6 Ways Poetry Meets Science

How are poetry and science connected, and what can they learn from one another? Zakia Carpenter-Hall, who will be teaching her Online Masterclass, Into Greater Fields of Possibility, with us this Autumn, explores the fascinating intersection where poetry meets science.

1. Exploration

Poets and scientists alike often observe the physical world, life within it, human experience or a combination of these. Their curiosity is a motivating force. 

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2. Experimentation

This includes trial and error, reaching for discoveries, drafting and redrafting, taking what was learned from old attempts and bringing that into the new. 

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3. Pattern

Poets make use of repetition, rhythm, rhyme – the pattern-making features of language. Scientists look for meaningful recurrences across many observations. The patterns reveal underlying characteristics, structures and principles.

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4. Surprising Connections

This includes everything from chemical reactions caused by bringing different elements together, to sparks of insight created by a good metaphor where disparate forms or ideas meet. These fusions make new compounds and combinations.

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5. Convey Complexity

Both share a best practice of finding elegant ways to communicate what is hard to grasp or describe. By ‘elegant’, I mean ‘succinct expression’. Poetry tends to be more pithy than prose. Science has ‘beautiful’ equations (a famous one is Einstein’s theory of relativity).

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6. The Unknown

Though both poets and scientists may start with what they know, the goal isn’t to stay there. The unfamiliar is a beacon. There’s no limit to what you may find. 

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If you’d like to learn more and explore the wondrous worlds in which poetry and science meet, Zakia is running her Online course Into Greater Fields of Possibility Masterclass with us this Autumn, starting on Tuesday 22 September. To find out more & to secure your place, please click here.

Zakia Carpenter-Hall is an American writer, tutor, editor, and critic living in the UK. She was a winner of Poetry London’s inaugural mentoring scheme, a London Library Emerging Writer, and a Jerwood Bursary Recipient. Her poetry and reviews have both been published in Poetry Wales, Poetry Review, Wild Court, Magma, and elsewhere. She was on the editorial teams for Magma 82, Poetry Wales 60.2, Ink Sweat & Tears and is a current co-editor of Magma 97. Her poetry pamphlet Into the Same Sound Twice (Seren, 2023) is featured among TLC’s ‘Success Stories’. In addition to teaching at the Poetry School, she’s taught creative writing at Kingston University and Royal Holloway, University of London. She’s a current Poet in Residence with Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre’s ‘Loopholes and Boxes’ project commemorating the life and work of Harriet Jacobs. www.zakiacarpenterhall.com