CRWR 2018 - Experimental Writing: Games, Constraints and AI

Experimental and avant-garde writing has long been a driver of more mainstream literary innovation. This course will introduce students to an array of experimental techniques, including approaches that have been central to Surrealism, Modernism, and OULIPO. Together we will engage with examples of pathbreaking experimental works, including some of the most breathtakingly audacious writing being published today. Working with found texts, collage, cut-ups, manifestos, game forms, the intersection of text and image, and digital technologies including AI, students will produce a portfolio of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, screenwriting, or multiple forms. To produce their portfolios, students will make use of established techniques, as well as devising their own methods of formal constraint and literary innovation. They will be encouraged to approach the refinement of their practice and poetics as both a literary craft and an art pursued for its own ends that may stand liberated from the demands of the market.