In Competition No. 3159 you were invited to supply a poem that does not contain the letter ‘e’. This fiendish challenge was a nod to Georges Perec’s ‘e’-less tour de force La Disparition (protagonist: A. Vowl), which was subsequently translated, also without the letter ‘e’, by the heroic Gilbert Adair. Perec, who once composed a 5,000-letter-long palindrome — beat that — later took all his unused ‘e’s’ and deployed them in Les Revenentes, in which it is the only vowel.
The comp elicited moans and groans but proved wildly popular none the less. Perec’s friend and fellow Oulipian Harry Mathews said in an interview in the Paris Review: ‘What distinguishes Oulipo from other language games is that its methods have to be capable of producing valid literary results.’ Well, they did so on this occasion. Honourable mentions go to Hugh King, George Simmers, Katie Mallett and D.A. Prince, but congratulations all round.
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