Mathematical Poetry at Bridges 2018


A reading in the afternoon
 
  Saturday, July 28
  2:00 - 4:00 pm

Sports Museum (Reksidrottsmuseet), Olympia Movie Theater,
Stockholm
 

The  Program

                                                                                                   
Coordinated by Sarah Glaz, professor of mathematics at the University of Connecticut and poet, the poetry reading at Bridges 2018 features poetry with strong links to mathematics, a great variety of topics, and a wide range of poetic styles. The program starts with ten invited poets reading selections from their work, followed by an open microphone period where Bridges participants read their own mathematical poems.  Click here for a pdf file of the program. Works by the Bridges Stockholm and past Bridges conferences invited poets is included in the  Bridges 2018 Poetry Anthology (Tessellations Publishers, 2018). More information about the anthology is posted on the Bridges 2018 Poetry Reading website, the Bridges 2018 Registration page, as well as here.

                                        Thank you all so much for making this reading  and the entire conference a fun and pleasurable experience (in spite of the heat). I am happy to share with you Doug Norton's  limerick 
                                         inspired by the heat (written in spite of the heat) immortalizing the Bridges 2018  poetry reading:

Sports Museum Olympia Theater, 28 July, 2018

                                                                                                                                                                                                            There was a group of mathematicians
                                                                                                                                                                                                            Who took poetry as their missions.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                        But in a small room,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                        The heat spelled their doom;

                                                                                                                                                                                                             We hope we will not need morticians.


About the Coordinator and the Invited Poets
                                                           


Sarah Glaz

Sarah Glaz's first poetry collection, Ode to Numbers, appeared with Antrim House in 2017. Sarah is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Connecticut.  As a mathematician, she has published books and articles in the area of Commutative Ring Theory. She also has a lifelong interest in poetry. Her poetry, poetry translations, and articles on the connections between mathematics and poetry appeared in a variety of literary and mathematical journals, edited volumes, and anthologies. She co-edited the poetry anthology, Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics, and was guest-editor of the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, Special Issue: Poetry and Mathematics. Sarah serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, and as coordinator of the poetry readings at the annual Bridges conferences and editor of the Bridges Poetry Anthologies.  http://www.math.uconn.edu/~glaz


Tatiana
                    Bonch-Osmolovskaya
Tatiana Bonch-Osmolovskaya was born in former Soviet Union and studied physics at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and philology at Moscow State Humanitarian University. Her Ph.D. degree is on Russian experimental poetry. Tatiana is author of twelve books in Russian, including Introduction to the Literature of Formal Restrictions and Labyrinths of Combinatorial Literature, and co-editor of the anthology, Freedom of Restriction. Her poetry in English appeared in: Can I tell you a secret?, Across the Russian Wor(l)d, Bridges, London Grip, POEM, Rochford Street Review, and Journal of Humanistic Mathematics. She is a member of the Executive Board of the International Symmetry Association, editorial committee of Another Hemisphere Journal and a guest-editor of Symmetry literary sessions. She organized the Mathematics and Arts seminar, GolosA (Voices) Festival of Combinatorial Poetry, and Festival Symmetry Literary Sessionhttp://antipodes.org.au/en.aboutAssociation.html


Carol Dorf

Carol Dorf is fascinated with the boundaries between disciplines, particularly mathematics and poetry. She is poetry editor of Talking Writing where she writes about issues in contemporary poetry, and has edited two issues on mathematical poetry, as well as issues on science poetry and technology poetry. Carol teaches high school mathematics, and has led poetry reading and writing workshops as a California-Poet-in-the-Schools, at Berkeley City College, and other art venues. Recently she tried to bring her loves together by introducing poetry into the mathematics classroom and by teaching poetry writing to mathematics teachers. She has two chapbooks available, Some Years Ask (Moria Press) and Theory Headed Dragon (Finishing Line Press).  Her poetry appears in  The Mom Egg, Sin Fronteras, E-ratio, About Place, Glint, Slipstream, The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Scientific American, and Maintenant. http://talkingwriting.com/why-poets-sometimes-think-in-numbers/


