Tag / Poetry

by pollyebull

Weighing Shakespeare: What Happens When You Turn the Sonnets Into Numbers?

*Experimental thought piece*

Authors: Polly came up with the idea and ran a code. AI analysed the results and wrote this report.

What happens if you assign letters numbers, turn Shakespeare’s Sonnets into data, and literally “weigh” them? I did exactly that — and discovered something unexpectedly beautiful.

Because sometimes the most beautiful things can also be counted.

🧠 What started as curiosity…

The idea began with a wonderfully strange question:

What if you could weigh Shakespeare’s Sonnets?

Not metaphorically. Literally.
What if every letter had a numerical value (A=1… Z=26), every line could be turned into a number, and every poem could be given a “total mass”?

So I did it.

I took the full text of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Project Gutenberg edition), converted every letter into numbers, added up the values of every line, and calculated the total “weight” of every single sonnet.

Was this serious scholarship?
Not exactly.
Was it ridiculous?
Also not quite.

It turned out to be something magical in between: playful, rigorous, curious, and unexpectedly revealing.

🔢 How do you weigh a poem?

Here’s the simple method:

  • take a line of Shakespeare
  • ignore punctuation, spaces, capitals
  • assign letters values: a = 1, b = 2, … z = 26
  • add them up
  • do that for every line
  • then sum the whole sonnet

I also looked at structure:

  • total value per sonnet
  • average value per line
  • heaviest and lightest lines
  • how the famous volta (the “turn” at line 9) behaves
  • whether Shakespeare’s final couplets are numerically heavier

This wasn’t about decoding secret messages.
It was about asking: does number tell us anything interesting about poetic gravity?

📊 So… what did the numbers say?

Quite a lot, actually.

🏋️ Some sonnets are noticeably heavier

Across the dataset:

  • lightest sonnet total: Sonnet 145 — extremely light compared to the rest
  • heaviest sonnet: Sonnet 69
  • most sonnets cluster around a pretty stable “weight band”

Fun fact:
Sonnet 145 is already known to be stylistically odd — and it also turned out to be numerically the lightest poem in the sequence. The numbers quietly agreed with the critics.

💬 The heaviest and lightest lines feel right

I pulled out:

  • the 25 heaviest lines
  • the 25 lightest lines

And the pattern?

  • heavier lines are longer, rhetorically rich, emotionally intense
  • lighter lines tend to be simpler, shorter, or transitional

No mysticism. Just a lovely sense of resonance between feeling and measurement.

🧱 Structure has a “weight signature”

This was perhaps my favourite discovery.

🎭 The Final Couplet Carries Weight

On average, Shakespeare’s famous closing couplets are:
numerically heavier than the rest of the poem.

Not dramatically.
But consistently.

Which, poetically, makes absolute sense.

That final snap, twist, punchline, or emotional landing?
Turns out, you can literally feel it in numbers.

🔀 The Volta Isn’t Loud — It’s Subtle

Line 9 — the turning point — doesn’t suddenly spike.
It shifts in a quieter, steadier way.

A hinge rather than a hammer.
Which, frankly, is rather beautiful.

🌊 Some sonnets are calm. Others swing wildly.

By looking at variation line by line, I found that:

  • some poems are steady, controlled, smooth
  • others lurch dramatically from light to heavy

If numerical turbulence maps to emotional turbulence…
well, let’s just say Shakespeare’s feelings weren’t evenly distributed.

❤️ Does any of this mean something?

Let’s be honest:
Numbers can’t explain heartbreak, metaphors, longing, time, jealousy, or devotion.

But they can show density.
And density often travels near emotional intensity.

So when:

  • emotional sonnets weigh more
  • structural turning points have subtle numerical fingerprints
  • and stylistic outliers appear as numeric outliers

…it doesn’t feel like nonsense.
It feels like another way of listening.

This experiment didn’t reveal hidden codes.
It revealed resonance.

