Newcastle Lit & Phil Blog
National Poetry Day 2005: The Future
05 May 2006
Poetry & Science Conference, Lit & Phil, Newcastle - 4 May, 2006
What a great day yesterday. Who would have thought a room full of scientists and poets would have so much in common. Wonderful too, to hear scientists say that science proves nothing - that their proof lies in prooving what is not. The more I listen to the scientists, the more they begin to sound like poets! I love the idea that both scientists and poets are 'picking', 'scratching' away at things. I said at the conference yesterday that for me, enlightenment comes from having the wit to ask the questions, and not from finding the answers. I've felt this for some time and it was great to hear the scientists identify with the idea.
As a writer, I loved the concept put forward by Tom Shakespeare that science is good with the what,where and how, but perhaps not so good with the why of things and that perhaps the why of things is best dealt with by the arts. I've just emailed Tom and told him that although as a poet, I don't purport to try and explain the why of things, I do accept that I'm engaged with the why of things. His reasoning, that the why is more emotional, perhaps even spiritual really appeals to me and his expressing that concept, makes me feel much more worthwhile as a poet.
I found the discussion about poetry possibly being compromised by being used as a vehicle to understand science (and in my experience, many other topics too), really honest and thought-provoking and something we should not lose sight of.
I want to go off now and write about blood and bones, and trees and pass-it-on issues and selfish genes etc. etc. Now if only one of these scientists could find a way of adding a few more hours into each day and doubling the amount of energy I have!
Lovely meeting everybody and I hope we can continue this collaboration.
Maureen Almond
15 April 2006
Now that the Poetry and Science Conference is on the horizon I've found myself thinking again about the links between science and poetry. I've been looking up definitions of science. Here's a definition from the New Collins Concise:
'Science is the systematic study of the nature and behaviour of the material and physical universe, based on observation, experiment and measurement.'
It defines poetry as:
'Literature in metrical form; verse..... the art or craft of writing verse' poetic qualities are shown as, 'spirit or feeling in anything'.
As we scientists and poets would expect, neither definition seems adequate. I've certainly found many different definitions of poetry by a wide variety of people and none of those definitions on their own, seem wholly to capture for me, the nature of poetry.
One of the stated aims for the upcoming conference is to 'take The Poetry Experiment further, by comparing poetic and scientific methods and exploring the implications for educational approaches.' I'd be hard pushed to present in a truly structured way, my poetic methods, but the more I think about it, the more I realise thatI base my poems on observation, experiment and measurement. So, am I a scientist? From working with Ashleigh, John and Malathi and listening to their feedback, I'm certain that there are implications for educational approaches.
In an earlier diary entry (7 September, 2005) I said that I thought the main difference between poets and scientists was the tendency for the scientist to explain everything and for the poet to explain nothing, except obliquely. The quality I think we have in common, (if we're any good!), is to think outside the box - to experiment, tinker, play with the 'what if'.
On the evening of 4th May, after the conference, I'll be reading, so I've been thinking about what science-related poems I might have in addition to the three I wrote for the first part of this experiment, and I've realised that I can't in any case, extricate myself from the influence of science, given its opening definition as 'the study of the nature and behaviour of the physical universe.' Surely that's what all poetry is about.
Maureen Almond
27 September 2005
It is a week since my meeting with Maureen and after promising to try an
entry for the web-site blog, I have found that thinking about what to
write for the site has had me questioning the whole 'Poetry Experiment'
process.
When I volunteered for the experiment, I had no idea what would be
expected or how I would find the experience. However, the correspondence
between Maureen and myself has been almost like a couple of old friends
discussing long forgotten memories. There are certain aspects of my work
that I have had to expand upon for Maureen but, I am very proud to say,
that she has grasped the ideas very quickly. I have found that we are
talking about the same things from two, not so completely different,
angles. I have helped Maureen think about an aspect of science that she
previously did not know about and in return she has helped me understand
the need for integration and clear explanation of the science I am
involved in.
