Celebrate Constraints -- Happy Birthday, OULIPO

Patrick Bahls and Richard Chess of the University of North Carolina at Ashville have organized a "Conference on Constrained Poetry" to be held on November 19-20 in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of OULIPO (short for French: OUvroir de LIttérature POtentielle), founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. The group defines the term littérature potentielle as (rough translation): "the seeking of new structures and patterns that may be used by writers in any way they enjoy." Constraints are used to trigger new ideas and the Oulipo group is an ongoing source of novel techniques, often based on mathematical ideas -- such as counting letters and syllables, substitution algorithms,  permutations, palindromes, and even chess problems.