In order to make sure I post at least once a week I've decided to start a new series on poetic form. Each week I'll take a different form, talk about it a little, and then post my attempt at it. I would love it if people wanted to post their own attempts in the comments afterwards. And any suggestions for new forms would also be appreciated, I may run out otherwise!
So, for the first in the series I'm going to be looking at Fibs, which are poems based on the Fibonacci sequence - a mathematical pattern where each number is the sum of the two that went before it, ie 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 etc. This sequence is related to the golden ratio and if plotted on a graph creates a spiral that is found everywhere in nature, such as in snail shells and sunflower heads.
The idea to take this sequence as a syllable count for a poem has been around for at least 30 years, and probably long before, but was popularised in 2006 by a guy called Gregory Pincus when he published one on his Gottabook blog and encouraged readers to submit their own. So began an internet craze which is probably considered old hat these days by followers of passing trends, but the form has survived the fad and even has an online magazine dedicated to it. There you can see a range of variations on the standard six line stanza (beyond six lines it starts getting a bit cumbersome) which I've stuck to in my attempt, though I've run the poem on through three stanzas.Â
My idea was based on the Darren Aaronofsky film 'Pi', which is about a mathemetician trying to work out a code to predict the stock market (much more thrilling than it sounds, trust me!). A big theme in the film is how nature conforms to mathemetical principles, and the fibonacci sequence is mentioned in it, but the main character is a tragic figure and ultimately doomed by his obsession with numbers. So I wanted to write a sequence about him. Hope you enjoy it... (Still not sure about the last line, what do you think?)
He
Thinks
Maths is
The language
Of nature and we
Can understand all that surrounds
UsÂ
Through
Numbers.
If you graph
The digits of aÂ
System, patterns emerge. Therefore,
There
Are
Patterns
Everywhere
In nature. Random
Kindness is an anomaly.