This morning as I was looking online for Valentine greetings to send to my grandchildren, I found this mathy poem:
In Rochallyi's article -- entitled "Vector Poetry" -- he shows us three different illustrations of poetry portrayed using vectors. He takes a phrase that he would like to communicate poetically and offers three examples of how it could be portrayed using vector poetry. The phrase is:
Growing up in western Pennsylvania -- on a farm close to Indiana, PA -- I was not far from the town of Punxsutawney and enjoyed celebration each year on February 2 of "Groundhog Day." On this day a legendary groundhog who has burrowed underground to spend the worst of winter -- near Punxsutawney, PA -- peeks out to test the weather. If he sees no shadow, spring is on the way BUT if he sees his shadow, he quicky scurries back to his underground refuge, this departure predicting six more weeks of winter. (Recent publicizing of this event has altered it -- now the groundhog does his shadow-seeing and prediction in front of a large audience. And it is televised!)
Today, in her weekly radio broadcast on wpsu, poet Marjorie Maddox offered the slightly mathy Groundhog Day poem "On Gobbler's Knob" by Pittsburgh poet Shirley Stevens (1940-2022). I offer it below (followed by a link to background information about the poem and the poet). Alas, today's groundhog has predicted six more winter weeks.
On Gobbler’s Knob by Shirley Stevens
We gather on the hill outside Punxsutawney
to draw tight circles against the dark.
Five thousand strong, we twist and shout
to circulate blood to our frozen toes,
A few days ago I found poetic words (offered below) by G. H. Hardy (1877-1947) posted on X by @TheMathFlow -- I enjoyed not only the poem but also an exploration of various MathFlow postings -- which offer lots of delightful bits of mathematics. (Visit @TheMathFlow and enjoy!)
When I come across a title that connects math and poetry, I become interested -- and want to read more. Google helped me discover here, in China Daily, an article featuring German professor Andrea Breard entitled "Reading numbers like poetry: A journey into ancient Chinese math." She goes on to tell about some algebraic methods that were written as poems -- the rhythm allowing easier and better memorization.
Andrea Breard is a German historian of mathematics, specializing in Chinese mathematics. Her remarks took me back to my childhood when we frequently repeated "counting rhymes" as we dressed or played or whatever. "One, Two, Buckle my shoe . . ." and "Hickory, Dickory, Dock . . . the mouse ran up the clock . . ." were frequent parts of my childhood chatter.
A Contest for High School Students -- Read on to learn more . . .
Students who are 15 to 18 years old (on September 1, 2025) are invited to apply for the 2026 Steven H. Strogatz Prize for Math Communication (sponsored by MoMath, the NY Museum of Mathematics) to share their love of math with the world!
On or before April 23, 2026 projects will be accepted in the following categories:
Art, Audio, Performance, Social media, Video, and Writing.
Examples include: podcasts, articles, school newspaper columns, art exhibits, videos, websites, Instagram accounts, songs, plays, and any other mode of public communication. Detailed information is available at this link.
Entry deadline is coming soon -- February 1, 2026.
Students are invited to interview a math-woman
and write about it --
and submit the essay to the Association for Women in Mathematics
by February 1, 2026.
Guidelines (middle-school, high school, college submissions) are here.
Previous winning essays are available here (follow the link and scroll down).
Recently I came across a math-poetry article here in a newsletter published by the University of Illinois, Springfield -- an article entitled "Navigating the Intersection of Math, Poetry, and AI: The Crossroads in Helena Soares’ Pursuit." The article shares poetry by Soares -- who is a student majoring in both mathematics and English -- and also includes a brief essay by her, entitled "A journey through math, AI, and poetry." Here is a poem by Soares from that article:
Recently Google led me to a recent and fascinating article about Jordanian poet Dr. Zaina Al-Qasem, a Jordanian scholar, who combines data science with creativity and is also a published poet. For her, mathematics and poetry share thought patterns — both driven by interpretation, structure, and the search for meaning, but through different lenses.
Here are a few reflective lines of Zaina Al-Qasem's verse -- found in the article linked-to above -- lines that capture both introspection and intent.
Choosing a shape for a poem leads to restrictions on the numbers and lengths of words -- and sometimes this generously promotes creativity. Moving through the chilly winter season, I have discovered this poem -- "The Six-Cornered Snowflake" in POETRY (December, 1989) by poet and editor John Frederick Nims (1913-99). ENJOY!
When you have time, a fascinating website to visit and browse is OEDILF -- The Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form.
Here is a sample:
cuproid by Recumbentman (Limerick #89414)
Tetrahedrons are bounded by four
Triangular faces, no more.
