Workshop 4

4 June 2021

Wordplay: The Paradoxical Freedom of Constraints

Geert Jan van Gelder & Philip Terry

“Wordplay: The Paradoxical Freedom of Constraints” features Geert Jan van Gelder, Professor and translator of classical Arabic poetry and prose into Dutch and into English, including Classical Arabic Literature: A Library of Arabic Literature Anthology (2012). He explored the Arabic traditions of literary games with acrostics, puns, and intricate prosody alongside Philip Terry, poet and translator and editor of The Penguin Book of Oulipo: Queneau, Perec, Calvino and the Adventure of Form (2020) Terry demonstrates comparable Oulipian ‘constraints’ and methods of generating stories and poems.

The group sessions provided the scope to be innovative about participation and collaboration for literary creativity.

Workshop material:

Part 1: Presentations by Geert Jan van Gelder and Philip Terry