This book is a sample of poems by contemporary poets who are also trained as scientists. The writers of this selection are drawn from the fields of freshwater ecology, mathematics, marine biology, neural physiology, ethnology, computing, phenomenology and biochemistry.
The mode of selection is modelled on the 1802 Lyrical Ballads, in the spirit of Miroslav Holub’s notion of ’serious play’, with the shared belief of Wordsworth and Coleridge that ‘poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is the countenance of all science.’
A dark blue hourglass on the bookshelf fills with evening light. I turn it over, watch the sand slip through its waist, narrow as a wasp’s & count the time it takes the sand to fall….
(from ‘Slippage’)
DAVID MORLEY read Zoology at Bristol University, gained a fellowship from the Freshwater Biological Association and pursued research. He co-founded the Writing Programme at the University of Warwick, of which he is now director, and develops and teaches new practices in scientific and creative writing. He co-edited The New Poetry for Bloodaxe. A sequence, Ludus Coventriae, is published by Prest Roots; another, Scientific Papers, is to be published by Carcanet in 2002.
ANDY BROWN is Lecturer in Creative Writing and Arts at the University of Exeter, and Centre Director for the Arvon Foundation at Totleigh Barton in Devon. He is the author of two collections, The Wanderer’s Prayer(Arc) and West of Yesterday(Stride), and two pamphlets of poetry; From a Cliff is to be published by Arc in 2002. He edited the highly praised Binary Myths and Binary Myths 2(Stride) and is the founding editor of Maquette Press.
