Calling all experimental formalists... formal experimentalists?

Poets, do you combine experiment, exploration, existential freedom in your work with form, structure, stricture, constraint? Then you will want to look into the Fitzpatrick-O’Dinn Award for the Best Book Length Work of Constrained Literature, offered by Spineless Books. Submission deadline is December 31, 2003, entry fee $20, judge Christian Bök. The winning manuscript will be published (“artfully,” we are assured) in 2004 by Spineless Books, both “as a book (with a spine), and in an electronic format that complements the form.”

William Gillespie, the man behind Spineless Books, has long been a poetic presence on the Net: He founded Newspoetry and collaborated with Scott Rettberg, Dirk Stratton & Frank Marquardt on the hypertext novel, The Unknown, winner of the trAce/Alt-X Hypertext Competition 1998. Now at Brown University, he began Spineless Books on 20.02.2002 and has published books, CDs, floppy disks & electronic hypertexts including his own collaboration with Nick Montfort, 2002: A Palindrome Story. The Spineless Web site is full of writing tools & toys and home to Table of Forms, a playground for writers interested in forms, word games & experimentation.

Related resources:
Our articles & links to contests & awards
Our library of poetry publishers
Our links to word games & online poetry collaborations