Alice’s work on the web
A handy link to poetry/prose published elsewhere on the web.
Poems
Pro Coro Canada “A Prayer to bring you home” – poem set to music by John Estacio
Talking Writing “Zinnia becomes first flower to bloom on space station; Path integral (Dec. 2020)” – two haibun set to music
Talking Writing Subsurface ocean may be hiding beneath Pluto’s heart (March 2018)
Talking Writing Euclid’s iron hand; Bird singularities (March 2016)
The Trumpeter (Journal of Ecosophy) sun thread
Literary Review of Canada (on thefreelibrary.com) Glosa: the weather
Truck Foil and Advice to the lovelorn.
Poetry with Mathematics (JoAnne Growney’s blog) For Mary, Turning Sixty
League of Canadian Poets (National Poetry Month blog) – A slight preponderance
London Grip (UK-based e-zine of poetry and culture) – The Muse of Universes and The Jeweller God
Canadian Poetry Online (U 0f T website maintained at the University of Toronto) – The moon of magpies quarrelling; Saint Pelagia; Symmetries of dilation; Ships; Maps; For all that.
Prose
Bridges 2020 (Conference Proceedings) – Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow: on what poets might be counting on their fingers as they compose.
Bridges 2017 (Conference Procedings) – From e to Metaphor: on why and how a poet would use a mathematical concept as the basis for a metaphor.
Bridges 2017 (Conference proceedings) – Numbers with Personality Numbers are not simply dry and abstract symbols for arithmetic quantities. Human minds also endow them with rich and complicated personalities, from Mayan portrait glyphs to the form of synaesthesia called Ordinal Linguistic Personification
Journal of Mathematics and the Arts – Barbers & Big Ideas: Paradox in Math and Poetry
Bridges 2013 (Conference proceedings) – Math into Metaphor
Rattle (L.A.-based journal) – Poetry and Scale
Math Horizons Word Shapes and Rhymescapes: Translating Translaton Symmetry into Music and Poetry (2013)
Avenue Magazine Where there’s magic in summer twilight
Kenyon Review Poetics and Science
Interviews – print
Malahat Review – on judging the long poem contest
League of Canadian Poets – on the occasion of being shortlisted for the Souster award
Jane Day Reader – about process, punctuation and community
Freefall Magazine – a conversation with Bob Stallworthy about Intersecting Sets
Communicate Influence – on the relationship between writing ad copy and poetry
Bloom – on the relationship between mathematics and poetry
12 or 20 Questions (rob mclennan’s site)
CV2 – on accepting that I’m not avant-garde
Lectures, readings, online conversations
Alice Major reads for the Art Bar – Alice shares three poems that draw on concepts and imagery from mathematics — an approach that helps her deal with very personal subject matter and gives her some breathing space around emotional content. (Sept. 2021)
Shaping the sounds of language – A conversation with Ben Folds as part of his Lightning Bugs podcast series (July 2021), in which Ben sets some of Alice’s words to music. (July 2021)
She, The River – A multicultural, multigenerational and multilingual poetry film showcasing the voices of some of Edmonton’s most celebrated female poets and storytellers. Poets include Titilope Sonuga, Nisha Patel, Pierrette Requier, Naomi McIlwraith, Rayanne Haines and Alice Major. Alice’s contributions are taken from her long poem, “What kind of woman does not want a child?” from The Occupied World.
Lunatic Engine book launch with Dava Sobel – A conversation with Dava Sobel and Paul Pearson on the launch of his book of poetry, about Galileo and the common threads between poetry and science (Nov. 2020)
A Superposition of Brains – Provost’s lecture given at the C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stony Brook University
Terra Informa – radio interview on poetry and the environment
Tree Reading Series – Ottawa
Canadian Literature Centre – Alice reads “The Office Romeo’s Tale”
Critical Writing about Alice’s Work
Science and the City: The Poetics of Alice Major’s Edmonton by Neil Querengesser, in WRITING ALBERTA: Aberta Building on a Literary Identity, Edited by George Melnyk and Donna Coates
Metaphors, Myths, and the Eye of the Magpie by Don Perkins, in Ten Canadian Writers in Context, Edited by Marie Carrière, Curtis Gillespie and Jason Purcell