Submit your found poetry here

Tamyka Bell
Aug 22, 2017 · 3 min read
Photo by hongwon jun (Pixabay)

There’s a lot of hate in the world, and it’s been infiltrating Medium more and more of late. I’ve tried reasoning with hateful people; it got me nowhere.

So I took out my frustration finding the beauty hidden in the diatribe. There’s something cathartic about crossing out those horrible words, or cutting and switching them, until all that remains is kindness, or beauty, or truth.

(There’s also something satisfying about taking the end product and linking to it in your response to a hateful piece: “It is so kind of you to hide this beautiful love poem inside your hate story. I found it, and am now sharing it.”)

Go on, you know you want to.

  1. Find a hateful story (or several) on Medium, or elsewhere on the web, or offline.
  2. Find the beautiful poem hidden within. You can work through the whole story or just a paragraph, or mix multiple pieces.
  3. Take a photo or screenshot of your work or work-in-progress. It doesn’t need to be the entire poem; it can just be a snippet.
  4. Type your poem up as a Medium draft and give it a title.
  5. As the subtitle, write “after [original author] TK [link]” replacing the bracketed text with your source story’s author, and a link to the piece. (List all authors and links if you’ve mixed multiple pieces.)
  6. Add the picture of your poem.
  7. Add some explanatory text, if you like, and another picture with appropriate attribution that includes a link to show the picture is licensed for reuse.
  8. Add the tag Found Poetry and any other tags you wish.
  9. If you’re not yet a writer for Turn It Into Love, fill in the Google Form below and I’ll add you.
  10. Submit your story as a draft.

We will not publish hate-speech, discriminatory texts, or poems that seek to counter-attack. The goal of this publication is to neutralise the hatred by taking away its power and turning it into something positive.

As an example, here is a cut-up poem I wrote in response to a Medium story that, in my opinion, was taking a dig at unnamed others. But my response also takes a subtle dig at the author — even though it is intended in good nature —so it is not published in Turn It Into Love.

Embedded form not working? Click here.

Please note that I’ll remove the link to the source content before publishing; I ask you to provide it for internal checks only. I believe it’s important to credit creators for their work, but I have no intention of providing an additional source of direct traffic to the profiles of hate-writers.

We may also query you about possible errors in your text, because we all make typos sometimes, and it’s more fun if we catch them before people start highlighting your poem.


Yes, this publication shares its name with a classic Kylie song from the 80s:

… don’t let hate get in the way —

Turn It Into Love

Cut-up, erasure, Cento and free-form remixed works to find beauty hidden within ugly texts. Why feed the hate when you can turn it into love?

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Tamyka Bell

Written by

writes. runs. drinks coffee. doesn’t go in for that whole sleep thing. @AltraRunning Red Team

Turn It Into Love

Cut-up, erasure, Cento and free-form remixed works to find beauty hidden within ugly texts. Why feed the hate when you can turn it into love?

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