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:
Tuesday poem: To Sleep by John Keats
September 24, 2013
O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embowered from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength, for darkness burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.
Rhyming soul and mole is a brave thing, isn’t it? And sorry for using that photo again so soon, but it seems appropriate to one caught up in the exhausting world of editing! Click this link, dropped from a kakapo feather doona, and see if other poets have been thinking about dozing:
Tuesday poem: Air in the heart
September 16, 2013
Air in the heart
You might think it would be a good thing,
being light-hearted, like a kite, or a bird
riding up-draughts. But air in the heart
can stop pumping, block flow, rather than
bump it up. Diver into four ringed death,
ventricle prevented; you have blown
your last, and so you expire,
choking, full, oxygenated.
Open mouthed like a fish
surprised in sudden air;
a blimp crashing
through inflation.
Mouth a circle
of airy shock,
bubbling
an SOS
of ‘O’s.
P.S. Cottier
This jolly little thing, first published in The Mozzie, dates back to my disastrous attempt to scuba dive. That’s only disastrous in the sense that I couldn’t do it, rather than dying, though. Fortunately, I was learning (or failing to learn) in a pool in Canberra.
I had the totally irrational urge to remove the mouthpiece. Not so good in forty metres of water…
I suppose that I’ll never swim with the fishes. But neither, hopefully, will I sleep with them.
For more poetry, press this feather. Which reminds me that I’ll never skydive, either.
My column at Australian Poetry which will go up later this week is about different ways of performing poetry: slams, bush poetry and ‘literary’ readings. Pop over there as well! My first one was on being a poetic guinea pig, as mentioned before.
Tuesday poem: Unholy sonnet
September 10, 2013
Yes, I’m afraid it’s another link! My poem about mining in Australia was just posted at Eureka Street, along with some excellent poems about asylum seekers. I rewrite a John Donne sonnet as an address to Gina Rinehart. Fun fun fun! Press this link to go there:
http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=38158#.Ui6JomthiK0
prospecting for pentameter
Then if you like, fly freely to New Zealand by pressing this feather:
PS Cottier 