Monday, March 10, 2014

Five Questions (and roughly the same number of answers) about Oulipost

So, I am super psyched to be participating in Oulipost this year. See here for details and an explanation. In short, it's an experimental form of poetry creation.




http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/oulipost/




April will be pretty busy on this blog, so be sure to check back often. The assignment is to respond every day in April to one of the prompts, so be prepared to be surprised and amazed and enthralled each day you read this blog.




In any case, on to the starting five questions about Oulipost






1. WHAT EXCITES YOU ABOUT OULIPOST?


My writing has always been pretty "traditional" which among other things means that it lacks some of the surprise and whimsy that I like in other people's writing. I very much like the idea that artificially imposed structures can actually free you up to be creative. And there's nothing more artificially imposed, I suspect, than Oulipost. This is kind of a cool chance for me to see how I respond to structure, with some public accountability attached that will ensure I stick with it.




2. WHAT, IF ANYTHING, SCARES YOU ABOUT OULIPOST?


The distinct possibility that on a given day I won't be able to produce anything that doesn't suck, and won't be able to do what I usually do in such cases, which is keep it to myself.




3. HAVE YOU WRITTEN EXPERIMENTAL OR FOUND POETRY BEFORE? IF
SO, TELL US ABOUT IT.


Never, ever, ever.



4. WHAT NEWSPAPER WILL SERVE AS YOUR SOURCE TEXT?


The Houston Chronicle, which I'll access and consume at my local starbucks and do my initial response there as well.




5. WHO’S YOUR SPIRIT OULIPIAN?


Ummm... Burt Reynolds?





1 comment:

beth said...

Hi Matt. Thanks for joining Oulipost! And I can't wait to see where Burt Reynolds leads you. :)