Verbatim found poetry is an intriguing collection of found poems. Poems found in ordinary, and not so ordinary places. Submit yours.
magazines, catalogues, leaflets, pamphlets, programmes
Names have power,
so let us speak of hers.
Her name is Sharbat Gula,
and she is Pashtun,
that most warlike of Afghan tribes.
It is said of the Pashtun
that they are only at peace
when they are at war,
and her eyes—then and now—
burn with ferocity.
She is 28, perhaps 29, or even 30.
No one, not even she, knows for sure.
Stories shift like sand
in a place where no records exist.
From ‘A Life Revealed’, by Cathy Newman, National Geographic, April 2002. Submitted by Angi Holden.
Traumatic images,
queer looks,
dangerous texts.
African slave trade: introduction to proof.
Environmental disasters,
face of the land:
terrorism, intelligence and war–
Games and simulations,
advanced taxation,
cyberinfrastructure (the language of medicine)
Shakespeare the dramatist
(art of dying)
Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler.
discrete mathematics: prostitution and vice
major issues in criminal justice.
American deaf history,
human centered requirements,
special populations — thinking about making
power and influence,
options and futures,
boundary
value
problems.
sounds of protest,
vibrations and waves:
introduction to intelligent systems.
Course titles from the course catalog of Rochester Institute of Technology. Submitted by Rebecca Charry Roje.
The other day I saw a woman in an omnibus
open a satchel and take out a purse,
close the satchel and open the purse,
take out a penny and close the purse,
open the satchel and put in the purse.
Then she gave the penny to the conductor
and took a halfpenny in exchange.
Then she opened the satchel and took out the purse,
closed the satchel and opened the purse,
put in the halfpenny and closed the purse,
opened the satchel and put in the purse,
closed the satchel and locked both ends.
Then she felt to see
if her back hair was all right,
and it was all right,
and she was all right.
From The Windsor Magazine, November 1907, via Futility Closet. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.
Rise and dine
The winner will appear
When you’re too hot to move
Don’t worry about snagging a picnic table
The winner will appear
Don’t just watch the Food Network
Don’t worry about snagging a picnic table
Just toss ‘em in your pitcher
Don’t just watch the Food Network
Make pulled pork with the Neelys
Just toss ‘em in your pitcher
Happiness is simple. Cook with bacon.
Make pulled pork with the Neelys
Keep everything cold for nearly a week
Happiness is simple. Cook with bacon.
It will travel forty feet on a flat surface
Keep everything cold for nearly a week
If you find anything else inside our bag…
It will travel forty feet on a flat surface
Not all love notes are written.
If you find anything else inside our bag…
See if the judges pick your dish
Not all love notes are written.
Where can I buy it?
His and her refrigerators
Happiness is simple. Cook with bacon.
Where can I buy it?
Where can I buy it?
Rise and dine.
When you’re too hot to move.
Ads and headlines from ‘Food Network Magazine’ 2009, arranged into a pantoum. Submitted by Lita Kurth.
Even our ideas
Rick
are most certainly not our own
We have read everything
somewhere
or have heard it
somewhere
We’ve got nothing
really
except each other
And we hate each other
From a discussion of the political divide on Salon.com. Submitted by Wesley Brown.
A motorway in all but name
the A14 trunk road blunders into
this delectable landscape
like an unruly oik
gatecrashing
a debutante’s party.
Fortunately,
its influence is transitory
and the canal re-asserts
its rural identity,
weaving a tortuous path between
the Hemplow Hills and the curiously named
Downtown Hill.
It crosses the infant
River Avon – which goes on in later life
to find fame and fortune
as Shakespeare’s Avon –
hereabouts forming the border.
From the article ‘WW Guide to the Leicester Section’ in Waterways World, September 2012 edition, p67. ‘556ft high’ has been omitted and the last sentence cut short. Submitted by Robbie.
They ate blubber, cooked with blubber, had
blubber lamps. Their clothes and gear were
soaked with blubber, and the soot
blackened them, their sleeping
bags, cookers, walls and
roof, choked their throats
and inflamed
their tired
eyes.
From ‘Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin’, a banned pamphlet by GM Levick, scientist with the 1910-13 Scott Antarctic Expedition. Via The Guardian, 9 June 2012. ‘Tired’ added to make the nonet work. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.
The photos show a pool with a slide
and a sand pit – an idyllic family setting
separated from the gas chambers by just a few yards.
His grandmother told the children to wash the strawberries
because they smelled of ash from the ovens.
“So you ask yourself, they had to die. I’m alive.
Why am I alive?
To carry this guilt, this burden
That must be the only reason I exist
to do what he should have done.”
Goeth was played by Ralph Fiennes.
“I kept thinking this has to stop
at some point they have to stop shooting.
If it doesn’t stop I’ll go crazy right here in this theatre.”
She left the cinema suffering from shock.
Both she and her brother chose to be sterilised.
“When my brother had it done, he said to me ‘I cut the line’.”
Seeing his father’s childhood home he broke down
kept repeating the word “insanity”.
Taken from an article in BBC magazine about the descendants of high profile Nazis, 22 May 2012. Some words and phrases omitted for scansion. Submitted by Grace Andreacchi.
(after Macaulay)
All who could help or hurt at Court,
ministers, mistresses, priests, were
kept in good humour by presents
of shawls and silks, birds’ nests and
attar of roses, bulses of diamonds,
bags of guineas.
Lord Macaulay, as quoted in an article in the Economist about the East India Company, 17th December 2011. Submitted by Rishi Dastidar.
On days one to two: Wees –
two or more per day; Poos –
one or more per day;
Poo at this stage is called meconium
or mec for short. It’s very dark
brown green black and sticky
and it’s already in the bowel
at the time of birth.
On days three to four: Wees –
three or more per day; The
amount of wee increases,
and the nappies feel heavier than before.
Poos – two or more per day;
The colour changes and looks more green.
These poos are called ‘changing stools’
and they change because your baby
is taking in more milk and digesting it.
On days five to six: Wees –
five or more heavy nappies per day;
(see what heavy means overleaf).
Poos – At least two soft, yellow poos
per day; They’re yellow, because there is
no more mec in the bowel.
Day seven onwards: Wees –
six or more heavy nappies per day;
Poos – at least two soft, yellow poos
per day; greater than the size of a two pound coin
– not just skid marks. You might notice
little seedy particles in it – that’s fine.
Taken from the National Childbirth Trust notes ‘What’s in a nappy’, attached to the cots in the delivery unit at Addenbrooke’s Hospital. 16 May 2010. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.
Verbatim Poetry 
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