Building the Labyrinth: Finding Freedom in Constraint

Last month, I wrote about the importance of play in the writing process (and, importantly, Legos). This month, I want to extend on that theme by writing about my favorite form of literary play: the constrained writing techniques developed by the OuLiPo.

First, some definitions: the OuLiPo, which stands for l'Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or Workshop for Potential Literature, is a French literary movement that began as a collaboration between poets and mathematicians. This may seem like a bizarre mash-up, but poetry and mathematics have always had a great deal in common. Consider forms like the sestina, which essentially follows the FOIL method from Algebra class, or the Fib, a poetic form based on the Fibonacci sequence (in alphabet, for instance, Inger Christensen combines the alphabet and the Fibonacci sequence to create the formal system for a stunning book-length series of poems). The OuLiPo sought to develop a series of formulae, or “constraints,” which could be applied to any text to create a new text, or to conquer the blank page and generate new work.