S is for ... SNOWBALL

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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.



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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.

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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