Golden Shovel poetry is a poetic form in which you borrow a line, or lines, from someone else’s poem, and use each of their words as the end words in your poem. Preferably, you write your poem in a way that feels like a continuation or a companion of the original. Personally, I struggle with this form. It’s challenging but I love that we get to celebrate and honor our favorite poets and their poems in this way.

Below you will find my poem and a template I designed to guide you when writing your Golden Shovel. Click here to learn more about the form.

Today I’m sharing my Golden Shovel poem that uses a line from, “I Am Offering this Poem,” by Jimmy Santiago Baca. Notice how the line “I am offering this poem to you” reads down the page in bold letters (and that I’ve continued the “poem” theme of the original borrowed poem).

A Golden Shovel Offering

A poem is bits and pieces of knowing. I
share words, it’s who I am,
a gift of metaphor— a simple offering.
My thoughts are punctuated with this
pen. It might be a scribbled napkin of a poem,
but it’s a part of my heart that I give to 
each and every one of you.

©Danna Smith 2023 at poetrypop.com all rights reserved 
(After I am offering this Poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca)

Template

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