This month’s Write out Loud poetry workshop exercise comes from Winston Plowes, and concerns the cento, a type of found poem.   

“Hello there, Write Out Loud Community: here is a simple idea that can work really well especially if you are lacking inspiration of your own or get that “don’t know where to start” feeling. The cento is a type of found poem. Cento is directly from the Latin definition: patchwork garment, where (usually) whole lines are taken from different sources and reassembled to make something new. It’s sometimes called a patchwork or collage poem. You can choose to select lines from say, two different poems or sources, many different poems or articles by the same author, or lines from a book either chosen randomly or planned. These lines can be arranged to say more about the original text but in a different (or greatly condensed) way or can have a completely different message.

Example 1 – Long Ago My Father Died by Jennifer Saunders

Using 22 lines from 12 different authors to create a new and moving poem.

Example 2 – Checkout by Winston Plowes

Lines taken from competitors’ poems in a poetry slam scribbled down on the night and rearranged to say something about the decline of the mills in Calderdale and the employees frustration (at least to me)

Example 3 – Ecstatic Permutations by Connie Hershey

A long cento made from one line out of each of the poems in the anthology Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms edited by David Lehman.

Have a go, have fun.”

 Winston Plowes