Found poetry is created by taking and remixing words and phrases from other texts. In my class, I used poetry and literature that are written in Spanish and English, such as La Casa en Mango Street and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisnero (2009), …Y no se lo tragó la tierra/…And the earth did not devour him by Tomás Rivera (1987), Cool Salsa by Lori M. Carlson (1994) and Mariposa by Kim Guerra (2018). Bilingual texts written by bilingual authors offers a different insight of linguistic practices, which were often deemed broken under the dominant monolingual norm.
The main purpose of this activity is not to learn about the poem genre, but to introduce a creative way to engage with bilingual texts and the translanguaging practice through art-making. For this activity, I started with reading the text aloud together. After reading, we talked about new expressions we learned as well as the meanings and contexts of the text. Next, I asked the participants to circle the phrases or words that stand out or they found interesting in both Spanish and English texts. Based on these words and phrases, we created a new bilingual poem.