26 has always focussed on the importance of letters – I even hear the alphabet had something to do with the choice of name! But what if that 26 became 22? What if we had just one vowel to choose from?
For our February mini-project we are asking 26ers to try their hands at univocal poems – poems of any length (from one-liners, to sonnets, to Virgilian epics), that use just one of the 5 English vowels: A, E, I, O, or U.
The hope is to prove that each vowel has its own personality, and to explore that personality while demonstrating the flexibility of the English language; nudging you in new directions with your writing, and towards new corners of vocabulary you would otherwise rarely explore.
Examples – The epics:
I first heard the constraint used in Ron’s Knock-Off Shop by Luke Wright (at a poetry reading in the ruined water tank at the top of Colchester’s landmark “Jumbo” water tower). It’s an epic 1,000 or so words of Os only, but here’s an extract:
... Bolton’s not so droll. Bolton’s not got Rococo blocks. Bolton’s not got dons or profs Bolton’s got no dotcom showrooms no comforts for London cohorts. No, Bolton’s got lots of old workshops lots of soot lots of fowl old folk (orthodox lowbrows who mop floors or drown sorrows) ...
Christian Bök’s Eunoia (2001) is the definitive example of the form, with five chapters, each limited to one of the five vowels (A, E, I, O, and U in turn). In Bök’s eyes, “A is courtly, E is elegiac, I is lyrical, O is jocular, U is obscene.”
While we’re in the mood of “O”:
Chapter O for Yoko Ono Loops on bold fonts now form lots of words for books. Books form cocoons of comfort – tombs to hold book-worms. Profs from Oxford show frosh who do post-docs how to gloss works of Wordsworth. Dons who work for proctors or provosts do not fob off school to work on crosswords, nor do dons go off to dorm rooms to loll on cots. Dons go crosstown to look for bookshops known to stock lots of top-notch goods: cookbooks, workbooks – room on room of how-to books for jocks (how to jog, how to box), books on pro sports: golf or polo…
Or a little “E”:
Helen sees the September breezes bend the elm trees (the perches where the egrets, then the grebes, perch themselves); there, the petrels, then the tercels, nest. Helen lets the geese peck seedlet kernels (except when ferrets pester the mews). The kestrels screech. The wrens peep: tweet, tweet. The terns keen: cheep, cheep. The peewee peetweets tweelde…
Some shorter offerings:
Lightning flicks its riding whip, blitzing this night with bright schisms.
Owls howl from lofty woods.
No moon shows.
Crows look coldly.
No worms, no food, only gloom.
Ubu drums drums (such hubbub, such ruckus):
thump, thump; thrum, thrum.
Ubu puns puns.
Ubu blurts untruths:
much bunkum (plus bull-),
much humbug (plus bunk)
– but trustful schmucks trust such untruthful stuff…
Awkward grammar appals a craftsman
The ask and the deadline
Write something.
It can be one line or one-hundred, but have a go at writing within the constraint, and send your scribblings to max@whiteweavearts.co.uk by the evening of Saturday 21 February.
I like this limit. I think it invites nice things…