Five words: Come. To. Free. The. Words.
In 1960, artist and writer Brion Gysin observed that these five words could be rearranged into unique permutations — “To free the words come,” “Free the words to come,” and so on. This became the basis for his permutation poems: works generated through systematic reordering rather than traditional composition.
Gysin first produced these poems by hand, manually working through the permutations and arranging them into a sequence. Later, working with mathematician Ian Sommerville, he turned to the computer — producing some of the earliest examples of algorithmic digital art. They developed several algorithms to automate the generation of permutation sequences and to explore different ordering approaches.
Recent research has recovered the code they used — you can find the algorithm here on GitHub.
Most algorithms Gysin and Sommerville tested produced either overly predictable or highly erratic results — until they found approaches that achieved a balance between these extremes.
The algorithm in the screensaver below operates by rotating a subset of words — typically the last three in each line. The key feature: every three steps, the rotation reverses direction. The words rotate forward, then backward, then forward again. This alternating pattern runs consistently through all 120 variations.
Additionally, this pattern naturally divides the poem into 6-line sections — matching the stanza structure Gysin used when he performed the poem live for a 1960 BBC radio broadcast. You can hear that recording below. The algorithm produces a midpoint between rigid sequencing and random arrangement.
Analysis of Gysin’s original handwritten poem reveals that he intuitively arrived at a similar structure before any computer involvement. The algorithms Sommerville later developed formalized patterns Gysin had already discovered through manual experimentation — suggesting Gysin possessed a strong intuitive grasp of combinatorial structure, which the computational work subsequently confirmed and extended.
The permutation poems demonstrate that constrained, rule-based systems can generate work with aesthetic coherence. Gysin and Sommerville’s work remains a relevant example of early computational approaches to artistic composition.