Science Communication through Poetry Anthology

Science Communication through Poetry Anthology Class of 2023

Alchemy

by Kathy Fawcett

If I cried now for our broken world, the flood would swell the rising seas but never stop the burning.

So I dam my eyes, and a new alchemy transmutes all my tears to fire.

And I RAGE.

Arid

by Kayla-Jane Barrie Hematite winds, Sweep the terrain.

Botanicals wither, Under waves of drought.

Fragrant blossoms, Dreaming under rust.

Roots of immortals, A hidden oasis.

Particles of life, Evaporate.

Arrival of the Fattest

by Anna Joyce Oh, ripe fruit of my ancestors, sweet, luscious sustenance, how you flow with abundance.

Flesh feeding flesh crucial calories sought and stored as fat, fat oh fabulous fat for survival through famished winters.

Oh, sweet calories of my ancestors, how you would recoil at what your dopamine surge has become.

From adaptation to adiposity through artificial selection of the sweetest fruits and pure powdered pleasure sold in paper bags and dissolved into every pre-packaged product on sale.

Oh, sweet stores with sugared shelves, marketing to unsuspecting addicts, how your users return with their dopamine-marked memories foraging sumptuous snacks to hoard in their homes and feed their pre-diabetic children.

Consumption shaped by cultural convention, economies, and aeons of evolution.

Yet, you can't quash individual intention.

So today, I will not eat cake.

Auroral Appreciation by Áine Flood

Unexpected, unfamiliar Shining lights dancing in the sky, Bright against the cold dark air Energy moves, swaying.

Magic in the night.

Myth inducing Molecules Burst and Glow.

Battle of the pigments

by Eva Haas

As the days get shorter and rain is picked up by winds deep inside the leaves of a mighty beech tree an argument unhinges.

Two pigments in opposition!

Listen:

»Oh, camouflaged in summer time, shielding my mighty home like my best fellow, respecting strength from glow and shadow.

Oh, now it’s time for me to shine!

Yellow«

»My sister, I must stand my ground!

Absorbing energy like a summer’s queen from the nutritious summer’s beam.

It’s surely me who gets the tree crowned!

Green«

»Hear me, your time expired, chlorophyll.

Your job’s no longer needed, till the spring birds chime mellow.«

As the argument goes on the mighty beech tree feels the need to intervene hands-on:

»The joy of both of you I feel, just different sections of the colour wheel.

Living since well before the dawn of man:

green life line, yellow guardian.

Don’t worry for my chemistry, I found a mighty remedy.

Store all of green’s good energy to take on seasonal dormancy.

Releasing green in harmony, make room for yellow’s legacy.«

»Alright, alright, I do concede!

Till spring, when spring birds come and sing.

But I’ll be back, I surely will, so watch this space!« said chlorophyll.

Beaufort’s Estimation of Wind Force

by D.J. Garbutt

Force

Name

Effects

0

Calm

smoke rises vertically, leaves still

1

Light air ‘Willows whiten’, Poplars shiver, wind vanes—stolid

2

Light breeze

Breezes on the face wind vanes move at last Oak leaves rustle, acorns fall tsk-drops on dry soil

3

Gentle breeze

Red Kites fly without flapping for hours, crows chase them like pieces of paper torn from the book of night; light flags extended

4

Breeze

Dust in spirals, small branches in photos are blurred; a washed silk shirt dries quickly

5

Fresh breeze

Crested wavelets on Staines reservoir scoters hard to see; white horses beneath Bonxie’s wings; spray

6

Strong breeze

Washing blows away, whistling in telegraph wires denim dries quickly

7

Moderate Trees in motion, inconvenience felt gale when walking; spindrifts; Flocks of Fieldfare passing by, quickly, downwind

8

Fresh gale

Few small birds moving twigs snap and fall, leaves never landing

9

Gale

Slates slide off the roof to crash on the pavement a wolfhound runs up the street lightning makes snap shots it cannot be heard

10

Whole gale

Trees uprooted, greenhouses fly past, steel building sides tumble up into the sky and are gone, the suspended ceiling, pants as if dancing the polka.

Doors? Don’t open them

Beneath the Sun

by Nuala O’Flynn In my youth, the sun was a beacon, Promise of summer, lazy days, Yearning for its warm touch, painting my skin in hues, Laughter and light, Mourning as day turned night.

I grew older seeing beyond the surface, Delving into scientific secrets, No longer just warmth and light, but burning hydrogen, No longer just summer, but Earth's tilt, No longer just a suntan, but Ultraviolet Light, The Sun's allure dimmed.

In pursuit of the universe's knowledge, I turned from the sun, Once familiar warmth overshadowed by distant stars, Not the biggest, nor the grandest, Never to go supernova, Never a black hole, Rejecting simplicity, its predictable path through the sky.

Yet, I never truly left, still yearning for warmth, Longing for summer's gentle rays, Finally finding solace in unassuming presence, Recognising the extraordinary in ordinary ways.

In its averageness, allowing calm, In that calm, life developed, The steady radiance of light, a delicate balance, A canvas for existence, a cradle for life's birth.

