Tuesday poem: (haiku)
October 29, 2013
Germs hitch-hike
drift in pink balloons
star-man’s lungs
Yes, I’m afraid that use of the wonderful Japanese form of the haiku in these pages (if a blog has pages) is an indication of intense busy-ness. As the anthology The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry demands more of my time, my poor blog has been somewhat neglected. My apologies, dear followers!
This wee SF poem thing was first published in the United States, in Scifaikuest, way back in February 2010.
Press this feather and go to New Zealand, where the hub poem is also about explorers, in a sense. And the country not known as South Canada:
Tuesday poem for Ada Lovelace Day: When geeks were women
October 15, 2013
When geeks were women —
or one woman.
Lovelace, unknotting expectations
into programmes; cognition dancing.
Father’s couplets sounding through
the could-be Difference Engine cogs,
but twirling in pas de deux maths;
poetry dressed and transmogrified.
‘Supposing, for instance…’
you saw a computer writing music;
an Aeolian harp catching numbers,
driven by numbers, until numbers
were the musician and the song.
No mere calculator; you sang too.
Your thoughts ring in history’s ear.
Medicine lagged behind your mind,
and the small number 36
is all the years you had. Cancer
bloomed inside your womb;
a sick reminder of biology.
No algorithm could remove that fate.
The same age as your (to you) unknown father
who died heroic on the shores of myth.
Ada, when I Google you,
I think of you holding a fan
(lace as elegant as your ideas)
and I want to shout back through clogged time
to deafen sad boors who still say no:
‘Ada, it works! My dear, it works!‘
*
‘Supposing, for instance’ is a quotation from Ada Lovelace’s writing. Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815 – 1852), born Augusta Ada Byron, wrote the world’s first algorithm.
P.S.Cottier
(Note that the first line is supposed to be properly broken into two; so that the words ‘or one woman’ occur at the extreme right of the line. My blog — or, more probably, my ancient difference engine — doesn’t seem to like cleverness today!)
Ada Lovelace was a scientist/mathematician back when women really didn’t do that sort of thing. There are still places where women don’t get any education at all, and even in highly developed countries, there are far fewer women than men who manage to occupy the highest research positions in academia.
But raise a glass to all the women who do science, including Ada Lovelace, all those years ago. Then click this link, for further poesie. You may put your glass down first:
Tuesday poem: Bathers from Poland
October 7, 2013
Bathers from Poland
They are on their way;
my new bathers, adorned
with palm trees so neon
they glowed on Bikini
when the Americans
taught sand to speak atomic.
Bathers from Poland
to Australia;
winging their way
through choked skies,
changing the air
and thickening it
with chemical spread.
One piece retro.
Black, and a blue
never seen on any beach
where water meets grin
of yellow sand.
Modesty panel!
You will shade
a shyer smile of glee.
P.S. Cottier
This is not Canberra.
Having returned from a very sybaritic week at the beach (not the beach above, but a ‘proper Aussie beach’) I thought I would post this poem about some bathers I really did buy from Poland. Which is like selling coals to Newcastle, in reverse. I think.
Are they beachifying themselves in New Zealand, the United States, or Paris? I know not! I will press this albatross feather to find out, and I suggest you do the same:
PS Cottier 