If parallel lines could meet: what exactly can a poet say about the Fano plane?

Journal article

Abstract:: This article describes our invention of a new poetic form based on projective geometry. In doing this we also explore the 'what ifs' in mathematics and poetry which spark the creative processes of poet and mathematician. In other words, throughout our collaboration we often asked one another, is this what it’s like for you? Do you think in this way, too? How does your experience of creativity compare to mine? And often, as well, what exactly do you mean when you say…? We spent a fair amount of time and energy, for example, trying to understand one another’s interpretation of ‘a line’. This collaboration resulted in three poems in the new projective plane form. We also consider what might be interesting avenues for future research, such as the incorporation of octonions in poetic form.

Files:: Collins_and_Ng_2025_If_parallel_lines.pdf

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Language:: English
Keywords:: projective geometry

Fano plane

poetry

poetic form

line

poetic line

octonion
Pubs id:: 2300124
Local pid:: pubs:2300124
Deposit date:: 2025-10-16
ARK identifier:: ark:/29072/ora_9f5c8fa5493b41149935f855653f3bfd

Copyright holder:: Collins and Ng
Rights statement:: © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has beenpublished allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

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