Arts-based Math Education -- Meet one of the Stars

     Through BRIDGES Math-Arts Conferences I have become acquainted with the versatile Canadian scholar, Susan Gerofsky -- and I introduce you to her varied achievements with this biographical sketch.

Susan Gerofsky is an Associate Professor of Mathematics Education and Environmental Education at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Her interdisciplinary research in curriculum studies is in embodied mathematics education through the arts, movement, gesture and voice, and she is a regular contributor to Bridges Math and Art. She is active as a poet, playwright, musician and filmmaker, and works with dance and fibre arts. You'll often find her cycling around town with a baritone horn or an accordion.

Gerofsky has introduced me to the use of combinatorial patterns in bell-ringing in the structure of poems.  Here, for example, is her "Desert Poem" -- based on the pattern "Plain Hunt on Four" or PH4.

Math-Poetry -- Linz, Austria -- 07/19/2019

     On Friday, July 19, 2-4 PM at the 2019 Bridges Math-Arts Conference in Linz, Austria will be a Reading of Mathematical Poetry that features these poets:

Tatiana Bonch-Osmolovskaya 
     Susan Gerofsky
          Emily Grosholz 
               Lisa Lajeunesse 
                    Marco Lucchesi 
                         Iggy McGovern 
                               Mike Naylor and
                                   Eveline Pye 

reading mathy selections from their work.

And here is a sample of the stanzas you will enjoy at the reading -- from "First Test" by Marco Lucchesi, translated from the Portuguese by Renato Rezende:  

Connecting with BRIDGES . . .

     Bridges Math-Arts Conferences have become an annual summer tradition and this year's conference is July 16-20 in Linz, Austria.  One of the participants in this year's Mathematical Poetry Program is University of British Columbia Professor Susan Gerofsky -- and I offer her "Desert Poem" below.  Gerofsky's poem was constructed using a permutation pattern called PH4 (from bell-ringing) and an explanation follows the poem.

               Desert Poem     by Susan Gerofsky

               Wings over dry land
               Over wings, land dry
               Over land, wings dry
               Land over dry wings
               Land dry over wings
               Dry land wings over
               Dry wings land over
               Wings dry over land --
               Wings over dry land.