Verbatim found poetry is an intriguing collection of found poems. Poems found in ordinary, and not so ordinary places. Submit yours.
At first, Ruth was a bit put off
by the fact that Simon turned up in a car
with every imaginable gadget:
I wasn’t used to flash cars, she says.
Then, on a day out to the beach,
Simon messed up Ruth’s kite.
He got all the lines tangled
so I didn’t use it again, says Ruth,
who had, however, noticed
that Simon was very polite.
From the Announcements, Marriages and Engagements section of The Times, 18 February 2012. By Thom.
I confess:
I have become
a runner.
I go
running.
I
run.
Like a
runner.
Which is what
I have become.
A running
runner.
Forgive me.
Oh Christ.
Forgive me.
From I have been murdered and replaced with a suspicious facsimile. In running shoes. Submitted by Ailsa Holland.
You live very self-consciously, in Brooklyn.
Do you drink juice or coffee or eat
vegetables? How do you live with yourself
and your bourgeois lifestyle choices? Have you
ever grown a plant?
You monster,
you gentrifying Brooklyn monster.
Your plant is a symbol. Punch that up
on your sushi iPhone app where you get
your food from in your new robot Brooklyn
dystopia, you invasive specie.
Do you like quirky things?
It’s people
like you who are ruining the Brooklyn
remembered by old folks who sit on stoops
and provide readily available
sound bites about the days of old.
From the article Brooklyn is cool until you start reading about it.
Here
I am on the seafront in Brighton, in 1994.
I have just told my best friend that
we shouldn’t go out with each other.
‘We were meant to be just friends,’
I am saying.
I have read about love in novels and am sure
I know all about it. This is one of the cleverest things
I have ever done.
I am 18.
I exhale my cigarette, like a grown-up. Here
I am four years later, on the same stretch of seafront
with the same friend.
We are on a bench. My head is in his lap.
We are talking about what to call
our baby in my belly. My wedding dress is in a bag at
our feet.
We get married in three days. Since
we were last here,
I have learnt that
I knew nothing at the age of 18.
I know now that love can be a quiet, sure thing
– like the first April sun on
your arms – and not the pyroclastic blast
I was waiting for. In 19 hours,
we will find out that the baby
is dead. The grief that is coming for
us has five blades on each hand: it will fall on
us like a blizzard, and leave
us on the floor.
We will weep on
our honeymoon in Ullapool – so lost
I could not tell you if it did rain at all,
that time. At the time,
I thought the deep-sea pressure of sorrow was
so great, it would crush
my heart smaller, for ever.
I was sure I knew everything about it.
Taken from Caitlin Moran‘s column for the Saturday Times, 20 August 2011. By Marika Rose.
It is, frankly, an amazing story.
The indomitable patriarch who will shortly
be forced to plead age and infirmity;
his headstrong son whose eagerness
to do what his father would have done
will shortly doom him;
the loyalists who will unquestionably fall
on their swords; an upending of the moral
landscape in which the miscreants once
happily functioned; and the virtuous newspaper,
perhaps the last great newspaper,
with a last great editor, who, long waiting
for and never believing it would get
such an opportunity, now has
the devil in its sights.
From Will the Guardian Bring Down Rupert Murdoch. Submitted by Rishi Dastidar.
We incorrectly stated
that Julian Brooker, twenty three, of Brighton,
was blown fifteen feet into the air
after accidentally touching
a live railway line.
His parents have asked us to make clear
he was not turned into a fireball,
was not obsessed with the number twenty-three
and didn’t go drinking on that date every month.
Julian’s mother did not say,
during or after the inquest,
her son often got on all fours
creeping around their house
pretending to be Gollum.
From an apology in The Sun, 29 April 2005.
My dad had
an affair with his
21-year-old secretary.
He regretted it
almost immediately when she
started standing on bridges
and threatening suicide should he
go back to
or pay maintenance to
his wife and three
very young daughters.
Disgusted, my mother
refused to have him back. The spineless man
was then marched up the aisle,
vasectomy reversed, child produced. Anti
depressants ensued, along with
the loss of any meaningful
relationship with his
previous three daughters.
He currently works
long hours with a
serious heart condition to
support his wife and her
expensive horsey hobbies.
Meanwhile my mother
grew strong, witty and
wise. His daughters all
suffered. The lure of
a youthful admirer!
More fool him.
From Where did it all go wrong?, 9 February 2011. By Marika Rose.
Diana, the bride
at every royal funeral
and the mourner at
every royal wedding, was
present in more than
just the engagement ring which
sat so heavily
on the hand of this young woman
who must now walk a
mile in her bloodied shoes, on
a road leading who knows where.
Julie Birchill quote, via The Daily Mash. By Marika Rose.
Freelancing means walking from the West Village
to the Upper East Side and back because
you don’t have enough money for the subway.
Freelancing means being so poor and so hungry
for so long that you “eat” a bowl of soup
that’s just hot water, crushed-up multivitamins
and half your spice rack (mostly garlic salt).
Freelancing is being woken up on a Monday
at eight a.m. by an editor who
gives you the following assignment: “Put
together everything interesting about
all the city’s airports by Friday,”
doing it, and then not getting credit
when it runs … as an infographic.
Freelancing is having your mother send
you a book called $ix-Figure Freelancing
which lists as helpful resources, on page
one nine eight, the dictionary, thesaurus,
and sree.net. Freelancing means your editor
will reject your pitch and then, seven months later,
run the story you pitched—with the same language
as your pitch—and then have it submitted
for a National Magazine Award.
Freelancing is having an editor tell you
that he really loves the story you’ve filed
and wouldn’t change anything, and in fact
suggests you expand upon the characters
a bit—and also cut the story in half.
Freelancing means having to chase down checks
every time, even when that means waiting
two years for one thousand dollars. It means
having stories killed and being told that the
editor-in-chief gave no reason, but
that the same editor would love to work
with you some more.
From Seven Years as a Freelance Writer, or, How to Make Vitamin Soup, The Awl, 2 August 2010.
Things millennials hate: old stuff,
mayonnaise, reading a book,
bluegrass music, movies that are
mostly talking, being sober
at school, people who have never
been on TV, having opinions,
losers, math, having an emotion,
animals, not being on Facebook,
virgins, when your mom makes you talk
about your day at the dinner table,
murders.
Things millennials love:
texting, sexting, Twilight.
From Young people neither love nor hate anything, Gawker, 6 August 2010.
Verbatim Poetry 
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