(Clare/Dunthorne/Sutherland)
A one-hour poetry show about limits, translation and imagination.
Earlier this year, Ross Sutherland, Tim Clare and Joe Dunthorne were granted an audience with the OULIPO, a group of leading French writers and mathematicians formed in 1960. An anti-surrealist movement, OULIPO flooded their work with rules and restriction as a way of breaking through into their subconscious minds. Adapting a famous OULIPO constraint, Tim, Ross and Joe took up the challenge of the Univocalism – a poem written using only one type of vowel (”verses penned yet less letters selected!”). Progressing through all five vowels in order, the poets embark on a quest of arbitrary limits and new frontiers, in the tradition of Luke Rhineheart’s The Dice Man and Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure.
Pushing their imaginations to their limits, the poets retell the fall of man, celebrate the defeat of a playground bully, and reminisce about standing around in a midnight park getting well blunted. The surrounding lecture covers everything from Biblical mistranslation to the Ex-WWE wrestler Mr Perfect.
Watch extracts from the show on YouTube
“A recipe for madness” – The Londonist
Found in Translation embarked on a nationwide tour in February 2009. For more information contact Tom Chivers at Penned in the Margins:
E: info@pennedinthemargins.co.uk
T: 020 7375 0258