“Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.”
- Hunter S. Thompson
In many years of environmental practice what I learned is that everything revolves around resources: how you use them, manage or generate them.
Well, this same notion we can apply in different ways in order to get our creativity flowing – especially when it comes to writing. Rewriting, revising our own or somebody else’s work helps us not only to become better writers, but also it helps us develop our reading and analytical skills. You learn to question ideas, statements and arguments. You learn to notice and search for new relations, discover weaknesses and come up with new ways to improve what’s already there. So, this is what I propose: reuse your old books, magazines or even shopping receipts and try to create new poem. It can be similar to collage, but this time try to focus specifically on words and create your poem out of them. Cut out your favorite words and phrases or circle them on the given page and make them the constituent part of your new writing venture. Play with the words. Try different arrangements. Pick words that somehow inspire you or relate to a project/problem you are working on. Once you found an arrangement you like, you’ve created a found poem. What kind of emotions or reaction words trigger? Read them, play with them and they just might offer some new, fresh perspective on the questions you have.
