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BN: I mean, I don't really have much else. I mean, I think that's actually a good place to end unless you've got other things you want to ask, Valerie? Or Amy, if there's anything we haven't covered that you'd like to talk about.

AU: Oh, there is something I was thinking about when you asked about my turning to poetry, was I'd often get the question, "You're a math teacher and you write poetry?" And, of course, I told you I didn't have the background of poetry classes and all that that a lot of my peers have that are writing poetry. I didn't have that background. Okay, now I lost my train of thought again. What was I... what did I start saying to you?

VM: We had asked if there, Brian had asked if there was anything you would like to add, and you mentioned that people were surprised that you, a math teacher, were also a poet.

AU: Okay. Mathematics really is about simplifying, really simplifying things to the basic core. And I think poetry does the same thing, the kind of poetry I write. I really enjoy writing short poems like haiku, but really distilling things, getting down to as few words as possible. And then poetry is musical, and I think mathematics is musical, too. So I don't see any problem with math and poetry being side by side. And, in fact, I don't think I've mentioned this to you, I've worked with a group of mathematician poets, and many years ago, I attended one of their conferences. It's called Bridges, and these were math professors. The conference was in Coimbra, Portugal. And so I got invited -- of course, I had to pay my own way -- but my husband and I said, hey, this will be a good way to get us to Spain, which we'd always wanted to see. So we actually created a wonderful vacation between Portugal and going through Spain. But anyway, this group of poets, they've been meeting now for several years, and they publish math poems. They put out a yearly anthology, which I've been part of several times, and it's just kind of cool. Math and poetry. [Laughs]

VM: Have some of your, the poems in your books appeared in these anthologies? I mean, is there a crossover?

AU: Yeah. They have printed several of my poems.

VM: Forgive me, I have another question and it's math-related, so this is perfect. And I did enjoy your math poems in the different books. My mother, when I was telling my mother about -- and she's also read some of your poetry -- she said, "What kind of math does she teach?" And I knew we hadn't asked you, because there are so many kinds of math. You know, in algebra, in calculus, so I wondering if you could say what kinds of math you have taught.

AU: Sure. I taught everything from basic math through pre-calculus, which is, you know, trig, higher level algebra, a variety of topics, but pre-calculus topics. I never taught calculus because I felt that I needed to go back and take calculus again myself if I wanted to teach it, and I really, by that time, I was into raising my son, working full time, trying to go to poetry classes. So I didn't want to go back and study calculus. So anyway, I taught a wide range. I taught everything from the really rowdy classes to the gifted classes. And at Venice, I would get groups of kids that couldn't pass the state exam, and I was one of the few teachers on staff that was willing to teach these kids. A lot of them were gang kids, but they were kids that had probably always failed their classes coming up, and they hated, hated math. I don't really know if they're taking the class with me, what kind of test results they got. I never was able to see that kind of feedback, it'd be interesting. But what I did see of them was really highly intelligent kids with street smarts, they just weren't book smart. And I taught lots of honors-level gifted classes, and I put many of those gang kids, the very same intelligence level as other kids, they were smart. Well, that was interesting, because outsiders have such rigid views of them.

BN: Yeah, I think that's about all I have. So yeah, thank you very much, this was great. I'm so glad we were able to spend the, almost a full session on the poetry, which we wouldn't have been able to do had we stretched it out last time. So I'm really happy we were able to do this.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.