Math Poetry Journal Released

Junior Sarah Sellers giggles at a poem during the first lunch launch party. Sellers had a few of her poems published in the journal and received an honorable mention award.

Julia Nall, Print Editor

Countless syllables later, the Math Poetry Journal has been published and released. The journal, resurrected by math teacher Andrea Sadler, is entirely composed of student-submitted poems that either follow a mathematical sequence or are about a math concept.

“At first I was really skeptical about [the journal], but it ended up being really fun,” junior Sarah Sellers said. “I’d do anything for Andrea Sadler.”

Sellers has poems published in the journal, which was released during first and second lunch on May 12.

Winners were picked from entries selected for the journal. Juniors Elizabeth Palmer and Dejah Harris won first place, juniors Marcus Mellor, Penny Smith and sophomore Ember Heavin won second place, and juniors Kailee Morehart, Chris Rassmann, Hunter Delaney, Sebastian Diaz, Madison Laisure, Sarah Sheets, Megan Barnett, James Lasley and Ashlyn Privett won honorable mentions.

“I didn’t have a single poem in [the journal],” junior Kaitlyn Baldwin said. “[I was] kind of sad, because I put the books together.”

The poems range in content from football to romance to the unit circle. Juniors Tanner Caton and Rachel Curtis’s love poems, which are about each other, were published on the same page.

“Tanner [Caton] and Rachel [Curtis’s] love poems were so cute,” junior Allison Studdard said.

The journal, which began accepting submissions in Feb., has gained a following, especially from Sadler’s students. Sadler has been tweeting out a daily haiku from the Math Poetry Twitter account, and the posts have gotten as many as 30 likes.

The Tweets themselves became a sort of competition; the first person to like the tweet every morning got their name on the board and received a round of applause. Sadler’s third period Pre-AP Pre-Calculus/Trigonometry class was especially enthusiastic about the Twitter contest.

“We like to focus more on our dynamic as a group than math,” Sellers said.

Sadler was happy with how the publication of the third volume of the journal went.

“It was beyond awesome,” Sadler said.

Sadler plans on keeping the Twitter account running for the summer and asks that students submit haikus “when inspiration strikes.”

“There’s always time to write a haiku,” Sadler said.