LiverpOulipo

LiverpOulipo graphic with a pink and blue background. Diagonal lettering in black and white says LiverpOulipo in two directions
LiverpOulipo is a Liverpool take on the French literary movement, Oulipo.

Summer School

‘LiverpOulipo’ will be a two-day workshop in July 2025, forming part of the University of Liverpool’s Continuing Education Summer School, which will have the theme of ‘Literary Creativity’.

The three-week Summer School will take place at 126 Mount Pleasant from Mon 14 July – Fri 1 August 2025. More details to be announced, but save the dates for LiverpOulipo on Tue 22 & Wed 23 July 2025 (10am – 4pm).

University of Liverpool Continuing Education logo
University of Liverpool's Continuing Education courses run in three terms - Term 1 (Sept to Dec), Term 2 (Jan to April), and Summer (April to July).
The front cover of the original hardback edition of 'The Penguin Book of Oulipo: Queneau, Perec, Calvino and the Adventure of Form. Edited by Philip Terry.'
Word-play on the back cover turns 'The Penguin Book of Oulipo' into 'The Penny Borough of Ourselves' and 'the Adventure of Form' into 'the Afternoon of Forum.'

Phil’s two-day LiverpOulipo Summer School will be all about wordplay and writing exercises inspired by the Oulipians.

Participants will need to find creative solutions as various rules and restrictions are imposed on their writing. Georges Perec wrote a 300-page novel (A Void, 1969) without using the letter E.

Jonathan Safran Foer’s ‘Tree of Codes’ (2010) was created by cutting holes out of pages from Bruno Schulz’s ‘The Street of Crocodiles’ to leave a new, much shorter story.