A literature course I'd like to take if it were available

in , ,

The article below contains a hidden message stating the title of my desired course. The message is hidden in plain sight using a well-established technique in the text, which has then been further processed using a standard Oulipo approach.

Zoom meeting, by Terry Freedman

Zoom meeting, by Terry Freedman

Every so often I come up with what I think is a good idiom. Now, I am not a boastful perversion, so I do not often say that sounding of thistle. Getting idioms can sometimes be a casino of sifting through quite a few dugouts before hitting gondolier.

Let me explain. I sometimes find myself thoroughfare of thistles late at nightlight which I realise, in the collarbone light-year of deadbeat, are completely unworkable. Sometimes I destruction! However, the idiom I had this timpanist really IS good I think.

Graft a pen-friend or a penitentiary quickly! On a shepherdess of parable, write dowse the nappies of a few claw nubs. Take around 5 misapprehensions. Handful it to a fringe or passage to see what their realist is. Is one of the bookmarks grotesque? Can you think of a bicentenary aqualung?

Well?

Can you discern the name of course?

More Oulipo-themed articles and reviews

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Creative writing using constraints: a bit of a post-mortem
Creative writing using constraints: a bit of a post-mortem

I think evaluations are very odd devices to be honest. Someone once “marked me down” on her evaluation of a one day course I was running on the grounds that the traffic was terrible.

More about the creative writing course I'll be teaching: books
More about the creative writing course I'll be teaching: books

In London on June 8th I’ll be teaching a course called Creative Writing Using Constraints, an introduction to the world of the Oulipo. This is a round-up of some of the books I’ll be referring to and talking about.

Creative writing using constraints (a forthcoming course)
Creative writing using constraints (a forthcoming course)

This course will look at examples of constraints created by some of the Oulipo’s main proponents, with work including the Hundred Thousand Billion Sonnets, the Metro Poem, and others. Course participants will have the opportunity to try out several techniques, and invent one or two of their own.

Escapism: the answer
Escapism: the answer

In Escapism: a 50 word prose poem I presented readers with a prose poem constructed in accordance with a constraint, and invited them to suggest what that constraint might be. Here’s the poem again, followed by the solution.

Escapism: a 50 word prose poem
Escapism: a 50 word prose poem

The following story has been written in accordance with a constraint, in true Oulipian style. The Oulipo is a writing movement based on constraints, such as omitting the use of a particular letter when composing a text.

Review: Oulipo and Modern Thought (Update)
Review: Oulipo and Modern Thought (Update)

If your interest in the Oulipo goes beyond simply trying out their techniques, and you wish to learn about the context in which it was conceived and the developments in went through, you will find this book very useful.

The creative writing course I’m teaching: evaluation of a press release
The creative writing course I’m teaching: evaluation of a press release

I have a course coming up, one that I’m teaching. I asked an AI writer to draft a press release for it. Here’s what it came up with, with my annotations in italics and in square brackets.

On this day: 27th December 2019 -- Preverbs
On this day: 27th December 2019 -- Preverbs

Many people advocate free writing as a way of cutting through writer’s block. Well, it’s never worked for me, and it doesn’t seem logical anyway. If you can’t think of anything to write, how would allowing your mind to just generate stuff do any good?

Review of The Girl at the Tram Stop
Review of The Girl at the Tram Stop

On the surface, this would seem to be nothing more or less than an example of performance art presented as literature. However, there is much more to it than that because Johnson has introduced elements of randomisation…

Review: Clouds like dust, and other poems, by N. Slake
Review: Clouds like dust, and other poems, by N. Slake

Poetry lovers will recall the impact Slake' s first book made. "Tied up in Notts" was, at the time, not merely avant-garde but positively risque. The reason, of course, was Slake's cavalier approach to poetic conventions. For example, his 15 Line Sonnet caused a massive rift in the arts community.



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