#Oulipo - kulupu Topaliken

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jovial hedge
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Oulipo is a playful French (and international) literary movement, which creates prose and poetry under various, often mathematical constraints. The word stands for "Ouvroir de littérature potentielle" - "workshop of potential literature." Famous members of Oulipo include Marcel Duchamp, George Perec (who wrote the novel La disparition which does not use the letter "e" - translated into English as A Void), Raymond Queneau, and Italo Calvino. Jorge Luis Borges was not a member, but is one of the patron saints of the group.

There are already many examples of Oulipo-inflected literature in toki pona. There are leko nimi, square poems, an invention of Lewis Carroll, whom the Oulipo take as an ancestor (or "anticipatory plagiarist.") @twilit vortex has published many of these in lipu tenpo as well as more general diagarammatic poems. kapesi Pake published a limerick generator in another lipu tenpo, very similar to Queneau's combinatorial sonnets, A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems. And there are many palindromes and ambigrams - the ambigram was another invention of Oulipo.

I think the hundreds of language games the Oulipo invented might be fun and inspiring to explore in toki pona. We could call it tomo pali pi lipu ken or kulupu Topaliken (unless someone can come up with a better Oulipo-inspired name - maybe just kulupu Ulipo?).

If you're interested, join the conversation. I thought we might have a couple of challenges proposed every month, and all the creations shared here.

ancient wigeon
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oh this is neat :3
i love leko nimi, I should look into this

jovial hedge
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Just for fun, I did a quick translation of the "starter story" in Queneau's Exercises in style. In this book, Queneau told an absolutely boring little story, and then retold in 98 other Oulipo-ish ways. Here's my version:

tenpo pi ilo tawa mute a la, mi lon ilo tawa kulupu nanpa "S." jan pi tenpo sike mute luka wan li lon. len lawa ona li jo ala e linja kule namako, li jo e linja taso. palisa ona pi anpa lawa li suli ike; lukin la, jan tu li suli e ona lon musi utala linja. jan ante mute li weka. jan ni li kama pilin utala tan jan pi poka ona. ona li awen toki e ni: "sijelo sina o lon ala poka pi sijelo mi, o utala ala e sijelo mi!" kalama uta ona li nasa ike; taso wile ona la, kalama uta o monsuta e jan ante. ona li lukin e supa monsi pi jan ala la, ona li pana wawa e monsi ona lon supa.

tenpo ilo tu li tawa la, mi lukin sin e ona lon leko pi ma Loma lon sinpin pi tomo suli Kasanlasa. ona li lon poka pi jan ona. jan ona li toki e ni: "sina o tawa e sike lile lon len suli sina pi awen seli. o lukin a e weka sike lon sewi pi len suli."

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Here is the English translation (by Barbara Wright, who magically managed to translate all his French word games into English)

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twilit vortex
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I had no idea of this history

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I don't know what the starter story is supposed to do?

jovial hedge
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It's a deliberately boring little story that Queneau tells over and over again in 98 different ways. And subsequent writers have continued to add versions. I'll share a couple more. For me, it was just a chance to add yet another version to the probably hundreds that exist now - in toki pona.

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Three random examples from the book:

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jovial hedge
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Here's a couple of ideas of things we can try in toki pona, just to get us started (both from the amazing Oulipo compendium).

I've always felt it would be nice to have more proverbs and over-worn phrases in toki pona. So let's make our own!

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And for the next one - this may be difficult in natural languages, but I think we can come up with 2 or 4-line poems that follow this pattern:

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jovial hedge
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There's a whole Oulipo genre of liponyms - texts that avoid a particular common word or words. I guess toki pona already does that with various nasin: jon't, kepeken't! Our little language is already very Oulipo in spirit.

dusky current
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is this how you do it

jovial hedge
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Yes! How many lines can you get out of those vowels? Can you make coherent meaning across lines? I feel it might be easier in toki pona than in English or French (but I haven't tried yet).

dusky current
jovial hedge
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Omg. That's good. The first official contribution to kulupu Topaliken

crystal onyx
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I wanted to try something with that! This... maybe makes some semblance of sense? but I tried to incorporate multiple lines into one narrative that sorta works I think

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jovial hedge
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"oh, engine sludge is on the ground.
But the ground is almost dead
If the green of the earth is in the machine,
Man, lichen is its roots.

(Maybe? for the last line). That's really good! Sticks to the rules, and it's good poetry!

crystal onyx
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Something like that I think;

'The green of the earth is upon the machine, people look— the lichen/moss/etc has rooted'... or something equivalent... is sort of what I was going for with the last line, ya!

kinda got stuck having to fill in 'jan o', nothing else seemed to work there

jovial hedge
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Trying the same thing. This is the start of a longish poem of my own:

tenpo wan la
mi sona ala
e kalama tu
lili pi nimi sina.

Two different homovocalisms:

telo ala
li pona tawa
weka nasa: mu
pi pilin pini mi a!

selo kala
pi pona nasa
en alasa tu
li sinpin pi mi insa.

(the first one actually kind of works as a poem and continuation of the first; I'm not sure what the second one is about!)

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One more:

ken ona la
ni o kalama
e wawa anu
lili pi pipi linja.

dusky current
jovial hedge
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Yes. It would be so difficult, because there aren't workarounds for the forbidden words, as there are in any natlang