Just do it. Put your butt in the chair and write. So here I am, sitting in a chair, writing. I have a project I’ve been working on for several years that is nearing completion. An endless list of writing ideas for poems, picture books, and more. No more procrastinating.
This weekend, before I decided to stop procrastinating, I cleaned out my email inbox. (Is there such a thing as productive procrastination?) As I scanned the subject lines, certain words began to grab my attention. Simple words, but all words are full of possibilities, aren’t they? Soon, I had a list of more than twenty words in my notebook. Before I knew it, the words were arranging themselves into a poem.
There are many variations of found poetry. Some retain the word order as it appeared in an original text; others are more flexible. Because I found these words in email subject lines, I felt free to rearrange the order and add articles and small words such as to. Besides, keeping the beginning of the list in order resulted in this:
Today, hours
Are free.
The code
Is yours,
Waiting
Here
Here
Here.
If only!
Here is another poem I drafted with the found words from my email subject lines:
Seeds lie hidden
in books:
A collection, a code
waiting
to reveal
hidden gifts
for each soul
lucky enough
not to miss
the miracle.
Happy writing, everyone. Keep an eye out for those miracles!
Thank you to Stacey, Betsy, Beth, Kathleen, Deb, Kelsey, Melanie, and Lanny for creating this community and providing this space for teachers and others to share their stories every Tuesday. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.
Reading to the Core 
There’s some great energy in this post, Catherine! How exciting for you that your project is nearing completion. I hope to hear more soon! PS–I’m a firm believer in productive procrastination and have practiced it for years.
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What a fun way to motivate yourself! I generally dislike tidying and this might motivate me to do it better.
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Just wonderful, Catherine. I really like this and will share it with students when I sub. Unique idea I am guessing. My inbox is beyond full and ridiculous. I should delete but can’t put in the time. Good for you and you made it useful. So maybe there is hope. I did a poetry lesson while subbing in gr. 3 yesterday. It was wonderful so see the 3rd graders writing poems this time and with such enthusiasm. You are write oops I mean right……you just have to DO IT regularly and voila, then it comes…….nuggets to get you started. And maybe soon, a worthy poem.
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Love your energy and your motivation. Sometimes giving ourselves the grace to celebrate what we ARE doing moves us farther forward than beating ourselves up over the “Should be, could be or might be! 🙂
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Inspired! I love how you took something that could become a negative to something so lovely. It’s not surprising you “found” these poems.
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Oh.. now I have to try this.. thanks for the inspiration.. lovely!
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So weird to see that you and I have been (across two state lines)been up to the same things. I took my blog post of today and crafted a found poem of my own to present to my writing group this afternoon! Writers are inventive, even if we do procrastinate :).
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This is a very cool idea! Thanks for sharing! I’ll have to give it a try!
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I adore your found poems, especially the one from the email subjects!
BTW: There are a hundred things that get in the way of me writing what I want to write. {Sigh.}
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What a beautiful poem.
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