Alan Harnum

For World Poetry Day

21 Mar 2017

For UNESCO's World Poetry Day 2017, three poems from an ongoing project of mine to compose found poetry by listening to the live stream of Toronto Public Library searches.

Each poem is the product of a single listening session and the order of the search terms has not been rearranged, though not all search terms from a listening session are included - the composition process is a selective choice of search terms as they are heard, followed by restructuring of the text through punctuation.


Once Emerged Horses

Johnny Cash carousel
    thin man mirror blue.
      Billy Strayhorn brain -
      limitless billable hours.

  Oliver Stone anime traffic
    accidents, succulents,
    investments; anime Coleman
    Hawkins, you can heal your life.            

    Donny Osmond dreamland
            bringing in
            the new year;
            Paul Klee once emerged
            horses, twilight horses.   

Huge Collateral People

Cinderella, man, city and
    town life sleep demons.

    Surely your joking Mr.
    Adoption Egomaniac,
    knitting knitting artisan
    filigree.

International adoption marketing     
metrics, strangers in their
own land marketing metrics.

        Ready to read the
        burial hour wings huge,
        collateral people.

Animals Breathless Animals

My grandfather's gallery, I'm
thinking of ending things;
animals, you are not so smart.
Food, health and happiness
designing your life.

Animals, breathless animals;
the highly sensitive child
colours the bloody chamber.

And other stories: invincible
living embrace of the serpent,
big data homeland. Autoimmune
printers quilting, autoimmune
quilting overdrive.

Winter, from me to you, never,
never, Toronto filthy rich
heartland. The complete salvage.