Today in the Guardian book blog you'll find an article entitled The Poetry of Life. Here's an excerpt.
Gillian K Ferguson has spent five years working on a mirror 'sequence' of 1,000 poems inspired by her wonder at the human DNA code being cracked.
Ferguson's aim is to offer a "poetic exploration" of a hugely important subject - "the ultimate poem/mother-poem - original poem - the Word" - whose technical complexity closes to all but a few. We know, in theory, that science, like poetry, begins in wonder. But Ferguson goes further, attempting to show by example that poetry is an ideal guide for the lay reader to the mysteries of science - and to restore a poetic dimension to science that is often obscured.
The full collection is available online at The Human Genome: Poems on the Book of Life.
This is an AMAZING project that I can't wait to spend some time perusing. You'll find quotes and background information generously sprinkled throughout the work, with representations from the Bible, Darwin, Coleridge, Whitman, Wordsworth and many, many others. This project is a fine example of what Kelly Fineman wrote of a few days ago--Research for poetry.
If you have any interest at all in the intersection of science and poetry, and even if you don't, go now and read.
If you have any interest at all in the intersection of science and poetry, and even if you don't, go now and read.
What, Tricia...do you not want me to get any work done at all?? This is fascinating!
ReplyDelete