Found fiction

There’s a genre of poetry known as ‘found poetry’ which involves take words, phrases and sometimes longer chunks of text from various sources and arranging them in a poetical way. Here’s a blog called simply ‘found poetry‘ with the subtitle ‘pulling poetry from pages of prosaic piffle’ which features many examples.

There’s a short story called Useful Phrases by Gene Wolfe based on the phrases found in a phrasebook, including such gems as Pava pacch, tîsh ùtra. Neéve sort dufji. (How like a ghost are the fountain’s waters! The flood carries away my riches), and Semphonississima techsodeliphindera lafiondalindu tuk yiscav kriishhalôné! (How delightful to discover in the shrinking sea a crystal blossom of home!”) – I suspect these phrases come from an imaginary phrasebook in a made-up language, but could be wrong. The story appears in Wolfe’s collection of short stories: Strange Travellers.

After discovering this today on this blog, I started thinking whether it would be possible to construct a story entirely or mainly from the phrases in a phrasebook, or maybe using a language textbook or grammar book as your source. Stories put together in this way might be called ‘found fiction’. Phrasebooks and other language books would probably be a good source of found poetry as well.

This entry was posted in English, Language, Literature, Words and phrases.

5 Responses to Found fiction

  1. Trochee says:

    Ozarque ( has discussed this idea of a glossary- or phrase-book format for SF stories quite a bit, with some success.

  2. lynneguist says:

    You might be interested in Annie Dillard’s book of found poems, Mornings like this, which includes a poem devised from snippets of Leonard Bloomfield’s Language. It ends up being a story of heartbreak…

  3. dmh says:

    I think I read on the How to learn any language forums about a french guy who learned English using Assimil and then wrote a play detailing his study that used a lot of the dialogues from the Assimil Anglais sans peine book.

  4. dmh says:

    Sorry, I wasn’t finding anything so I posted the previous message just a second before I found this:

    The guy is French/Romanian:Eugène Ionesco
    The play is called: The Bald Soprano (La Chantatrice Chauve)

    (The following taken from Wikipedia)



    Just a word about the play: With a record number of interpretations, it has become one of the most performed plays in France.

  5. Charles says:

    Brian Eno in his song Cordoba apparently did something similar. He took lines from a Spanish textbook and made a song of them. Here are a few lines from the song:

    The lift stops between two floors.
    You start to walk towards the station.
    I walk towards the bus.
    We’ll have to wait at the station.

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