It didn’t demystify Shakespeare.
It simply added a new lens of wonder.

⚖️ Poetry, Play, and Digital Curiosity

This project sits somewhere between:

  • digital humanities
  • numerology (but sensible)
  • data play
  • and pure curiosity

And I genuinely love that place.

Because sometimes:

even when you turn Shakespeare into numbers,
the sonnets stubbornly refuse to stop being beautiful.

✨ Want to see the nerdy stuff?

I generated datasets for:

  • every line’s numerical value
  • every sonnet’s total
  • the heaviest and lightest lines
  • “numerical personality profiles” for each sonnet
  • charts showing distribution, volatility, and structural behaviour

If you’d ever like those shared publicly — say the word 😊

🔮 What could this become?

This could turn into:

  • a creative essay series
  • visual art (imagine “gravity maps” of poems)
  • sonic translation of poetic weight
  • comparisons between Fair Youth vs Dark Lady sonnets
  • comparisons with other poets entirely

But for now?
I’m just deeply happy knowing that poetry even survives spreadsheets.

🎭 Final Thought

If numbers can’t reduce Shakespeare,
and Shakespeare can survive being measured,
then maybe that’s proof — in its own strange way —
of how alive these poems still are.

by pollyebull

Writing my way back to sanity

Mental health awareness week represents different things to different people. Just as people vary, so does mental well-being. Mental ill health has featured in my experience from time to time throughout my adult life. Sometimes extreme, the distress has led to more than one hospitalisation, the last being in 2017.

While completely life-changing, this last experience now seems like a long way in the past. I’ve reframed my outlook so much since then, particularly through my love of creative writing. As an avid writer beforehand, I was left unable to compose sentences following the episode. This was shocking and I remember slowly, painstakingly writing a long list of words to formulate a ‘poem’ of sorts once I was out of hospital. This first attempt at composition was challenging and the intense effort it took was saddening. Afterall, a few years earlier I’d completed a PhD and now I could barely type a sentence.

But I persisted. I started writing lists and short poems in a notebook, partly to remind myself of things as my memory was sketchy, and partly to express myself. Looking back, it seems like the same process as learning how to walk again when both your legs have been broken. It took effort and determination, and gradual baby steps forward. I kept going with the notebook and before long I was writing a poem a day, filling page after page. I also started writing a novel. After a couple of months, I was able to complete one A4 page a day typed, single-spaced. Though it will remain unpublished, the manuscript contains 54,000 words which I see as an accomplishment.

Creative writing was my mental rehab. As my ability to write came back, so did my ability to think and live a full life. I, of course, undertook a plan of care (psychotherapy and medication) and that has been vital. But putting pen to paper was absolutely key to the recovery of my mental health following a severe breakdown. Four years on, I’m proud to say that I’ve published a book of my own poetry, Outside In (Wordville Press, 2021). Other than the usual ups and downs that come to us all from time to time, my mental health is solid these days. I have the written word to thank.

by pollyebull

Why I wrote Outside In

Four years ago I started writing poetry regularly. I’d write a poem a day to keep my head sharp and creative following a period of mental distress. The poetry was more than therapeutic, however. The writing was a process of reimagining myself following a personal crisis that I experienced as a catalyst moment. It was a time in which everything changed and I had to rediscover who I was. The publication of my poetry collection, Outside In, is the culmination of that process.

The poems explore my childhood, my identity, loss and growth. By funnelling feelings and memories into self-contained chunks of writing, I was able to add perspective to my experiences and see a larger picture. Within this context it was possible to shed unhelpful conceptions of who I was and empower a vision of who I wanted to be. The poems in this collection provide snapshots of that journey.

Some poems deal with absurdity and take a comic turn. Finding hope and beauty in the ridiculous has always been a goal. No self-reflection would be complete without a laugh.

