Split This Rock Poetry Festival, April 19-21, 2018

For poems and poets that speak out FOR rights, AGAINST injustice, 

attend the biennial SPLIT THIS ROCK Poetry Festival!

Festival information is available here.  

Split This Rock maintains a hugs poetry database, available here.

One of this year's Festival's featured poets is Sharon Olds who was, a few years ago, my poetry teacher.  This link leads to an introduction to Olds and to a stanza from one of her poems that celebrates math-girls.   

. . .

indivisible as

a prime number

. . .

All Mathematicians are Equal!

     Last Saturday's Women's March in Washington was one the great events of my lifetime -- the feeling of community that bonded us participants was palpable.  We chatted and hugged and celebrated our differences and our common ideals. Here is a photo of the sign that I carried and, beneath the sign, are links to poems about women in mathematics who struggled to be considered equal.

This is the sign I carried at the Women's March on January 21, 2017.

This link leads to "Hanging Fire" by Audre Lorde.  This link leads to a few words of mine, "Square Attitudes."  A posting on girls and mathematics includes samples from Sharon Olds and Kyoko Mori and is available here.

Girls who like math

Often I think about the interactions of girls with mathematics and recently I have been feeling delighted that all of my school-age granddaughters like math. In fact, Harvey Mudd mathematician Rachel Levy has included views from these girls (and from me) here in her blog, "Grandma Got STEM."

T h i s
g i r l
d o e s
m a t h

S u m
f o r
f u n
 

s o
 i f 

1

To read selections from several of my favorite poems about girls-in-math (including Sharon Olds' poem "The One Girl at the Boys' Party" and Kyoko Mori's poem, "Barbie Says Math is Hard") follow this link to a posting made on 10 June 2010.  Another math-girls post was back on  26 December 2010.  Or use the SEARCH box (upper right) to find poems related to your own choice of topics.

Girls and Mathematics

In Indiana, Pennsylvania, my senior high school advanced math teacher was Laura Church--a Barnard College graduate and a flamboyant silver-haired woman who never let any of us suppose that girls could not do mathematics. In college my science scholarship kept me from fleeing mathematics to study literature when I was the only girl in my classes.