Found Poetry

While all of you amazing teachers are having orientations and teaching your first lessons, I'm still wandering around my empty classroom wondering where exactly to start.  In fact, here's a photo of my current recycling box - I've just gone crazy and tossed a bunch of stuff...

Anyway, as I was emptying shelves, and drawers, and filing cabinets, I made a pile of books that were really just beyond repair, there is a split-in-half To Kill a Mockingbird, a duct-taped Les Miserables, a Lord of the Flies with the cover completely missing, and a yellowed and falling apart Jane Eyre...

I was contemplating what to do with these books (because throwing them away would absolutely hurt my heart) when I remembered an idea that I had seen this summer on Pinterest...Found Poetry.

These particular pieces are for sale at deviantart.com, but I thought it would be a really cool project for my creative writing class to work on.   I could also have my Freshman and Senior Lit students create a poem using a page from one of the novels that they have read (Freshmen read TKAM and LOTF, Seniors read Les Mis and Jane Eyre).  I would love to have them create a poem from a page of the novel that relates to one of the themes of the novel.

I have plenty of ratty books in my classroom, so let me know if you have any other ideas as to how to use old books? I'd love to hear your ideas!