NEW PUBLICATION

Permutations

By Brion Gysin.

Written between 1958 and 1982, Brion Gysin's permutation poems begin with short phrases or sentences whose constituent words are exhaustively rearranged over the course of the text. At first, Gysin wrote these poems manually, although later, in collaboration with programmer Ian Sommerville, he would write permutation poems with the assistance of a computer, making them a very early instance of computer-generated literature. Some of these works were published in books, while others exist only as audio recordings. Many derive from a 1960 BBC radio commission, The Permutated Poems of Brion Gysin,” in which readings of the texts were recorded, cut up, . . . .go to book page >>