100 Days of Podokus

“Making 100 poem/Sudoku hybrids - my Podokus - was a great experience and a lot of fun. The small scale of the daily task, combined with the relentless regularity allowed space for inspiration and for reflection - it was so worthwhile”.

For those who are unfamiliar with Sudoku, it is a combinatorial logic-based number placement game originating from Japan. Using a grid of squares the aim is to fill each square with a number 1-9, with none repeating in any 9 square grid, nor in any row or column.  In her 2017 project Kirsty applied this logic to her poetry, to use 9 words every day to create a grid of poetry resolving in the final row.  

This gave Kirsty a way of taking nine words and changing their order in an orderly yet random way.  It created surprises and new perspectives for the poet and the reader alike.

"I loved doing the project last year - it was definitely a lot of work but somehow, the pressure of doing a specific form of writing every day for a finite period of time was actually kind of liberating. And...it did push me to produce a whole lot more work following on from that, including another visual arts/poetry exhibition a few months after the 100 Days were up".

So what does that mean for Kirsty for this year?

"I am super busy with a "day job" and all the rest of the wonders and challenges of life in general, but I am still definitely finding a lot more time for my writing and I do believe that the 100 Days thing pushed me a further with this, helping me move towards changing my career. I'm looking forward to this year's odyssey.

For 2018, my 100 Days plan is to create a new dictionary - one word a day for a hundred days - with words that don't yet exist, but maybe should, words that express something currently unsayable, in the English language at any rate. That's the idea - we'll see how it develops over the coming days".

We will have a look at Kirsty’s project as it progresses – I know I am looking forward to seeing some of the words yet to be!

Click on this link to visit Kirsty's Sudoku project from 2017