I have always been acutely aware of the need for demystification of
science for the wider community, however, I would not have thought it
possible for someone to write such a descriptive and factual poem about
the work that I do, making it informative yet elegant to hear. I am more
than happy to say that I have been proved wrong!
Ashleigh Fletcher
21 September 2005
I am an evolutionary psychologist, working with Maureen Almond on the Science and Poetry project. My research concerns the evolutionary origins of cooperation and altruism, in the living world in general and more particularly in ourselves. I gave Maureen an image of the Good Samaritan. It has been rewarding and enjoyable discussing my research with Maureen and explaining how biologists and psychologists seek to understand the evolution and motivation of behaviour. In doing this I have had a modest new insight into understanding the evolution of morality so the interaction has certainly been of benefit (selfish me!).
An unexpected outcome is that I have written a poem on the relationship between science and poetry, and have had the pleasure and benefit of Maureen's comments on my poem. I, in turn, have commented on the scientific content of Maureen's poem. She has captured well current thinking on the evolutionary origins of human goodness.
John Lazarus
20 September 2005
Shows what I know about science! In my 7th September entry I referred to thoughts about true altruism being 'the latest thinking', what I should have said was that it's one line of thinking. What I have found is that I'm talking to all sorts of people, asking them what they think about whether true altruism really exists - whether we have it in us to be naturally good. The variety of responses is amazing. I'm looking forward to my meeting with John Lazarus tomorrow, maybe that will persuade me. He's also been writing his own poem and asking me to comment on it. Of course I want him to cut it down, and to be fair, he's altered it quite a bit. It's great learning about the difference in approach; the sharing is really good.
Today I went to meet up with Malathi Natarajan. I've chosen to write about one of the many aspects of public health she's looking at at the moment - smoking. It seems to me that a lot of the anti-smoking material is directed at young people, I understand that, but typically (I think poets are rather perverse in this respect), I want to address this issue from the point of view of older smokers. I'm influenced by this for a number of reasons, not least of which was a visit to North Tees Hospital last week where the first sight that greeted me was a number of dressing-gowned, shall we say, 'older' people, puffing away on their fags, but also from my own experience of smokers. So my poem will be addressed to 'Old Smokie' (not the mountain)
Malathi was great and we hit it off straight away. She got the 'ironic' approach I was taking and felt it summed up the picture well. The scientist in her did just wonder whether I could put forward the positive benefits in not smoking - I said I could, but didn't want my poem to read like a commercial for the Health Service - fortunately there is enough of the poet in Malathi to understand fully where I was coming from. She was a gracious host and we had a very healthy lunch together. One of the exciting things about this is that none of us really know what to expect on the evening of 6th October, but we're enjoying the exchange and the process.
I'm also meeting with Ashleigh tomorrow and I'm determined to ask her how many miles to the full cell of alternative fuel I can look forward to. Wonder if we'll have to pay as much duty on it!
Don't know what my email box must look like at the moment: fuel that never runs out, goodness genes and now I'm asking Malathi for pictures of diseased lungs!
I notice Linda's been given a tub of ground ochre to play with - I didn't fancy asking Malathi for some fag ends. Somehow it doesn't have the same sort of appeal!
Maureen Almond
18 September 2005
Last Thursday Jon, Lucy and I met for coffee. We talked about our work and found common themes even though it looked from the outside as if we were doing very different things.
I enjoyed having a new element to stir into the pot - Lucy's work as a community doctor, working with families.
Afterwards I went to Jon's lab and came away with a large tub of ground ochre, which I am going to play with - conduct my own experiments!
13 September 2005
I visited Linda last week to talk to her about some of the science I'm doing and take her to see some of the sites I've been working on. I think I got across some of the excitement I feel for the things I deal with, we had an interesting time looking at things and talking.
I feel comfortable talking about what I do, showing objects and images but this experiment should impact me. I don't know how yet...maybe it could help me get across my amazement at the way the world is put together?..maybe something else?
