Monday 22 April 2013

S is for ... SNOWBALL


So today is the 22nd of April, which must mean that it's the nineteenth day of the A to Z challenge.  I've decided to share my love of writing through this challenge, and hopefully introduce people to the world of Oulipo.  I first heard about Oulipo when I was at university, and I was fascinated by their approach to writing that I decided to delve deeper into the world of experimental writing.

In a nutshell, this group of writers likes to assign constraints to their work in order to push creative boundaries.  Not only is this fun to do (the process of writing something with a constraint really does open the mind), the results are brilliant.



*****

S is for SNOWBALL
"A form of rhopalic verse, this procedure, already practised in Classical times, requires the first word of a text to have only one letter, the second two, the third three, and so on as far as resourcefulness and inspiration allow." 
Oulipo Compendium ed. Harry Matthews & Alastiar Brotchie (London: Atlas Press, 2005) page 228.
*****

The text I used was 'The Tyger' by William Blake, but you can write original snowball poems; you don't need to translate a pre-existing text.


Snow-Tyger

O
in
the
wood
Tyger
burned
nightly
brightly
perfectly
abominably
symmetrical


O
do
not
cage
Tyger,
framed
freedom,
creation
formation
discovered
inquiringly


O
no
man
made
Tyger,
hammer
furnace,
immortal
patriarch
mastermind
untouchable


O
so
the
Lamb
lives
calmly
because
designer
generates
voluminous
individuals


O
he
the
Lamb
Tyger
shaped,
various
separate
character,
cultivated
attentively

8 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thank you :) I like poems that have some sort of shape.

      Delete
  2. This looks cool, but I don't think I am near talented enough at writing to pull something like this off. It would be fun to try one day though.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you :) I think you should give it a go. It's not as tricky as it looks.

      Delete
  3. It looked like those X'mas trees. Cool! :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I
    am
    one
    more
    mondo
    Beccah
    fanatic

    #atozchallenge, Kristen's blog: kristenhead.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete