Educating the Artists of the Invisible: The Pedagogy of the Found Poem

The found poem is a poem that is created out of words from a variety of sources. The author of the found poem selects words, passages and phrases from a series of readings and crafts these words, passages and phrases into a poem. This article describes the use of the found poem in a graduate level Capacity Development course through the reflections of two graduate students and the course instructor. The article begins by articulating the challenges we collectively face as wicked problems, and describes these problems. The following section then describes capacity development and its relationship to wicked problems to provide a context for the found poem. The following section then provides a brief description of the use of the found poem followed by the reflections of two graduate students on the process of creating the found poem and its impact upon their learning. The course instructor then offers his observations of its use in his class and this followed by three conclusions on the value of the found poem.