Mark Wyatt’s pattern poetry is in the tradition of the 20th Century American poet, John Hollander. The writing technique involves the use of graph paper and monospaced x’s on a computer screen, which allows the number of characters per line (letters + spaces + punctuation marks) to be calculated during the design process. While then drafting the poem (the one here inspired by a passage in Ovid’s Metamorphoses), the poet is constantly counting characters while concentrating at the same time on the poem’s semantic and musical qualities. For more details of the technique, please see the article ‘Using letters as number-like particles in constructing pattern poetry’ in the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts: https://doi.org/10.1080/17513472.2025.2518519. The poem ‘All that glitters’ includes references to poems by Carol Ann Duffy (‘Mrs Midas’) and Ted Hughes (‘Midas’). It is shaped as a flowing river through each 62-character line being divided into two.