Magazine No. 14
(This is an gorgeous, useful digital magazine, check it out if you are an herb/plant lover)

My poem:

This is another found poem that turned out to be quite personal, about my mother with Alzheimer's.

PoMoSco - Day 13
Badge: Picture It

Directives: Use erasure/redacting techniques to bring out words for a poem, add visuals to the page with drawing, collage, etc.

My source: 
Burch, Noel. Theory of Film Practice.

My poem: 
Structures of Aggression

Apr 10, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 10

PoMoSco-Day 10

Badge: SubTexter

Directives: Choose a word to substitute for another word throughout a text. You can choose more than one.

My poem:
When Goats Make You Crazy


Apr 9, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 9

PoMoSco-Day 9 
Badge: X:Y

Directives - find instances of two words in a particular syntactical relationship, create a poem of them.
I chose the relationship "X and Y" and created a poem about my other art: fiber.

Source text: the latest issue of Fiber Art Now (and it is a great issue!)

My poem: 
backlash and bird's nests

Apr 8, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 8

PoMoSco-Day 8
Badge: Redacted

Instructions - pick a page online, redact using an online tool (, make a screen shot and post it.

My text: a Project Gutenberg 1911 book on dance.

My poem: 
a grace not unworthy

Here is the first one I did using the redacting tool. Same text.

Apr 7, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 7

PoMoSco - Day 7
Badge: Roll the dice

Use dice to select lines from text, craft a poem from them.

Text for this one from 1913 Rudolf Steiner lecture.
My poem:

Apr 6, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 6

PoMoSco - Day 6
Badge: First in Line

Create a poem using the first lines from poems in one poet's collection.
 I used Ted Hughes' Collected Poems,

My poem

In A World Where All Is Temporary

I loved working on this one. But I completely misread (and still can't figure out how I did) the instructions and thought we were to compose a poem using only the titles  of another poet's poems. That was very hard, but I did it.  Only to discover my error.

Many of Hughes' poems are titled with the first line, so that made it somewhat easier....still, it was tough. 

Here is the poem found in error.  As I worked, it became very, very personal. A poem about my son's death in March of 2006.


After moonless midnight,
a knock at the door.

The scream. Long screams,
smell of burning,

earth-numb bones,
the howling of wolves.

The sea grieves all night long.

The day he died he called,
speech out of shadow, a memory
turning out unfinished mystery.

March morning unlike others
I woke in the bed of the rains

Collision with the earth
has finally come.

Existential song:  starlings
have come.

Glimpse the new world.
You drive in a circle, work

and play in a world
where all is temporary.

Each new moment
my eyes look back.

Everything is waiting
Everything is on its way

to the river.


Apr 5, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 5

PoMoSco - Day 5
Badge: All Ears

The directive was to go to a public place, walk around and eavesdrop, making a poem from the bits of conversation we might hear. 
I found this one a bit difficult. It was hard to hear true conversations (I had been hoping to encounter people on cell phones who tend to talk loudly), so I was getting mostly mundane sales talk in the shops.
I almost decided to redo it, but couldn't face another trip to the mall, so worked with what I did get.

Also we were to take a picture along the way and post it with the poem.

My poem:
It's Just Like That

Apr 4, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 4

PoMoSco - Day 4

Badge: On Demand

Directives: We were to choose two words, Google them, create a poem out of the results on the search pages.

My words: radiant imprecision
My poem: Something To A Distant Point Like That Was Possible

Apr 3, 2015

PoMoSco - Day 3

PoMoSco Day 3
Badge: White Out. 

Directions: White out unwanted words in a source text and find the poem left.

My poem:
Conversation 97

My source text is the 1907 book by Arthur Christopher Benson, From a College Window. This is the book I have been working with for awhile in the same way.

Recently, I printed one of my found poems from that text. On silk. And stitched it like this.

Apr 2, 2015

PoMoSco-Day 2

PoMoSco - Day 2
Badge: Shake It Up. 

Directions: Make a poem in the Dada manner. Cut up a text, put pieces in a bag (I used a box), pull them out at random and use them in that order. No text omitted, no rearrangement allowed.

My poem: 

Full Moon: Watch How The Dream Is Being Received

Apr 1, 2015

National Poetry Month - PoMoSco

Today it begins.

This year, for National Poetry Month, instead of NaPoWriMo (the challenge to write a poem a day) I chose to sign up for PoMoSco, a structured project of the Found Poetry Review.

For this project, the challenge is to earn 30 badges by working with a source text of choice and following a set of particular instructions for finding a poem within the words and phrases of the text. It was within the rules to begin work before April. During the month, we post a poem a day.

PoMoSco - Day 1
Badge: Pick & Mix

Directive: Choose a source text and create a poem from selected words and phrases.

My poem:


The structured lattice
of language is continually

being made and remade
vibrating in one’s mouth.

The breathing body is yours.

Your earthly utterance,
a foraging fearlessly spoken,

is a dangerous magic,
summoned forth

by the exchange of wild wind
and breath.

Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous, New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Print.