4th June - Elementary Poetry Workshop...and end of year party!

All are welcome to join us to celebrate the end of our elements series with a found poetry workshop using all of the texts we have read and discussed over the previous two academic years. See here for an online introduction to found poetry, and examples.

We meet on Monday 4th June in the Newnham Grange Seminar Room at Darwin College, from 7.30–9pm.

See you then!

Easter Term 2018 - Aether (take 2)

The Science and Literature Reading Group will hold two sessions which were postponed from last term due to industrial action. We first complete our explorations of the aether by looking at the theme of communication, across and beyond the globe. We will then celebrate the end of our elements series with a found poetry workshop using all of the texts we have read and discussed over the previous two academic years.

All are welcome to join in our wide-ranging and friendly conversations, which take place in the Newnham Grange Seminar Room at Darwin College on selected Monday evenings from 7.30–9pm. The group is organised by Melanie Keene and Charissa Varma.

For recaps, further readings, news, and other updates, please follow us on Twitter @scilitreadgrp or check this blog.

14th May – Communication

• Rudyard Kipling, ‘Wireless’ (1902)
• Philip R. Coursey, ‘Interplanetary Wireless?’, Wireless World (1920) 
• Eric Roach, ‘Beyond’ (1950)

 

4th June – End of year party and Elementary Poetry workshop

• Online introduction to found poetry, and examples

Various Modes of Cooking

As prepared by Mrs Beeton


Carrots in the German way,

Minced veal and macaroni.

Hashed partridges and jugged hare,

Hot crab and cucumbers.



Rolled loin of mutton, eel pie,

Veal pie (dish for a picnic).

Rich strong stock; medium stock;

Economical stock.



Sunderland gingerbread nuts

(an excellent recipe).

Rich bride, crimped cod, fried smelts, gruel.

Suckling pig, bullock’s heart.



Hodge-podge and Yarmouth Bloaters –

Red herrings – useful soup for

Benevolent purposes.

Universal pickle.

Clinical Signs

Found suppurating in D.J. Taylor, 'Pig Diseases' (4th edition)


A common inhabitant of the nasal

cavity of pigs, the organism grows

on MacConkey agar. No alternative

hosts of the organism are known.



Coughing is obvious when the animals

are disturbed. One or more animals in a

pen may be affected severely. Outbreaks

of sneezing occur in baby pigs.



Affected pigs appear hairy and growth may

be depressed. In severe cases they may scream

or walk on their knees. Short snouts may occur.

The role of vectors is uncertain.


Dead animals are usually in good

Condition. The spleen kidney and a long bone

should be submitted for examination.

Rodents should be eliminated.

Energy Flux at Earth

Observed slowly rotating in Binney and Merrifield, 'Galactic Astronomy'

The mean metallicity

of the stars: proper motion,

accepted distance, richness,

class, magnitude, position.

They will probably suffer.



It can be advantageous

To turn the procedure round.

We can use standard candles,

Plenty of cosmic rays and

Lots of cool gas, energy,

A source of noise, unity,

Rotating components and

Even vertex deviation.

Mistle-Thrush

Found nesting in T.A. Coward, ‘British Birds and Their Eggs’ (1920)


Early in the year when
The weather is broken
The bird perches high on a tall tree
And in exultant and ringing song
Defies the elements

Into the Microscope

Spied through 'A Popular Handbook to the Microscope' (1895)

Get the best stand you can, and remember
The double nosepiece is the most useful.
Join the Queckett Microscopical Club.
Learn to judge the sharpness of the image
And use no greater power than required.
Exquisite lilies start into being
Thin slices of the cuticle of leaves
Diatoms in equi-angular forms
And proper water-fleas or Daphniae
Marvellous changes in appearances
The eye needs educating as the hands
There is such desire to look into things
Bring it close to the eye and it blots out
Almost all we can see of earth and heaven

The Poetic Process

This year’s meetings were brought to a close with a wonderful poetry-writing workshop on Monday 9th June, led by Katy Price.

Katy introduced the session by commenting how she would have liked to have discovered more about the collaborative process behind Crawford’s Contemporary Poetry and Contemporary Science: how such works as Kinloch’s ‘The Organ Bath’ were crafted and drafted, unseating scientific vocabulary and ideas and making them do poetic work; becoming self-reflective as language was recruited to perform scientific functions. Attention to the activity of writing (and rewriting) poetry, she pointed out, also parallels the increased emphasis on communicating scientific methods, processes, and practices to wider audiences, as well as detailing experimental findings. She discusses this in more detail in her review of the volume for the BSLS website.

The workshop then gave us the chance to experience one particular poetic process ourselves, writing ‘found poetry’ from field guides and reference works. It was based on a similar seminar given by David Morley at the Poetry School in March 2007. Our chosen structure was syllabics: for inspiration in this relaxed form of verse, something of a half-way house between metre and free verse, we listened to Thom Gunn’s ‘Considering the Snail’. Diving into an eclectic range of texts, we tackled subjects including pig disease and microscopy, astrophysics and chordate evolution, birds and badgers, ending up with a wide range of styles, lengths, and approaches. Some examples of what we managed to ‘find’ in just over an hour’s searching should be appearing on the blog soon.