Math-Poetry Recordings on YouTube

     The arrival in 2020 of COVID caused a huge number of gatherings to take place online -- including mathematics conferences and poetry readings- -- and performances at many of these special events have been recorded on YouTube.  I offer below a few links to recordings and to further information.  Recording myself reading poems would probably not been one of my chosen activities but mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz, who has been an enthusiastic organizer of poetry events for the BRIDGES Math-Arts Conferences, has requested recorded samples from each participating poet.

     One way to start YouTube math-poetry explorations is to go to this link -- a link I found by searching for "poetry math" on YouTube.  In this blog, we have mentioned YouTube a bit in the past -- and the blog's SEARCH feature finds this list of previous postings that feature YouTube links.

     Here is a link to the BRIDGES Math-Poetry site maintained by Sarah Glaz; the site offers many choices of poems -- some printable, some on YouTube -- and some of them follow complex mathematical patterns.  One of my accessible favorites is by California math teacher and poet Amy Uyematsu -- at this link she reads an excerpt from her poem "Praise for the Irrational" and also "Countdown."  One of the pages (2021) of Glaz's BRIDGES Math-Poetry website contains Uyematsu's YouTube links and a downloadable/printable version of her very fine poem, "This Thing Called Infinity."  Uyematsu's poem also has been included in one of my earlier blog postings, at this link.  I offer below a few lines of that poem below.

from This Thing Called Infinity by Amy Uyematsu 

       Mathematicians are the real jokesters when it comes
       to playing with the mind -- how counting from 1 to forever
       is somehow smaller than the set of all values
       between 1 and 2, or as I used to ask my students,
       take half of a half of a half and never stop.
       Some notions of the infinite can rattle the nerves --
       like the possibility there are many earths
       and someone exactly like you or me
       with a totally opposite or identical life,
       or there are galaxies of multiplying gods,
       plants that will never be at war.
       And what about time? . . .                   Uyematsu's complete poem is available here.

Visual Mathematical Poetry -- featuring Kaz Mazlanka -- is available here on YouTube, and my own YouTube offerings may be found here.