Convoluting poetry + maths – Poetrishy explores the possibilities

BDFI seedcorn-funded researcher Dr Rebecca Kosick explains how her project, Poetrishy has taken off and where the collaborations between the worlds of poetry and maths might lead.  Check out the stylish editions that can also be purchased in print from Tangent Books.

  • How ambitious is Poetrishy?

Poetrishy has big ambitions in that it is trying to bring together two fields of practice—poetry and maths—that are not obvious allies. We have found ways they can be, but our most ambitious goal, which we aren’t sure if we have yet realized, has to do with the convolution of these two fields.

Convolution increases the challenge, in that rather than just igniting an encounter between maths and poetry, we are trying generate opportunities for the two fields to influence and mutually modify each other, creating something new in the process. For our second edition, we spent a lot of time reflecting on the ways we have seen mathematics influencing poetry, particularly by creating new forms and possibilities for poetic production. This direction of influence is pretty well established in our experiments, and builds on earlier work we did in collaboration with the Brigstow Institute. The opposite direction, where poetry can influence and modify maths, seems to be still a nascent and more speculative possibility, though we have some ideas. For instance, my collaborator Mauro Fazion is working with other researchers to look into how metaphor and meaning-making in poetry can inform mathematical modelling of lexical and semantic evolution. Here we think poetry may have something to contribute to mathematics and its applications. And we are eager to see what other possibilities are out there.

  • What do the works submitted so far, tell us about our digital futures?

It’s been really interesting to see the range of submissions we have gotten, and to discover that the community of people interested in poetry and maths is bigger than you might expect. For me, this speaks to the continued vitality of the arts during the so-called digital age.

Plosive Consonants by Bruno Ministro for Poetrishy #1

I don’t think this was ever really in doubt for artists, or for those of us who study contemporary arts and humanities, but we still see ways in which the STEM disciplines are understood as, on the one hand, distinct from the arts, and on the other, as having a special claim on technology that the arts somehow don’t have. I think we can contest this claim historically, and with an eye toward the future too. Poets, in particular, have been keen to explore the possibilities that new technologies enable for the creation and dissemination of poetry, from the typewriter to the mimeograph and the algorithmic computing. I expect this will continue and that there are surprises yet for us to discover.

  • As this is an evolving project, what adjustments have you made along the way? What have been the most challenging aspects, and the most surprising?

One of the more technical challenges had was to do with how to display the range of poetic materials we were receiving (and publishing) in Poetrishy. We honestly didn’t know what to expect when we put out our first call, in that we were open to all kinds of formal possibilities, from text-based lyrical poems to apps, interactive web-based tools, videos, and more. We ended up receiving a range of submissions that exceeded, even, our own open imagination of the parameters of what we might expect. And then we needed to figure out how to first, share these works via some kind of unified digital platform, and second, share them in print form.

Our designers, Russell Britton (web designer) and Johanna Darque (print designer and co-editor), did such a fantastic job of bringing together a huge diversity of contributions, and in navigating the affordances and needs of digital versus print publishing. You should definitely check out both versions, digital and print. On top of making gorgeous and innovative homes for Poetrishy in each of these platforms, the team also worked hard to build a kind of flexible reciprocity between the web and paper versions, producing what Jo Darque called “non-identical twins.” The web version and the print journal are each their own distinct but linked elaborations of what Poetrishy​​​​ is.

  • When will we see the next edition?

We are working on the print version of Poetrishy #2 now (Autumn 2022), and it should be available for sale in the coming months. We are hoping to continue publishing Poetrishy in the coming years as well and will be looking for funding to make this happen. We are grateful to the BDFI for believing in this project and helping us get it off the ground.

 

Poetrishy is published by a team of poets, mathematicians, editors, and designers: Mauro Fazion, Rebecca Kosick, Rowan Evans, Ademir Demarchi, Miranda Lynn Barnes, Johanna Darque, and Russell Britton.