Live Encounters Poetry & Writing July 2026
Nine by Nine by Nine, poem by Jonathan Cant.
Nine by Nine by Nine
1.
Nine, you’re so shapely. You’ve really done
a number on me. Dressed to the Nines
to impress. You have a multitude
of fine facets—I never knew you
were such a well-rounded character.
You are the months it takes to create
a human life or conceive a big
idea. Workdays start with you. You’re
the highest single-digit number;
2.
but you do like to be spelled out—no
short cuts for you. You’d prefer we go
the whole Nine yards ’cos a stitch in time
saves… Nine baseball players and innings
and stanzas in Donald Hall’s poem
Meatloaf. Bat Out of Hell, the album,
peaked at Number Nine on the rock chart
in Britain. “Good thinking, 99!”—
she was always helping Max get smart.
3.
Nine by Nine by Nine. That’s odd: even
when you’re cubed, 7-2-9 is the
result—the first two figures add up
to the third. You’re the sum of yourself.
You contain yourself. Walt Whitman would
have agreed: you “contain multitudes”.
And, like Walt, I bet you “contradict”
yourself, too. Nine, you contrarian.
Now even 6 wishes it were you!
4.
The nonet is a nice Italian
poetic form—its Nine lines of Nine
syllables decreasing to one in
the last line. However, Dante used
terza rima to take us through the
Nine circles of Hell in his Divine
Comedy. The Aztecs and Mayans
also suffered Nine levels of Hell.
And the Ancient Greeks had how many
5.
muses? Nine, you mysterious and
magical number, you make black cats
lucky—giving them Nine lives to waste.
You owned the planets, too—before poor
Pluto’s demotion. You’re right in your
element with the Hindu world: Earth,
Water, Air, Fire, Ether, Time, Space, Soul,
and Mind. You’re Buddha’s Nine Virtues and
Odin’s Realms and his days spent. Hanging
6.
upside down, you’re a 6 arse-up. You
even have your very own Cloud, Nine—
an ephedra-based party drug way
back in the early Nineteen Nineties:
Herbal Ecstasy. Possession is
Nine tenths of the law but, then, you weren’t
illegal. No, not like the Real Thing.
Here, toke on this number—it’ll numb
the edge off all this nonic nonsense.
7.
Nine, you’re one half of a tantric act
and you look like a single sperm with
a bent flagellum. Yes, you’re into
some flagellation: your cat-o’-Nine
tails and your 99 lashes. Nein!—
saying “no” in German. Remember
Nena’s song Ninety-Nine Luftballons?
I much prefer If Six Was Nine by
Jimi Hendrix. Even Prince said he’d
8.
“party like it’s 1999”.
In music, you’re a note of nuance,
Nine. Hiding humbly, midway between
the tonic and the major third. Jazz
loves you—uses you. So do the Blues.
Classical music composers had
a superstition they’d die after
completing their Ninth symphony. And
Ludwig Beethoven was proven right.
9.
There you are, Nine, in pairs, at the end
of price tags—a virtual hundred
because you’re always rounding upwards.
On pages and screens, you’re at the end
of people’s “quotes”—always having the
last word, you cheeky punctuation
mark. This is no ode, that’s fine, but I
still celebrate you. You may not be
a 10, but you’re almost perfect, Nine.
© Jonathan Cant
Jonathan Cant is a writer, poet, educator, and musician. His work was shortlisted in the 2025 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize; won the 2023 Banjo Paterson Writing Awards for Contemporary Poetry; and was longlisted in the 2023 Fish Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in Cordite, Island, Verandah, and Bristol Noir. Jonathan’s debut poetry collection, Finding Pan, is available at 5islandspress.com