Mind expansion: pairing poets & scientists
Friday April 16, 2004
from The Poetry Society (UK)’s Poetrynews, with thanks to JforJames of the Newpoetry list for pointing out the story:
“Poets and Scientists: Some Experiments”
Poets have forever been drawn into collaboration with other artists -- musicians, visual artists, dancers -- but what of the current conjunctions between poetry and professions outside the arts? In March we saw publication of an anthology of lawyer-poets; now comes this report of two projects pairing poets & scientists in collaboration.
Reporter Janet Phillips asks the obvious question: “It’s easy to see what a poet might gain from shadowing a scientist: new material, insights, vocabulary. But for the scientists, is this anything more than an interesting way to spend lunch?” And she concludes that despite the differences between poets’ & scientists’ use of language & imagination, poets do indeed have something to teach scientists. We think the soon-to-be-published books arising out of these poet-scientist experiments promise to be very interesting reading:
Poetry and painting
Poetry from obscure & unusual sources
“Poets and Scientists: Some Experiments”
Poets have forever been drawn into collaboration with other artists -- musicians, visual artists, dancers -- but what of the current conjunctions between poetry and professions outside the arts? In March we saw publication of an anthology of lawyer-poets; now comes this report of two projects pairing poets & scientists in collaboration.
Reporter Janet Phillips asks the obvious question: “It’s easy to see what a poet might gain from shadowing a scientist: new material, insights, vocabulary. But for the scientists, is this anything more than an interesting way to spend lunch?” And she concludes that despite the differences between poets’ & scientists’ use of language & imagination, poets do indeed have something to teach scientists. We think the soon-to-be-published books arising out of these poet-scientist experiments promise to be very interesting reading:
- Wild Reckoning, “an anthology provoked by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring” published by the Calouste Gelbenkian Foundation
- Robert Crawford’s forthcoming book on poetry & science for Oxford University Press
Poetry and painting
Poetry from obscure & unusual sources


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