“…a strong love for the natural world, an ongoing fascination with the hidden nature of the unvierse, and a compulsive pleasure in putting things together and seeing what happens…”
Is this from the bio of scientist? A poet? Maybe it’s either of them, or someone who’s both and more. When it comes to creative writing and scientific inquiry, lines of professional demarcation don’t always hold.
Poetry and science have always had overlapping territory.
For instance, the University of Washington’s Creative Writing department got together with the Marine Biology department and came up with a great idea: throws poets, scientists, and students together on a boat, and see what happens. The class is still ongoing, and you can read more about it in this 2015 article from Seattle’s Stranger.
In April of this year, Maria Popova of Brain Pickings hosted a poetic tribute to science. Along with the Academy of American Poets and astrophysicist Janna Alvin, Popova gathered poets and celebrity authors in Boston for The Universe in Verse, an evening of poems about science and scientists.
Here’s a highlight: Sarah Jones performing a poem by Campbell McGrath about Jane Goodall.
(Jane Goodall was one of my Big Three childhood heroes, which also included Eugenie Clark and Indiana Jones. I love this reading.)
And here’s a link to Ten Poems to Get You Through Science Class, from the Poetry Foundation, including this one by Susan Mitchell, “The Bear.”
by Susan Mitchell
heavy, lumbering—is clear as wind.
but always coming out again.
