Happy Pi Day: interview with pi poet
Happy Pi Day, everyone! Today I have a special treat. I had the opportunity to interview Pi poet, Mike Keith. Mike is into constrained writing and Pi, among other things. Mike recently published a book,Not A Wake, that demonstrates the constrained writing:
A collection of short stories, poetry, plays, puzzles, and other surprises, all constructed according to the rigid rules of “Pilish”, that peculiar variant of English in which the number of letters in successive words is required to follow the digits of the number π = 3.14159265358979…, in this case for a truly grand total of 10,000 decimals. The perfect book for fans of the number Pi, constrained writing, wordplay, puzzles, or experimental prose and poetry.
Mike sent me a copy of “Not a Wake” to review. In case it’s not obvious, the three words of the title of the book have 3, 1, and 4 letters. And, the pattern continues with the subtitle “A Dream Embodying Pi’s Digits Fully for 10000 Decimals.”
This is a fun book. The challenge in writing such a book is to have the writing be natural in the face of a pretty serious constraint! The book accomplishes that beautifully! Mike is clearly a poet as he is able to pluck the right words out of the ether to make the poetry flow. And, he does it for 10,000 words!