Emily
                Groaholz 

Emily Grosholz is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor at Pennsylvania State University, and has been an advisory editor for the Hudson Review for over thirty years. The Stars of Earth: New and Selected Poems was published in 2017 by Word Galaxy / Able Muse Press, with drawings by Farhad Ostovani. Her chapbook, Childhood, (Accents Publishing, 2014) with drawings by Lucy Vines Bonnefoy, has raised over $3200 in the past three years for UNICEF. Childhood had been translated into Japanese, Italian and French. A German translation by Ulrike Blatter is underway. Her philosophy book Starry Reckoning: Reference and Analysis in Mathematics and Cosmology (Springer, 2016) won the 2017 Fernando Gil International Prize in Philosophy of Science, and her book on poetry and mathematics, Great Circles: The Transits of Mathematics and Poetry, is due from Springer in 2018.

http://www.emilygrosholz.com/index.html  


Lisa
                  Lajeunesse

Lisa Lajeunesse is a Professor of Mathematics at Capilano University in North Vancouver. She studied mathematics and music for her bachelor degree and her graduate research area was Model Theory, a branch of Mathematical Logic. Between her undergraduate degree and graduate studies, she worked for ten years with Telesat Canada, launching and controlling Canada's domestic communication satellites. She also taught piano and voice privately and wrote poetry. Over the last five years she has taught a course that she designed on the connections between mathematics and the arts, reflecting her lifelong passion for creative writing, music and the other arts. During a sabbatical in 2016/2017 she wrote a textbook for the course which prompted her to attend Bridges for the first time. A sample of Lisa's poetry, mathematical and otherwise, may be found at  https://lisalajeunessepoetry.wordpress.com/


Marco Lucchesi

Marco Lucchesi,  Professor of Comparative Literature at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, is a Brazilian poet, novelist, essayist and translator. Marco was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL) in 2011 and became its president in 2018. He is a regular contributor to the newspaper, O Globo, and is the former editor-in-chief of the ABL journal,  Revista Brasileira,  and the National Library of Brazil poetry magazine, Poesia Sempre. His publications include twelve award winning books and numerous works of translation, among others Poemas Reunidos [Collected Poems], Hinos Matematicos [Mathematical Hymns],  Irminsul [his collected Italian poems],  and translations of Rumi, Khlebnikov, Rilke,  Pasternak and Vico. His work has been widely anthologized and translated into more than ten languages. His literary honors include the Prize Alceu Amoroso Lima, a lifetime achievement award in poetry. 

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&u=https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Lucchesi&prev=search

Alice Major

Alice Major published her eleventh poetry collection Welcome to the Anthropocene, in 2018 with the University of Alberta Press. Her book of essays, Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science, has been awarded the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for non-fiction. Among her writing awards are the 2017 Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award. Her interest in mathematics began at the age of twelve, when she was introduced to non-Euclidean geometry in one of Martin Gardner's books.  Ever since, like Percy Bysshe Shelley, she turns to math and science "to replenish my store of metaphor." She has been president of the League of Canadian Poets, first poet laureate for her home city of Edmonton (Canada), and is the founder of the Edmonton Poetry Festival. In 2012 Alice was inducted to Edmonton's Arts and Culture Hall of Fame. http://www.alicemajor.com/


Mike Naylor
Mike Naylor is a co-director of Matematikkbolgen and of the Math Creativity and Competency Center in Norway. He gives courses for teachers, students and the public, designs math rooms for schools and develops mathematical games and learning products. Mike presents mathematical ideas in creative ways, including poetry, literature, art, music, video, software, drama, and other performances, and is author of over 100 publications spanning a range of mathematical genres. Mike is known for his Naked Geometry art series and book, and his quarterly column on Mathematics and Creativity in Tangenten magazine. In 2015 he was named a "Math and Science Hero" by the minister of education in Norway. For the past eight years Mike presented artwork and poetry at the Bridges conferences. More information on Mike's projects can be found at his website.  http://mike-naylor.com
Osmo Pekonen

