If you’re attending SLSA 2019 or in the LA / Orange County area, there are two chances to hear from our roundtable about the science of poetry:

Thursday, 11/7 at Skylight Books in LA, 7:30pm and Saturday, 11/9 at UCI, 3:45-5:15

Poetry and Science at the Margins: In this roundtable, six poets will read and discuss work about their engagements with science that was or is considered peripheral to mainstream scientific theory and practice. The participants are Will Alexander, Karen Leona Anderson, Kristin George Bagdanov, Amy Catanzano, Adam Dickinson and Stephanie Strickland. Addressing physics, mathematics, biology, as well as other scientific disciplines, these poets will ask how cultural forces shape and define “the marginal” as well as the ingenious ways that science was transformed by marginal practitioners. This roundtable will also ask why poetry, as a genre sometimes considered both marginal and experimental, is well suited to treat questions of knowledge, power, and speculation at the boundaries, and we’ll discuss how poets use such language not just to represent, but to intervene in, the processes of scientific inquiry.  Drawing on everything from early microscopy to contemporary physics, these readings will Involve the audience in a discussion of the embodied, material consequences of “experimental engagements” for both scientists and poets