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 and scientists in collaboration:
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,” by Janet Phillips
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’ and scientists’ use of language and 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
- Contemporary Poetry and Contemporary Science, a book written by University of St. Andrews literature professor Robert Crawford for Oxford University Press
Poetry and Painting
Poetry from Obscure and Unusual Sources
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