Digital found poem is a random poetry generator that combines tens of thousands of hand-picked words, phrases, and clauses into an infinite variety of five-stanzas poems that you can use as inspiration to help you create poems of your own.
Important: To run digital found poem, your computer must be able to run Windows. Digital found poem doesn't work on cell phones. For more download info, see the "Download digital found poem" section later on this page.
Using digital found poem in the classroom
If you're a poetry teacher and are looking for a way to spice up your poetry writing class or workshop, digital found poem may be of help. Let students play with digital found poem, shaping and molding words and lines that they see poetic potential in and discarding the rest. (Think cut ups, erasure poems, blackout/redacted poems, found poems, and so on.)* For a beginning poet, a few minutes of tinkering with text provided may be a more enjoyable and productive way to start each writing day than to have to stare at that proverbial blank page and hope that somehow the words will come.
* For an interesting take on the value of cut ups, erasures, etc, see the @heteroglossia blog entry for February 17, 2019, which (in part) says:
Cut up, erasure, projectivist, free verse — many of these forms and schools, by taking verse, lines, conceits from past works, force us to see the intertextual nature that constitutes all writing. When, say, one “cuts,” rearranges, or erases a poem to bring to light another, possible poem, one illuminates the infinite possibility of language, the infinity of language. The poem lying in wait behind (or above, or to the left or right of) the poem.
Digital found poem is essentially just a gigantic "cut up." But instead of cutting up a single existing work, it cuts up a huge chunk of the dictionary and the spoken/written English language. It then rearranges the "cut up" pieces programmatically into an infinite variety of never-before-seen stanzaic text that students (or anyone else) can peruse to find/fashion new poems that may be "lying in wait behind (or above, or to the left or right of" the digitally generated text. And what they find or fashion, they may, of course, keep and call their own.
Digital found poem UI
The user interface (UI) of digital found poem looks as follows. Click the generate new text button and you'll get completely new text to read or play with.
Found poem UI
Digital found poem is an extremely simple, single-file text editor (think Windows Notepad) that won't add cookies, mess with your registry, or collect any personal information. If you download it and it's not to your liking, you can delete it in one second with a single click.
Note: Although digital found poem doesn't contain "four-letter" words, it's intended for a mature audience. Its dark and adult themes make it inappropriate for those too young for all that misery. For an explanation of why digital found poem is so dark, see the how text is generated page.
Download digital found poem
To see digital found poem in action, download it by clicking download digital found poem(Last updated July 3, 2022).
Note 1: Digital found poem is programmed for Windows PCs/tablets only and it won't work on mobile phones. And it will only work on a Mac or other operating systems if they can run Windows.
For download instructions if you need them or to see an explanation of warning messages you may receive when you try to download, see the download info page.
Note 2: I update digital found poem at least once a month, usually on the 1st. Each update adds hundreds of new pieces of language, removes piece of languages that aren't working very well, and corrects errors.So if you use digital found poem for whatever reason, don't forget to update it every few months or so, so you get the full benefit of what digital found poem has to offer.
