Poetry
This week: OuLiPo: A Brief History and Overview Edited by: Red Writing Hood <3 More Newsletters By This Editor
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“With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
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OuLiPo: A Brief History, Overview, and Examples
I love words, as well as learning and playing with new poetry forms. I discovered a group of writing and math geeks (I consider myself both a math and writing geek), founded by Francois le Lionnais and Raymond Queneau, who liked to experiment like this, also. Oh yeah, now I’m ready to play. *Rubs hands together gleefully*
Oh, and don’t worry if the word ‘math’ scares you. They aren’t all about math, as the examples I share below will attest.
BRIEF HISTORY
Back in the 60’s a group of guys in France got together to experiment with writing structures. They named their group Ouvrior de Littérature Potentielle, or OuLiPo for short. Using their skills in mathematics and writing, they came up with many exercises and writing patterns that are often referred to as constraints. The group also borrowed existing structures and gave them a little twist: palindromes, anagrams, and tautograms, for example.
These constraints will usually work for both poetry and other writing. Some specific to poetry would be: Snowball, palindrome, the métro poem, and univocalism. I find the métro poem particularly interesting.
Métro poem
NOTE: Considering not everyone has access to a subway or metro, use a train, trolley, or bus.
MUST HAVES
--You can only create the poem in your head while the train, trolley or bus is moving—do NOT write anything down while in motion.
--You can only write down what you have created in your head when the train, trolley or bus is stopped—no creating any part of the poem when stopped. Each time there is a stop and you write things down, this is a verse. If you have five stops, not counting the stop where you started, you will have five verses.
COULD HAVES or WHAT IS THE POET’S CHOICE IN ALL THIS?
-- Any topic and any theme.
--Any rhyme scheme, including no rhyme scheme.
--Any meter.
Anagrammatical Text
MUST HAVES
--A beginning sentence. This sentence can be from your own work or a source work. Please remember to cite your source if you use someone else’s work as your starter sentence.
--Create anagrams using the starter sentence.
COULD HAVES or WHAT IS THE POET’S CHOICE IN ALL THIS?
--Make as many, or as few, anagrams from the starter sentence that you wish.
--Can create a poem or other piece of writing.
--You can choose to work the hard way and create the anagrams on your own, or use an anagram generator. Can you guess which way I’m choosing to go? Um yeah, I counted six different ones on the first search page alone.
-- Any topic and any theme.
--Any rhyme scheme, including no rhyme scheme.
--Any meter.
OF NOTE
See the source notes below for more OuLiPo constraints.
SOURCE NOTES:
The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Edited by Ales Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan. 1993.
http://nestersteachingblog.com/2010/11/23/a-collection-of-oulipo-exercises/
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Theme: Lipograms and palindromes
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