Come explore OULIPO (“workshop of potential literature”) and try your hand at constrained writing or generating poems. We’ll spend about half the class exploring cool poems/excerpts, then we can write some of our own—establish our laws and observe them. Some classic constraints: palindromes, writing without the letter “e,” writing “snowball” poems—example below, etc. Wacky generative techniques: N+7, Queneau’s 99 “Excercises in Style,” his One Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, etc. I am now post haste (sort of) posting new topic to discuss. do you enjoy constraints? does word play give headaches? are you confused? This is a snowball, A poetic form which was created by those who group themselves with the name of Oulipo. Every line contains one Additional letter. U like? (by John Newman) Prerequisites Read and write in English

Come explore OULIPO (“workshop of potential literature”) and try your hand at constrained writing or generating poems. Hopefully we’ll spend about half the class exploring cool poems/excerpts, then we can write some of our own—establish our laws and observe them. Some classic constraints: palindromes, writing without the letter “e,” writing “snowball” poems—example below, etc. Wacky generative techniques: N+7, Queneau’s 99 “Excercises in Style,” his One Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, etc. I am now post haste (sort of) posting new topic to discuss. do you enjoy constraints? does word play give headaches? are you confused? This is a snowball, A poetic form which was created by those who group themselves with the name of Oulipo. Every line contains one Additional letter. U like? (by John Newman)

Come learn how to make some mathematical art with pipe cleaners! We'll make models of the hyperbolic plane using a Borromean linkage technique and discuss some of the math behind these things.