If on each one of those
A pyramid rose,
A cuproid would then take the floor.
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is again sponsoring a Math-Poetry Contest for students -- inviting submission of poems up to 20 lines in length in three admission categories:
Middle School High School College
Information about how to submit entries -- along with wonderful results from past contests -- is available at this link.
The following poem (which is found online here -- along with other winners) by Nora McKinstry (Edmonds Heights K-12 S) was the Middle School winner in 2025.
A recent visit to the Poetry Foundation website brought me to poems by William Wordsworth (1770-1850) -- and I counted sadly as I read his poem, "We Are Seven." I offer its opening stanzas below (and the complete poem -- 17 stanzas -- is available here.)
We Are Seven by William Wordsworth
For some students, math is fun BUT . . . if we don't understand something that can keep it from being fun. For those who DO NOT FIND MATH FUN, it is important for the rest of us to try to change that attitude. One useful viewpoint is that math need not be treated as an isolated subject . . . it is connected to our lives in VERY MANY ways. And sometimes, as this blog's postings illustrate, poetry offers non-threatening ways of making connections.
One of my recent discoveries is the website We Are Teachers where I found a collection of 38 mathy poems -- a dozen for elementary school students and the rest for middle and high students. Here is a sample from the elementary school group.
Fourteen years ago, back in October of 2011, I posted a poem of mine entitled, "Like Poetry, Mathematics is Beautiful" (at this link). Written more than thirty years ago, this continues to be one of my favorites of my mathy poems. I offer a portion of it below.
Like Poetry, Mathematics is Beautiful by JoAnne Growney
Timidly I ask
each one I meet if they
find mathematics beautiful
or useful, and each one dares to say,
"Useful, of course. I use it every day."
And if I seem to want a proof,
they all go on to tell
that daily they subtract and add
to keep a checkbook; sometimes also
they multiply to find how many squares
they need to tile the kitchen floor.
Born in New York City (1950) and of Asian heritage, poet Arthur Sze is the 25th US Poet Laureate (named on September 15, 2025) and the first Asian American to hold that position. In the October 20, 2025 issue of The New Yorker, we find Sze's poem, "Library of Congress," which opens with these somewhat mathy lines:
You peer down a lit corridor
on the fifth tier of stacks
where a million books breathe
on shelves, here's a book
on neutrinos, captured in Antarctica,
here's another on solar flares.
A curator displays a book
in Vai script and points to a triangle
with two dots, you wonder . . .
Mathematics organizes libraries!
More poetry from Sze can be found here;
scroll down below the bio to find titles and links.
Poetry-comic-artist Grant Snider posts wonderfully illustrated and entertaining verses online -- on X (Twitter) @grantdraws -- and sometimes his postings are mathy. Here is a link to an interview with Snider. Snider has indicated in his postings that our current month of October is Poetry Comics Month, Here is a link to one of his past poetry-comics-month postings -- and below I offer one of his illustrated mathy haiku.
On X I learned that this week -- November 10-14, 2025 -- is World Nursery Rhyme Week, and I searched and found this website that offers information about the week and these "5 official rhymes for 2025":
Monday, 10th -- Sing a Song of Sixpence
Tuesday, 11th -- Humpty Dumpty
Wednesday, 12th -- When I Was One (I played the drum)
Thursday, 13th -- I Hear Thunder
Friday, 14th -- Two Little Dickie Birds
Here at this website are all of the above except "Two Little Dickie Birds" -- which I offer a version of below. (Here in Wikipedia is more about that rhyme.)
At this link, I found the following math-poetry information:
JOHANNESBURG - Some good news for struggling mathematics students:
Award-winning author Botshelo Mthomboti has a solution for you. In her book, Poetic Atmosphere of Mathematics, Mthomboti simplifies the subject through poetry. The 22-year-old Financial Management graduate has also penned two other books, A Black Child Transformed by Accounting, and The Poetic Atmosphere of Income Tax.
Here is a link to a YouTube video of a news story -- entitled "Poetic Solutions to Complex Problems" -- that tells of Mthomboti and shares her poem entitled "Multiplication and Division of Variables." And here is more about Mthomboti.
THANK YOU, Botshelo Mthomboti, for the enthusiastic energy you give to mathematics.
Stephanie Strickland is a poet whom I know and much admire -- and her work contains a rich variety of math-poetry creations; her poems have been featured in several posts in this blog (Here's a link to those postings.) Today I had the good fortune to refind another of her poems -- not yet posted herein -- and I offer it below.
Who Counts, Counts by Stephanie Strickland
Baby and you
--and me,
we will make three,
but baby-and-me
are different; we're two-
who-are-one.
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