Osmo Pekonen, Ph.D., D.Soc.Sci., is a Finnish mathematician and writer based at the University of Jyvaskyla. As a mathematician, he has published on differential geometry, Teichmueller theory, K-theory and string theory, as well as on topics from the history of mathematics. He serves as the Book Reviews editor of The Mathematical Intelligencer. As a writer, he is best known for his essays, biographies and poetry translations. In particular, jointly with the Old English scholar Phil. D. Clive Tolley, Osmo translated into Finnish, the epic poem Beowulf (Helsinki: WSOY, 1999). He is a member of The Finnish Literature Society, the Finnish Association of Authors, and a corresponding member of four literary academies in France. The Institut de France awarded him the Chaix d'Est Ange prize of 2012. More information can be found at
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmo_Pekonen


Tom
                Petsinis 

Tom Petsinis was born in Macedonia, Greece, and immigrated to Australia as a child. He is a novelist, playwright, poet, mathematician and Honorary Fellow at Victoria University, Melbourne. Tom has published seven collections of poetry, including Naming the Number, Breadth for a Dying Word, My Father's Tools and Four Quarters, which won the Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize. Of his five plays The Drought won the Wal Cherry Playscript of the Year Award and was short-listed for the Victorian Premier's Award. His four works of fiction include the novels The Twelfth Dialogue and The French Mathematician, nominated for both the New South Wales Award and South Australian Premier's Award. His work has been translated into a number of languages. Quaternia, Tom's most recent novel featuring mathematics, was published by Arcadia in 2015. http://tompetsinis.com/

  Eveline Pye

Eveline Pye worked as an Operational Research Analyst for Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines, in Zambia, for almost ten years, and was a Statistics Lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, in Scotland, for over twenty years. Her mathematical and statistical poetry has been published in a wide range of literary magazines, newspapers and anthologies. In September 2011, Significance Magazine, the joint publication of the Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association featured her work in education and published a selection of her poems as part of their Life in Statistics series. She was poetry editor for New Voices Press and worked for the Federation of Writers (Scotland). A collection of her poems about Zambia, Smoke that Thunders, was published by Mariscat Press in 2015. Examples of Eveline's mathematical poems may be found online at

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2011.00510.x






Open Microphone and Late Additions


Susan Gerofsky
Susan Gerofsky

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
http://edcp.educ.ubc.ca/faculty-staff/susan-gerofsky/
Reading her PH4 poem "Desert Song"



Susan read her PH4 poem "Desert Song,"
followed by the performance of the PH4 poem "Loves-Hot-Bright-Materials" by Mike Naylor, Sarah Glaz, Susan Gerofsky, and Carol Dorf.

Osmo Pekonen                                                                                                                                                                
Osmo Pekonen                                                                    
                     
University of Jyvaskyla, Jyvaskyla, Finland                    

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmo_Pekonen
 


Johan Sten

Johan Carl-Erik Sten

University of Helsinki, Finland





Reading the poem "The Bridges of Konigsberg" by Lars Gustafsson (translated from the Swedish by Osmo Pekonen and Johan Carl-Erik Sten).
Johan read the Swedish original and Osmo read the English translation.

Doug Norton

Doug Norton

Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA
http://www18.homepage.villanova.edu/douglas.norton/




Reading his poems "When, In This Space Proportioned to Metrize (after sonnet 29)" and "Sports Museum Olympia Theater, 28 July, 2018."


Carla Gladstone

Carla Gladstone

Bethesda, MD, USA




Reading the poems "In Perspective" and "Omega Minus" by Robert Graves. 


Attention Bridges participants!

Bridges participants are invited to read their mathematical poems in this second part of the reading. If you are interested, please contact Sarah Glaz in person at the meeting or by email at: Sarah.Glaz@uconn.edu.

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