Jonathan Aumônier
12 September 2005
Visit to old mining sites at Acomb and Blenkinsop (Northumberland) to look at the ochre – sometimes gold and sometimes blue.
That’s all I feel I can share at the moment – my head’s whirling with images and information...
Linda France
07 September 2005
As well as the Good Samaritan image, I now have copious emails and notes from John Lazarus about Altruism and Cooperation, The Samaritan Paradox, about the selfish gene and evolutionary psychology. I didn't know we were all so complicated! Well I had a bit of an idea having worked in the Probation Service as a personnel manager for nearly twenty years.
John has sent me a poem he's written about the crossover between science and poetry in general, and has asked me to respond to it. I've done that and am waiting now to see what his further response is. One difference I've noticed is that there's a tendency for the scientist to explain everything and for the poet to explain nothing, except in an oblique way. I hope that doesn't reflect life's choices; either perfect clarity or total obscurity - I rather like the middle ground of opacity.
I feel a bit guilty actually, about trying to shrink everything John's sent me, down into a sonnet - or at least my take, on everything he's sent me - it seems such an insult.
It has made me think though. Normally when I read the Good Samaritan story, I think about it in terms of trying to emulate the actions of the Samaritan, until now I'd never thought of it from the point of view of the recipient of the Samaritan's actions. Despite my reading and the latest thinking, which seems to support the view that we all have a natural 'goodness' gene, I remain somewhat cynical. My hope for the future (the theme of this project) is simple in relation to responding to this image, it is the hope that we can all come to believe, (myself included), that there are strong altruists out there.
More when I pluck up the courage to send John my sonnet and see what he says!
Maureen Almond
29 August 2005
I've now come up with a poem in which Ashleigh (we're on first name terms now, following numerous emails!)recognises the science of her subject. I'm not going to say here yet, what the image is because if I have time, I'd like to do another poem which, whilst inspired by the science, takes it away again from the original subject and I think the two poems side by side could be quite interesting.
I must put my mind now to something completely different, an image of the Good Samaritan supplied by Dr. John Lazarus. I don't know as yet what approach I'm going to take to this one, but certainly I'm beginning to think about the story not just from a 'Christian' point of view. I must admit I'd never quite thought of the Samaritan's actions as perhaps being part of Reputation Theory. I'd always thought of him rather as a 'passive' character being used to get a message across to those so-called 'Christians' who'd acted in a non-Christian way. I'm also chewing over thoughts about whether as humans we're born naturally selfish, or naturally 'good' - whether indeed any of us do anything even vaguely Samaritan-like, without the notion of some payback, either immediate or predicted. That latter thought is scary! What does it say about love?
At the moment my emails to John Lazarus are asking things like, "are the brain patterns of those who act like Samaritans different from those who don't?". I guess I won't even understand the full answer when I read John's response, but it won't reduce the fun of trying to find out and coming up with a poetic response to his image. A look at your brain scan for a look at mine! Maybe in future we'll all be going along this route as part of pre-nuptual agreements!
23 August 2005
One of the wonderful things about poetry is that it leads to all sorts of interesting places. I've just received a beautiful image from Dr. Fletcher. I wanted my first response to be 'blind', that is, I wanted to respond to the image without any knowledge of what it was. To me the picture I received could have been anything from a jellyfish to the cross section of a strand of hair. I decided to regard it as a cell and wrote a sonnet to it. Dr. Fletcher's response was fascinating. It wasn't a cell of course! She's given me some background to what she's working on and I've fired a few more questions back to her and now await her further response. She says that what I'd written, whilst not directly related to her science, has made her think about the science and her image in particular, "in a very different way". For my part, thanks to Dr. Fletcher, I now have a few more wonderful 'sciency' words to play around with. I picked up on an idea of life and shape-changing from the image and it appears that is very present in the science so already, we are seeing a striking overlap of concepts between the science and poetry. I think this will be a very interesting project and I'm looking forward to seeing where it takes me.
Maureen Almond
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