Is it possible to write new fairytales? Or can we just rewrite old ones? I’m thinking here about Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale where he breaks down a group of Russian folk tales into a classification system of thirty one narrative functions.

For Little Red Riding Hood, it breaks down like this:

1. One of the [...]]]>

Is it possible to write new fairytales? Or can we just rewrite old ones? I’m thinking here about Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale where he breaks down a group of Russian folk tales into a classification system of thirty one narrative functions.

For Little Red Riding Hood, it breaks down like this:

1. One of the members of a family absents himself/herself from home.
2. An interdiction [prohibition] is addressed to the hero.
3. The interdiction is violated.
4. The villain makes an attempt at reconnaissance.
5. The villain receives information about the victim.
6. The villain attempts to deceive the victim in order to take possession of the victim or their belongings.
7. The victim submits to deception and thereby unwittingly helps the villain.
8. The villain causes harm or injury to a member of the family.

The structure is incredibly familiar to us- we can recognise it from an indefinite number of stories – oral, written, enacted or filmed. Its so familiar that we can even follow it when all the nouns and verbs have been replaced with the corresponding word 23 places below the original in the dictionary.

When I was on tour in Germany in 2006, I participated in a lot of Poetry Slams. Slams are huge throughout Germany- almost every poetry reading is Slammed. Even though I was guest of honour, I was still expected to earn my set time by fighting off the local talent. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t, but I was always enthralled by having to compete in a battle of words across a incomprehensible language divide. I had no idea what the other poets were talking about, yet I could still recognise the different classifications of poem, the poetic techniques being deployed, etc, etc. The rhythm and the structure were so familiar, that I found myself laughing at jokes in language I couldn’t speak. It made me attune to body language and rhythm in a way I had never experienced before. I guess I wanted to try to recreate that feeling in this piece.

The technique was developed by the writing movement OULIPO. I write more about them here.

The footage is taken from an old stop-motion animation from the 70s, and the song is ‘The Nursery’, by the awesome Clint Mansell. It’s from the Moon OST.

I make a brief appearance in a documentary on Radio 4 this week, along with my regular collaborators Tim Clare and Joe Dunthorne.

Writer and typographer Ben Schott was investigating the French experimental literary group the Oulipo. Seeing as we wrote a show about the Oulipo earlier this year, Ben decided to meet up with us [...]]]>

I make a brief appearance in a documentary on Radio 4 this week, along with my regular collaborators Tim Clare and Joe Dunthorne.

Writer and typographer Ben Schott was investigating the French experimental literary group the Oulipo. Seeing as we wrote a show about the Oulipo earlier this year, Ben decided to meet up with us and ask us about the Oulipo’s appeal across the channel.

The full doc features interviews with Oulipo president Paul Fournel, member Harry Matthews, and author Christan Bok, amongst others. It was Podcast of the Week, which means you can download it through iTunes for the next few days. I’ve also uploaded it to this website:

R4Choice_ Oulipo 20 Nov 09 (Part 1)

R4Choice_ Oulipo 20 Nov 09 (Part 2)

The Oulipo are a mixture of mathematicians and writers, founded in the 1960s, primarily interested in the development of new modes of literature. In the tradition of the sonnet or the haiku before them, the Oulipo develop new writing constraints to challenge the creative process. The less freedom we have, the more inventive we become.

I think Oulipo might have begun as a loosely anti-Surrealist movement. You have these Surrealists saying “aha, I have painted a hat bigger than a man! Thus I have broken through my normative bourgeois mindset and uncovered my subconscious desires!”

To which the Oulipian response would probably be “no, you are not free. You’re just obeying rules that you don’t understand.” Ie, better to foreground the rules and excel within them, rather then pretend that they don’t exist.

That’s my take on it anyway. The first Oulipian technique I attempted was a writing style known as univocalism, which is the production of a text that only contains one vowel.

I chose the vowel of O. The process was torturous- I spent days working on the poem without having any idea what it was about at all. After a couple of days, the Rorschach blot eventually began to resemble something. I realised that I had unconsciously chosen to tell a story from my childhood: the story of a young boy that gets so stoned in public that he can’t find his way home again.

I think that I might of unwittingly chosen this particular story because it mirrors the state of mind that is produced by working within Oulipian constraint. It’s my own personal metaphor for the process of writing univocally: the feeling of being lost in a familiar place (and, er, well blunted.)

Two Moons For Mongs

Frosty mongs bosh shots of scotch on London’s onyx commons, rock-off to soppy mono toss; lost songs of London: Town of Bop. No motor. No lolly. No job to mock. From tons of pot down to Jon’s bong only (too strong for Tony, only Tony don’t know so).

Gordon’s cold brown cosh of old hotdog now looks so good. Tony scoffs lot; sods off to look for Polos.

Johnny shows Gordon how to body-pop: slow Robocop foxtrot to Bobby Brown.

Scot robs Holly’s shock blowjob story; lots of ho ho ho follows.

Two o’clock: Tony growls bon mot bollocks from London’s soft throng of woods; lost moth for God’s two moons. Poor Tony looks down, drops Pollock on both boots.

On plots so holy, old dogs poo boldly. Goons do loops of blocks, too cold for words.

Gordy pops bon bons. Jon spots Bono.

Both gobs go ‘O’.

Our show about the Oulipo, Found in Translation is planned for a follow-up tour in 2010.