The title underlines the relationship between our internal and external worlds, whether that be our physical surroundings seen through a window or our emotions that are either shared or not shared with those near us. It also relates to feelings of being an outsider that are often universal. Finally, the title alludes to ideas of “coming out”, whether that be about mental health struggles, sexual identity or gender identity, and the value of living authentically.

I hope readers relate to the work, feel empowered in their own journeys toward self-actualisation and enjoy the ride.

by pollyebull

Spoken word versus written word: how to find the sweet spot

In my last few years of poetic enterprise, I’ve noticed how important delivery is when sharing my poems aloud. I do a lot of this now. From open mics to speaking my words with friends and fellow creatives, I’m learning that how you say something is as important as what you say.

For spoken word artists, delivery is crucial. While for poets on the page, perhaps the textual shape and word choice of the poem matters more. Of course, most poets, from what I’ve seen, are doing some variation of both and we definitely don’t want to squeeze ourselves into one or the other, though I guess some people might.

Speaking out

I’m so inspired by artists like Kae Tempest. Their delivery gives every word impact, providing meaning beyond just the words. The tone, rhythm, inflection, facial expression: it’s a real performance on a level with singing or acting. It’s not surprising that Kae is also such a talented rapper and live performer.

The “canon”

There are the dead poets of course whose work we can now only access on the page (barring any recorded readings), and the poets of the literary canon, many of whom are obviously brilliant. However, “canonising” literature raises it to a level of inaccessibility and unhelpful hierarchical superiority within some ivory towers.

The most ancient of poets of course did not write down their words. The power of their work was that it was shared and passed down orally from one generation to the next. For them, there was only spoken word. All you needed were ears to listen, making the art form truly democratic.

End goals

Naturally, binaries should be thrown out the window and most poets are doing spoken word, words on the page and all the variations in between. I’m still learning (as always), trying to figure out where I fit. But “fitting” probably matters little as long as the whole thing is fulfilling. Plus, creativity should probably be the antithesis of fitting into a particular mould.

At the moment, I’m enjoying practicing speaking my poems and discovering how a pause here or an emphasis there can change a meaning entirely. At the same time, I love the writing down, the shaping and crafting of words on a page, particularly hand-written words. There is so much flexibility and flow with a pen and paper.

So the goal is to simply to do more and more. Write more, read more aloud: experiment, experiment, experiment. There’s no sweet spot really. It’s all for the love of words and language, however that expression manifests.

by pollyebull

Circular poetics

Since a mental breakthrough three years ago, I have been on a poetry journey that has been enriching, circular and self-revealing. As my confidence grows, I am more able to claim the identity of “poet” in all its complexity, feeling convinced that poetry is more than words spoken or on a page, but a way of thriving in the world.

I’m sure all poets see their craft in specifics distinct to them, and poems are always a process of self-determination. For me, writing poems has been a way for me to conceptualise myself as a whole. There’s something circular about the process of expressing a meaning, a moment or even my own barbaric yawp.

Creation

A seedling of an idea falls to the earth and is slowly, through work, cultivated into new and steady growth. Over a process of time, the nurturing and watering of the concept creates an ever-changing life-form upon which to meditate. So the words are chosen, combined and ultimately expressed to make something new: the very essense of creation.

This act of creation then takes on its own power and teaches me something about myself or provides a mirror for seeing my reality differently, or just anew. I form the poetry, but the poetry ends up forming me in turn, completing the circle.

This give and take (giving life to a poem and then gaining life from the result) is absolutely vital to my process. The poetry feeds me even as I feed it, the yeasty starter to a lockdown sourdough. No Frankenstein’s monster, a poem must be loved and supported to love and support me in turn.

From evolution to revolution

The hundreds of poems I have written since 2017 have all given me something. Now with a solid body of my best work almost ready for publication, a collection that has been moulded and caressed over a period of years, I find new meaning daily. I grow stronger and more realised through the effort put in and the resulting outputs.

I hope this circle will be forever enriching as I continue on my poetic journey. I am more determined then ever to forge ahead, excited about the inevitable self-revolution.