Lines from some of my favourite poems

This is a little resource to get you started writing a Cento.

A Cento is a poem made entirely from line of other poems. My favourite example is Cameron Awkward-Rich’s “Cento Between The Ending and the End”, which you can read here, or relax and let him read to you here.

To write a Cento, simply borrow and play. Use these lines. Use other lines from poems you love. Use the song lyric that’s been stuck in your head all week. Use the graffiti in the bathroom at the coffee shop.

Just remember to shout out your sources! Poets work hard, and deserve all our credit and celebration. Sources are below.

I wake up & it breaks my heart
The wind wags its many tails
Let phones, unanswered, ring themselves to sleep.
Today, I broke your solar system. Oops. My bad.
Desire, desire, desire
I am a student of wrens.
We have so little of each other, now.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
Please bring strange things
Breathe in, knowing we are made of all this
I should’ve kissed him, one good forehead kiss
You just have to stand there
So many places to be
Now, I remember only the flavour
Just at the moment I thought we were lost
I want to hold a poem in my fist in the alley just in case.
I have no answer.
Starting here, what do you want to remember?
I didn't know what I had touched, ice or fire.
I have faith in the night.
The rain will never stop falling
The queen, alone in a crowd
I watched them let a bird go
Let us take a knife and cut the world in two
Remember June's long days
Like rice flung from the giants' wedding
I am living. I remember you.

Sources (in order)

Cameron Awkward-Rich, “Meditations in an Emergency”
Mary Oliver, “Song for Autumn”
Ros Barber, “How to Leave the World that Worships Should”
Fatimah Asghar, “Pluto Shits on the Universe”
Stanley Kunitz, “Touch me”
Thomas R. Smith, “Baby Wren’s Voices”
Danusha Lameris, “Small Kindnesses”
Wislawa Szymborska, “Possibilities”
Ursula LeGuin, “Initiation Song from the Finders' Lodge”
Joy Harjo, “Eagle Poem”
Marcus Jackson, “Full Time Driver”
Tony Hoagland, “Disappointment”
Kaveri Patel, “Dear You”
Dorianne Laux, “Dust”
Ted Kooser, “Dandelion”
Jamila Woods, “Blk Girl Art”
Denise Levertov, “A Reward”
William Stafford, “You Reading This, Be Ready”
Gregory Djanikian, “When I First Saw Snow”
Rainer Maria Rilke, “You Darkness”
Naomi Shihab Nye, “Shoulders”
Mary Soon Lee, “What Bees Read”
Dana Levin, “How to Hold the Heavy Weight of Now”
Langston Hughes, “Tired”
Adam Zagajewski, Translated by Clare Cavanagh, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World”
Aracelis Girmay , “Consider the Hands that Write this Letter”
Marie Howe, “What the Living Do”