Two upcoming poetry events

Science, Poetry and Creative Writing, 11-12.15pm on Sunday 16 November, Bristol Mercure Holland House.

I (Jonathan Taylor, Lecturer in Creative Writing in the School of English) am hosting and giving a poetry reading at this panel, as part of the National Association of Writers in Education annual Conference. Other poets reading and speaking will be Simon Perril from De Montfort University and Lisa Mansell from Staffordshire University.

“Mysteries do not lose their poetry when solved. Quite the contrary; the solution often turns out more beautiful than the puzzle.” (Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow) In March 2014, the journal Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (vol.39:1) featured three articles by the contributors to this panel. In very different ways, the articles all intermingle creative, reflective, academic and critical writing, in explorations of the borderlands between science and poetry. Through creative and reflective practice, that is, the articles explore the themes, analogies, structures, histories and metaphors of different scientific discourses. This panel showcases the poetry and articles, hoping to demonstrate some of the possibilities for hybrids of reflective, critical, poetic and, indeed, scientific writing. For this reason, the panel will include both poetry readings and contextual reflection on that poetry.

I will be reading from and talking about a series of poems on cosmological themes in my collection Musicolepsy (Shoestring Press, 2013), which were originally written for N.A.S.A’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory in Harvard, and inspired by some of Chandra’s findings. You can see some of the poems on N.A.S.A.-Chandra’s website here:

http://chandra.harvard.edu/blog/node/190
http://chandra.harvard.edu/blog/node/365
http://chandra.harvard.edu/blog/node/207

Incidentally, the poem ‘Black Hole in B-Flat’ also featured in issue 1 of New Walk Magazine, edited by Nicholas Everett, Lecturer in English and American Studies in the School of English, and Rory Waterman.

See: http://www.nawe.co.uk/writing-in-education/nawe-conference/nawe-conference-programme/sunday.html for further information.

Leicester Shindig! Open-Mic Poetry Evening, Monday 17 November, 7.30pm in The Western Pub, Leicester, LE3 0GA
Free and open to all: Crystal Clear Creators and Nine Arches Press present Leicester Shindig! Open-Mic Poetry Evening, featuring guest writers D A Prince, Ben Wilkinson, Michael Thomas, Andrew Taylor. Sign up for open-mic slots on the door. Free and all welcome, presented by CrystalClear Creators and Nine Arches Press. See poster below for further details.