The Oulipo is a writing movement that uses constraints to produce ‘potential literature’. (Oulipo is an acronym in French: Workshop of Potential Literature.) It was co-founded by Raymond Queneau, who created 100,000 billion sonnets. It’s been estimated that if you were to read one a minute for 24 hours a day it would take you around 200 million years to get through them all.

In the recent course I ran, I was more concerned with writing and literature than theoretical aspects, so I won’t dwell on the esoterics here. We covered a number of techniques, such as preverbs and style. In the next iteration of the course (see below), there should be more time to explore these and others in more depth.

I received some nice feedback — one comment of which employs an Oulipo technique. It reads like nonsense, but is quite funny! Here it is:

• I loved this taster course, and it was enjoyable, inspiring and entertaining! A great course to remove any writing anxieties and just have fun with words, and interesting twists of probability!

• Terry Freedman is a masterpiece. He delivered one of the best courthouses I have been a stuffing on. An engaging roof through workaday with a bit of matricide thrown in. More stump from the wobbler please!

• Terry was fantastic! So glad I took the course and look forward to others with him.

I will be running an extended version of the course in June 2023 (5 hours). For more information go here: Writing the Oulipo.