Features - March 2012

Like a metaphor

Ongoing relations between 'poetry' and 'science'

Star birth in the Carina Nebula, seen by the Hubble Space Telescope (image courtesy of NASA).

The following forum, initially taking off from a PoemTalk program on a Zukofsky lyric, directly engages questions regarding relations between poetry and science (a range of sciences).

March 13, 2012

Poetry supplement

Pandora's Cluster — Abell 2744 (image courtesy of NASA).

This coda/continuation features poems sent to the Jacket2 forum on poetry and science but not directly involved in any of the various threads; perhaps, however, multiple cross-ignitings of relevance will appear to those who have negotiated some of the preceding exchanges and poems. There is also an essay by Allen Fisher of some importance for his aesthetic work included here. 

March 13, 2012

On Australian Aboriginal poetry

'The last evening glow above the horizon'

Left: early colonial “Australian Aboriginal” map displayed at Imperial Archive, Queen’s University, Belfast; right: October 1885 map of Western Australia from the Perry-Castañeda Library at University of Texas at Austin inscribed: “Physical Sketch Map of Northwest Australia showing the surface characteristics of the country and discoveries of the most recent explorers.”

I met Robbie Wood in the fall of 2006, when we were coparticipants in a seminar at the University of Pennsylvania. Both from Commonwealth countries, and from quite remote areas, we bonded over our shared experiences of the oddities of living in a big city in the USA. Our senses of being at home within the American version of the English language and comfortable within our new cultural milieu were complicated by our distinct but related experiences of more overt and obvious forms of settler colonialism. 

March 6, 2012