The Poetry and Mathematics of Crochet

There may be poets who can sit in front of their computer or notebook and spontaneously compose a poem, but I am not one of them. Generally, my poems have a long gestation. I tend to mull them over while doing other things: gardening, walking, cleaning the bathrooms. Crocheting.

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Which comes first – the chicken or the egg?

How does the formulation of a poem begin? With an idea, an image, a phrase, a subject, a feeling, a memory, a structure? 

I’ve been thinking about this question in relation to my own writing. Unsurprisingly, there is no single answer. On rare occasions a poem plops almost fully formed into my head (inconveniently, this tends to happen in the middle of the night). The trick then is to capture it, to write it down before it flits off and disappears like a migrating bird.

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February’s Garden

The days are lengthening. Harbingers of spring
pierce through resistant soil; spikes of daffodils

and early tulips mingle, tight buds sprinkle
thin syringa stems. A few oak leaves linger,

crisp-curled and dead, rasping in the flowerbed – 
but death is a stranger now. Pale hellebore

blushes shyly, fern fronds prepare to unfurl.
Clouds lift. The air is clear and bright. All winter

I have dug hard cold ground, hoed, mulched, dreamed of growth.
Now, accompanied by bird song, I plant words.

This poem was first published on The Wombwell Rainbow in February 2023. It is a variation of a masnavi (or mathnawi), a poetic form that has its origins in Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Kurdish and Urdu writing.

Cascade

Listen to the riversong – 
meltwater from mountain flanks
tumbling its own path
between resistant rocks.

Meltwater from mountain flanks
trickles down through peat and moss,
conjoins to become a burn

tumbling its own path;
tugs at roots by shaded banks,
crashes, eddies, foams.

Between resistant rocks
salmon leap against the flow,
glinting in the sun.

This poem was first published on The Wombwell Rainbow in January 2023. It is a trimeric, a recent poetic form devised by Dr Charles A. Stone.

2022: End of year reflections

There has been a great deal of flustered fluttering on Twitter in recent weeks, as regular users have become concerned for the platform’s viability. Change is always tricky to deal with. Amid expressions of nervousness, uncertainty for the future, defiance, outrage etc, it’s also become clear how significant the micro-blogging site has been to the poetry community – as an online meeting place where we can form new friendships, discover new journals, explore unfamiliar poetic forms, become reacquainted with old favourites, market our own work and celebrate the work of others.

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MACHINATIONS – an interview with Kinneson Lalor and JP Seabright

‘Can machines think?’

Alan Turing posed this question in his seminal 1950 paper ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ that laid the foundations for research into artificial intelligence. Turing’s life and work provide the inspiration for Machinations, a poetic collaboration between Kinneson Lalor and JP Seabright published by Trickhouse Press. Fiercely intelligent, dazzlingly inventive and profoundly insightful, Machinations does justice not only to the depth, breadth and creative genius of Turing’s intellectual achievements but also to the complex layers of his personality.

I asked Kinneson and JP how the book came into being, their experience of working together and what informed their creative choices.

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