VOCABULARY CLEPT POEMS are achieved by writing a poem, then giving another poet a list of the words you have used. That person then writes a new poem using only those words.

PALINDROMES were not invented by Oulipo writers. What does distinguish them is their achievements writing poems and verse plays of extraordinary lengths that can be read forwards or backwards.

MOEBIUS STRIP poems are constructed by writing the first half of a poem on one side of a strip of paper, the second on the other side upside down, then the paper is twisted, the ends are joined, and the content is read as a continuous poem. This produces an intriguing interlacing, which can be written down as a new poem.

Long palindromes:
Dr Awkward & Olson in Oslo by Lawrence Levine (1986, 31954 words)
Satire: Veritas by David Stephens (1980, 58795 words). In French, Oulipo writer George Perec's "Grand Palindrome" (1969) is 5,556 letters in length

JUNCTURE poems are similar to hypertexts or choose your own adventure stories. Juncture poems contain points where the reader must choose from alternatives, and so be led to a different next section of the poem depending on the choice made.

HOMOSYNTAX poem is when you replace all the words of an existing poem with new words, but still preserve the grammar and syntax.

Isomorphism Exercise

Materials: piece of writing.

1. Select a piece of writing.
2. For each word, replace it with a word that sounds like the word phonetically, syllable for syllable. For example, if a line of a piece of writing is:
   
   I called up my sister and she hung up on me.
   
   Replace it with the following:
   
   My bald pup high mister glammed me at three.
   Obviously, don’t worry about making sense so much. Just replace the words that sound like them.
   
3. Repeat until end of piece of writing.

rhymezone

Adapted from: Motte, Warren F., trans. and ed. Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1986.

PIED POETRY involves rearranging all the words of a poem to achieve a new one (the rules permit varying punctuation and capitalization)

The SNOWBALL poem has each word one letter longer than its predecessor;

An example of a snowball

I
am
the
text
which
begins
sparely,
assuming
magnitude
constantly,
perceptibly
proportional,
incorporating
unquestionable
incrementations


By Harry Mathews

(a melting snowball is the other way round - it starts long and gets smaller)

Activity:Using the poem machine write a Snowball poem.

In the CYCLICAL POEM the last letter of each word is the first letter of the next.

One of the most famous formal methods proposed by Oulipo is the Jean Lescure's 'Méthode M ± n'.

To write a LESCURE ALGORITHM poem, a formula is applied, of the type N + 7. This means that each noun in a poem is replaced by the noun seven words ahead of it (or behind) in a dictionary. Related is the technique of LESCURE SWITCHING. To do this replace the first noun in a poem with the last and vice-versa then the second-from-start with the second-from-last, and so on.

An example of N+7

With a big dictionary
In the beguinage God created the hebdomad and the earthfall. And the earthfall was without formalization, and void; and darnex was upon the facette of the deerhair. And the spiritlessness of God moved upon the facette of the watercolorist. And God said, Let there be lightface: and there was lightface.

and a small one
In the bend God created the hen and the education. And the education was without founder, and void; and death was upon the falsehood of the demand. And the sport of God moved upon the falsehood of the wealth. And God said, Let there be limit: and there was limit.

Using your poem machine write a an N+7 poem.



The N+7 Machine

LIPOGRAM is one of the oldest exercises. It takes the form of a poem (or novel) and the challenge is to avoid using one or more letters of the alphabet. Nestor of Laranda, a Greek poet who lived during the late-second and early-third centuries AD, translated the Aeneid, while omitting a different vowel from each book.

Georges Perec wrote La disparition (1969), a novel in French without the letter e, and Gilbert Adair translated it into English as A Void (1994).



Try a long poem, for example, avoiding all words which contain the letter 'e', and you will find the effort forces fresh approaches on you. A short poem which uses only one vowel, again, can produce powerful alliterative effects.

Rewrite the passage without one or more words—the, a, one, etc.

Rewrite your the passage using only one-syllable words

other Challenges

1. Use an anagram generator to create anagrams from your full name or from a phrase.
   
   
2. Metro poem
   This is a poem composed on the subway while you are riding it.
   • A métro poem has as many verses as your trip has stations, minus one.
   • The first verse is composed in your head between the the station you get on and the first stop
   • Transcribe it onto paper when the train stops at the station.
   • The second verse is composed in your head between the next two stops.
   • It is transcribed onto paper when the train stops
   • Do not write when the train is in motion.
   • Do not create your verse when the train is stopped.
   • The last verse of the poem is written down on the platform of your stop.
   • If your trip involves one or more changes of subway lines, the poem will have two or more stanzas.

Special Project Office