Linnet Drury of Oxford Spires Academy, who has attended our Problem Solving Matters course and problem-solving workshops, has written the following poem which she performed recently on Radio 4’s More or Less.
Thank you for sharing the poem with us, and we wish you success in your future aspirations with maths.
From the Gospel of Quarantine: The Statistics and The Silence.
The statistics grew exponentially like
everyone’s uncut hair or the hedges
forsaken by the council or like the strangling
queues round shops. The statistics
couldn’t understand why no one else appreciated
their magnitude, why no one was proud of them.
They couldn’t be kept quiet; too young to realise,
too old to be expected to find out for themselves.
Silence became chewy. Politicians
began to speak about science and scientists
began to speak about people, which confused
the statistics, slowing them down.
But they had already grown too far
to be reclaimed, like how
when I next see you you’ll be a head taller
and I’d have missed it, my cousin
will have learnt to talk without me, my granny
will have shrunk, and the silence
will have begun to take root, having taken our friends
since the first day.
Linnet Drury (17)