Introducing Florilegia Found Poems

Ever since I stopped going to church regularly, I’ve been looking for something to salve the spiritual hole in my heart. A couple years ago, I found it: the podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. In this weekly missive, two divinity school graduates (a non-practicing Christian and an atheist Jew) discuss progressive values, living with intention, and finding the sacred in the everyday through a close reading of one chapter at a time of this great series. I recommend it if any of that sounds appealing to you!

One of the best gifts I’ve taken from the podcast is a new activity of writing found poems based on florilegia. Podcast hosts Casper and Vanessa create florilegia as a way of sacred reading. I’ve tweaked the practice for my own use as a way to further engage with the books I read.

A florilegium is a gathering of writings or quotations; Merriam-Webster says that “editors who compile florilegia … can be thought of as gathering a bouquet of sweet literary blossoms.” As I read, when a sentence or phrase jumps off the page, I copy it down. Then when I’m done with the book, I read through these blossoms and cut and arrange them. It’s fun both as a writing exercise and as a way to study the text more deeply.

Of course, not every book makes good found poetry — some stories are simply entertaining, and that’s fine. But introspective memoirs, novels that wrestle with big, thorny questions, and volumes of poetry are fertile ground for growing and gathering these poems.

In the coming weeks, I’ll share some of the florilegium poems I’ve created for these books and others.