Bridges in Coimbra

     Newton's binomial is as beautiful as Venus de Milo.
     What happens is that few people notice it.

                -- Fernando Pessoa (as Álvaro de Campos) (1888-1935)
                    translated from the Portuguese by Francisco Craveiro

     Coimbra, Portugal is this year's host city for the Bridges Math-Art Conference during July 27-31, 2011.  Thanks to planning and recruitment by math-poet Sarah Glaz, this year's conference features (on Saturday July 30)  a Poetry Day, including a reading by several poets who are fluent in mathematics and who draw frequently on its imagery.  These include Emily Grosholz, Amy Uyematsu, and Sarah Glaz ;  I, too, am on the program but not able to attend due to illness in my family.  Also reading will be poetry-in-translation by Portuguese mathematician and translator Francisco José Craveiro de Carvalho and by Iranian mathematician Saeed Ghahramani. 

Here is additional information on poets participating in Bridges:
     First, a link to a poem by Sarah Glaz -- a poem structured by the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic.  This next link goes to Amy Uyematsu's "The Meaning of Zero."  From here, go to "The Ratio of Green" by Emily Grosholz.   Several poems that I might have read at Bridges are available in this file -- and a proposal for a workshop entitled "Using Mathematics to Make Poetry" that had been scheduled for the afternoon of Wednesday, July 27, is available here.
     Sarah Glaz and I have co-edited an anthology, Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics  (A K Peters, Ltd, 2008) and she is an active contributor to both the devlopment and popularization of poetry-math linkages; poems by her appear in my blog postings for 18 April 2011 and 23 April 2010. 
     "Reflections on the Transfinite" by Emily Grosholz was posted on 24 September 2010 and Amy Uymatsu's "The Invention of Mathematics" on 29 September 2010. 
     Fine poems leading to several of this blog's postings have been helpfully suggested by F J Craveiro de Carvalho -- for example, 23 October 2010 and 30 May 2011.