The Writing Experiment by Hazel Smith

stanza three: 7 lines and 7 words per line

stanza four: 9 lines and 9 words per line

Alternatively:

Example 3.11

stanza one: 2 lines

stanza two: 5 lines

stanza three: 8 lines

stanza four: 1l lines

stanza five: 7 lines

stanza six: 3 lines

In this second example the number of lines per stanza goes up by the addi-
tion of the number 3, and then descends by subtraction of the number 4.
Numbers have often been important in writing. A traditional Japanese
haiku is written to a numerical system, and conventional poetic metrics
have a numerical base. However, here I am proposing that you create your
own arithmetical bases for composition, rather than fitting into traditional
schemes.
Using a numerical method is a fascinating way of approaching writing,
because it gives you a limit to work against, and it is often boundaries, rather
than total freedom, that trigger the most exciting creative work. This sense
of a limit was one of the advantages of a conventional rhyme and metric
scheme, but it can be anachronistic to return to the metrical structures of
the past, which were culturally specific to that time. Writing tends to be most
effective if it has contemporary relevance in both form and content: we
need to find an up-to-date way of using numbers. Also we do not want to
be tied down to rules which are a straightjacket, so much as define self-
imposed limits against which we can creatively push. This defining of
self-imposed limits is sometimes known as procedural writing (Perloff
1991, pp. 134–70).
A number of contemporary writers have worked with numerical struc-
tures to intriguing effect. American poet, Ron Silliman, has written many
pieces based on them. For example, his ‘I Meet Osip Brik’ is in thirteen
sections, each of which consists of thirteen sentences (Silliman 1986).
Sometimes writers have favoured systems which are well known in math-
ematics, such as the fibonacci series (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21) in which each
number is the sum of the previous two: this is used by Silliman in his prose
poem Tjanting (1981). Sometimes they have used a number which seemed
to be strongly related to the subject matter. My Life —an alternative and
anticonventional autobiography by American poet Lyn Hejinian (1987)—

58 The Writing Experiment