This poem was originally published in Project Space Byi, a pavilion at The Wrong Biennale 2025.
Discontinuity
Category Archives: Poem
Illustration of the Theorem of Pythagoras for a 3-4-5 Triangle
Notes:
32 + 42 = 52.
This poem demonstrates the theorem of Pythagoras for a triangle with sides of lengths 3, 4 and 5 units respectively. The poem consists purely of monosyllabic words with either 3, 4 or 5 letters. There are three stanzas, corresponding to the sides of the triangle. The first stanza has three lines of three words each (32 = 9 words in total), the second stanza has four lines with four words each (42= 16 words in total) and the third stanza has five lines of five words each (52 = 25 words in total).
Each word in the 3- and 4-line stanzas occurs only once. The 5-line stanza consists of all the words that make up the other two stanzas.
This poem is from my collection Triangles (Penteract Press, 2023).
When the news broke
When the news broke, we danced. I danced beneath an alien sky. Plants bloomed: I tasted guavas firm and sharp upon my tongue. Trees flung their roots into the air, rivers reversed to flow uphill, stars spun cartwheels, the moon embraced the sun and clouds kissed the mountain when the news broke. Born in freedom, now we owned our freedom. We clasped our hands in prayer with the dead. When the news broke, we sang. I sang, softly, long forgotten songs.
‘When the news broke’ first appeared in L’Éphémère Review issue 11, August 2018.
Elevenses
Squeezed awkwardly between the round completeness of 10 and factored convenience of 12, 11 is the odd one out. We don’t have 11 fingers or toes; we never buy 11 rolls, or eggs, or long-stemmed roses for our lover. In binary notation its digits become the three of us, on our terrace with coffee and scones in the sunlight and birdsong of June, while the radio plays Test Match Special and 11 extends its parallel arms towards the unbounded sky.
This is a square poem: there are 11 syllables per line and 11 lines.
It was first published in The Book of Penteract.
Snails
A thin slime trail meanders over the gravel to my flowerbeds, where hostas that I had tended so carefully have been reduced to tattered shreds. A robin perches among panicles of lilac as you approach with buttered scones and coffee. Light slants through leaves, glistens the slime trail silver. Everything contributes to the dazzle of this day – even snails. This Fibonacci poem was first published in The Fib Review Issue #41
Iterations of Emptying
‘Iterations of Emptying’ is shaped by the Sierpinski carpet fractal. It was first published in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Volume 11 Issue 1 (2021) and has also appeared in Poetrishy #1.
Circles within Circles
This poem first appeared in my pamphlet Fractal Poems (Penteract Press, 2021)
Sungrazer
Reply
‘Sungrazer’ first appeared in Consilience Journal in June 2021.
Midwinter
The structure of this poem is based on Pascal’s Triangle.
Entanglement
Among vetch and dandelions, hollow shells, inhabitants gorged by blackbirds whose songs tremble in summer’s heat, you emerge - wrap around my calves, bind my arms, entwine my throat, caress my neck, my ears – insidious as haar that creeps in from the sea to steal the sun. Overhead, siren insistence of oystercatchers, while beneath the hawthorn bush a magpie tilts its head. Across years and continents, we cannot decohere.
This poem was first published in Dust Poetry in May 2021.