Golden Shovel
Quick answer: The golden shovel is a form where each line ends with the next word of a borrowed line, invented by Terrance Hayes to honour Gwendolyn Brooks. Learn how.
A golden shovel is a poem in which the last words of its lines, read downwards in order, reproduce an entire line, or lines, from an existing poem. Take a borrowed line of six words and you write six lines, each ending on the next word of the original; the source line runs down your right-hand margin like a hidden seam, and the source is always credited.
Terrance Hayes invented the form in his 2010 poem The Golden Shovel, built from Gwendolyn Brooks's most famous short poem about pool players, whose epigraph names the Golden Shovel pool hall. The form is at once homage and conversation: your poem physically contains your ancestor's line while saying something entirely your own, which is why it has spread through classrooms, anthologies and contests faster than almost any form invented this century.
How It Works
Choose a line you love, keep its words in order, and let each one become a line ending. Working with an invented source line, say the rain forgot our names, a golden shovel might run: Nobody warned us about the / ordinary weather of grief, the rain / that fell all spring as if it had forgot / us, as if the flood that took our / house had never once heard our names. Five source words, five lines, the borrowed sentence intact down the margin. The craft is in the enjambment: your syntax must flow naturally while hitting fixed end words, and small words like the and of become the hardest tests.
Where You Will See It
Hayes's original appears in his collection Lighthead, and it doubles the trick, running Brooks's poem through twice. The Golden Shovel Anthology, published in 2017 for the centenary of Brooks's birth, gathered hundreds of poets, from Pulitzer winners to students, all shovelling lines by Brooks, which confirmed the form as a living tradition rather than a one-off stunt. Since then poets have applied the method to lines from song lyrics, scripture, speeches and other poets entirely, and teachers assign it wherever they want students in close contact with a great line.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Pick a source line short enough to manage, six to twelve words, and strong enough to deserve the labour. Write its words down the right margin first, then draft toward each ending, letting your subject differ from the source's; the form sings loudest when your poem and the borrowed line argue. Always name the source poet, usually in an epigraph reading after followed by the poet's name. Since only single lines are borrowed and credited, the form stays on the right side of both ethics and most contest originality rules, and a well-made golden shovel shows a Writory judge structure and language working at once.
What poets can take from this
- Start with a borrowed line of ten words or fewer; long lines multiply the difficulty.
- Treat articles and prepositions in the source as enjambment opportunities, not obstacles.
- Let your poem's subject sit at an angle to the source's, so the two texts converse.
- Read the finished poem aloud ignoring the margins; it must stand alone as speech.
- Try shovelling a line of your own from an old draft when copyright or credit is a concern.
Try it yourself
Write one strong line of your own, six to nine words, about a promise. Then write a golden shovel using that line, in which the poem tells the story of the promise being broken while your original line survives intact down the right margin.
Questions
Do you have to use Gwendolyn Brooks's lines in a golden shovel?
No. The form began as homage to Brooks and the anthology devoted to her keeps that association strong, but poets now shovel lines from any source, other poets, songs, letters, provided the borrowed line is credited.
Is a golden shovel a kind of found poetry?
It is a cousin. Found poetry reframes existing text as the poem itself, while a golden shovel writes an entirely new poem constrained to end its lines on a borrowed line's words, openly credited. The new language is all yours.
Can a golden shovel use more than one line of the source?
Yes. Hayes's own original runs through its source poem twice, and long golden shovels can take a whole stanza, one borrowed word per line ending, in order. The rule is simply completeness and sequence.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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