The Magic of Numbers

An useful morning at the Richard Jefferies Museum in Swindon; Hilda Sheehan was facilitating a workshop on "The Magic of Numbers". As someone for whom numbers are a mystery in themselves (a hang over from primary school days!) I was unsure as to what I'd make of it but it proved an interesting and enjoyably challenging couple of hours - the only calculations required being the numerical equivalents of the letters of the alphabet!

Of the poets whose work we considered, I found Jackson Mac Low clever but not really to my taste; the Mary Cornish poem "Numbers" however I loved -

"... multiplication's school
of fish times fish,
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow of a boat.

Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else;
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else's
garden now ..."  

It's a poem well worth looking up if you're unfamiliar with it, as I was.

As with all good workshops, the morning left me with a host of ideas and possible avenues to explore, both topic and style-wise. An exercise we did, based on a Mac Low technique, produced superficially nonsensical poems that, on closer study, contained some startlingly original use of language - definite food for thought there! Significant dates, numbers of bus routes, telephone numbers, PIN numbers, passwords - our daily lives are almost constructed around these now, so they certainly offer a plethora of writing opportunities. Thank you, Hilda!

Hilda Sheehan