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The Search for the Golden Fib was a public creative writing competition we held in 2009, based around the curious six-line, twenty syllable poetic form, the Fib.

Based, like many good things, on the Fibonacci sequence, The Fib is a poetic form with a strict formal syllable structure, a little bit like a Haiku. The  number of syllables on each line follows the classic mathematical sequence, so that the number of syllables in the next line is found by adding the two previous ones together. Like so:

1
1
2
3
5
8

Make sense, maths fans? Good.

In the build-up to the 2009 festival, we ran a competition to search for the best six-line wonder. Out of nearly 400 submissions, ten finalists were chosen to go through to the live grand final at the launch of the festival.

In a nail-biting face-off, the finalists were performed by and , and the winning, Golden Fib was chosen live by editor Anna Goodall.

The finalists all appear in the March ‘09 relaunch issue of Pen Pusher Magazine. The winner also received the priceless Golden Fib trophy and a festival pass.

On the left you can view the finalists, their poems brilliantly transformed into poster form by designer

To view all the entries, and have a go at writing your own Fib, . There you will also find some star fibs from friends of the festival including and .

 
*The Fib is an original invention by Gregory K Pincus. Read more about how he came up with it .