NY Times Found Poetry Contest

Click for NCTE PDF on Found and Headline Poetry

The New York Times announced on March 31st that submissions for their 7th Annual Found Poetry Contest are now being accepted.

Not only is this contest an excellent enrichment activity for students performing above grade level, but it also includes the components of a balanced literacy lesson.

The activity requires students to read, analyze, and ultimately choose a NY Times article (or two) to summarize, personalize, and manipulate into a "found poem." This is a multi-step process that requires direct instruction, modeling, analyzing mentor texts, guided reading, and independent reading (as well as re-reading). 

From comprehension to application to synthesis in the areas of both reading and writing, this extension activity will get students actively engaged with an opportunity to lend their voice to a published article or text.

Here are the guidelines from their website:

– Each poem must be 14 or fewer lines.

– You may give it your own original title if you like. The title does not count as one of the lines.

– Your sole source material must be Times pieces. You can use up to two articles. (Note: This is a change from previous years, when we allowed you to mix words from as many items as you wanted.)

– The poem itself should use no more than two of your own words. The rest of the words and phrases can be mixed up any way you like, but should all come from The Times.

– You might choose to write in a traditional poetic form, or not.

– Poems may be submitted by groups or by individuals. Only one poem per person is allowed, however.

– You must be from 13 to 19 years old but can be from anywhere in the world.

– You must post your poem as a comment on this post by 7 a.m. Eastern time on May 3.

– At the bottom of your found-poem post, please provide us with the URL(s) of the article(s) you used.

– Though The Learning Network often publishes excerpts from literary and historical works on our blog via our Text to Text andPoetry Pairing features, those are off limits for this contest. The Times articles they are paired with are, of course, fair game

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