Only occasionally does a journalist get to write a ‘gosh, sorry’ story and have a genuinely reasonable hope of getting away with it. This is that time. It’s a moment in history. And thus…
We launched the Cosmos Pi-ku 2021 competition on 14 March – International Day of Mathematics according to UNESCO – and also Pi Day in the US (where March 14 is written in month/day format – 3.14).
Today, 22 July (22/7 in day/month format), is Pi Approximation Day.
Why are we reminding you of this?
This is the day we’ve said will be announcing our Pi-ku 2021 winners. But, well, Houston, we have a problem. Or a series of problems, if you want to get whingy whiny (and frankly, we do) about it.
In March we thought that everything was going swimmingly, and we never considered that there’d be a… a COVID lockdown… months and months and months into Australia’s brilliant, and brilliantly organised and marshalled and rolled-out, ahem, national COVID vaccination program.
Oh well.
Our judges are under the same pressures as many around the country.
Tasmanian performance poet and writer Amelia Neylon, a serial finalist at the Tasmanian Australian Poetry Slam finals or several years – recently fled her state to travel to Queensland to talk to family friends and consider her options for tertiary study. She’s avoiding our telephone calls…
Writer, storyteller and sometime hiking guide – and member of Poor Man’s Pot – Brett ‘Bert’ Spinks decided to come to South Australia to explore the Flinders Ranges. Then there was a statewide lockdown. Then some anti-social types kicked him out of his campsite in Wilpena Pound. Then he moved out of phone range…
Journalist, non-fiction writer and accomplished novelist Ashley Hay juggles ‘friend gigs’ such as this with, y’know, totally minor work, such as editing the Griffith Review – and then (can you believe it?) claims she’s busy. Harrumph.
So we’re begging a stay of announcement of a few days until we can round up our judges and have them decide on the top three entries of the 2021 comp. These worthies will each win a Cosmos digital subscription, and we look forward to announcing their names.
Originally published by Cosmos as Cosmos Pi-ku 2021 competition
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