Brain Waves

by Kathryn J. McCullough Electrical bursts that crest Against a calcium encasement The brain waves

Case study: why we need to hyphenate (colonial)-science

by Lucy Aphramor

This body that is exquisitely sensitive to ingested glucose So much so that it can be tipped over the textbook threshold and into diabetes merely by eating a bit much sugar And yet – here’s the pinch – manages to survive and breathe incredibly metabolically inert with regard to every bitter non-food threat to its existence – Terror, indignity, displacement. War, assault, humiliation, pollution – These variables are – as per base Evidence - lived through indelibly Oh body of knowledge of choke-hold indelicacies of beautiful neutral white dietetics. Let them simply eat veg, move more, and Be Resilient Though by beautiful I mean terrible By neutral I mean genocidal By white I mean delusional By dietetics I mean racist cishet-patriarchal project of scientific imperialism

By Be Resilient I mean FFS stop, Stop, drop everything, drop to your knees

weep

if you can

feel now how we kindly brandishing our Rightness our clever colonial-science got this so wrong

finding

by Yemurai Chaza Large, deep spaces within, unseen to the eye.

In the beginning, these spongy sacred spaces formed and held memories.

Now enlarged, these spaces are hollow.

Oh the weary head mindless.

We see the vessel; a body withering away, even in thought and cold, in every season.

We are still searching, to understand, finding what once was and learning why the mind is no more.

Goodnight glymphatics

by Sophie Quick Motionless murine, always asleep, paravascular pulse, dozing deep.

Waking the mouse, what did they find?

The mysterious method to clearing your mind.

The secret system streams, and drains.

Wake, no waste, just washed-clean brains.

Glymphatic vessels glide away the amyloid beta of your day.

Network nestled in plain sight, astrocytes active through the night, expanding space between each cell.

Rub your eyes, did you sleep well?

Sleeping soundly, fluid flows, tau tangles off to where waste goes.

No need to remember “when’s bin day?”

At night it’s collected either way.

The purpose of our slumbering rest.

Wasting time? No, time for waste.

Would you forgo eight hours in bed and take a pill or jag instead?

Is sleeping simply scrubbing clean What we've done and who we've been?

They've opened up the how and why.

Perhaps let sleeping mouses lie.

In the news today

by Angela McG

Another old white man, albeit a popular one, one who teaches us about the green and blue, the flying and the predating world has been honoured.

An animal from an island in the Pacific wandering the jungle on a mountain range, an ant-eater, different from other ant-eaters, Echidna-s, by the length of its beak – rarely seen, shy, nocturnal, believed - by Western scientists – to be extinct, its re-discovery - by Western scientists celebrated by adding the name of the nature TV presenter many of us like to its Latin name.

The people of Papua who live by the Cyclops Mountain hold the ant-eater sacred and use it in a ritual that helps reconcile communities.

The people of Papua by the Cyclops Mountain have a name for it, a name that was mentioned once in the TV news segment this morning, But doesn’t find its way into the writing on the BBC News website.

The scientists doing the re-discovering and celebrating by naming mention briefly that those same Papuan people tried to stop the scientists’ adventure, by invoking the sacredness of the mountain and all that dwells there, but in the end, the scientists won the fight and get to stamp the white man’s name all over this story.

For now.

Insomniac

by Lee Haines

I Nightly Seek silence O’er the bawl of My frolicking lambs.

Nocturnal hypnosis Inhale, exhale, deep; repeat.

As heartbeat and mind relax, my Closed eyes guide monochrome sheep to sleep.

Light pollution

by Tessa Zonneveld 1.

To start your research feels as if you're walking through a busy street.

The city lights shine all around, billboards, lanterns, shops compete.

Structure is still hard to find, with new facts here, opinions there.

Your eyes glide along high facades to find support up in the air.

Three close friends you always see, Strong Orion and the Great Bear, Cassiopeia clear up high, despite the light through which you stare.

2.

With hope to find a clearer sky, you leave behind the crowded space.

Stars appearing as you walk, a framework starts to fall in place.

Details keep appearing still, new constellations taking shape, as you wander past the rural land, till darkness fills the full landscape.

3.

No light pollution hides the sky full of ideas, theories and claims.

You can study Ursa minor and those without such well-known names.

Probing deeper in the sky, connections grow and start to hide the friends, the theories, once held dear, no longer valued as a guide.

Thus where city lights drown out all thoughts the rural land too intervenes.

Be aware that noise is found in crowded and deserted scenes.

Meiosis

by Elizabeth Bridges The stages of meiosis, one and two, chromosomes duplicate then split, take one diploid cell double, then divide, then repeat, equals 4 haploid cells, creating some potential for new Life.

Mycelium Melody

by Yanyi Lu Snow outside my pane, Fungi wear a coat of white, Silent earth whispers.

Beneath the frozen cloak they wear, Mycelium murmurs in the frigid air.

Chemical codes in snowflakes bind, A secret language of roots entwined.

Caps adorned with crystal grace, Mushrooms converse in a frozen space.

Nature's dialogue in quiet tones, A silent symphony of mycelial drones.

neighbours save us by shade b resilience through community, not promised by economy. profit-fuelled disasters rise; it may be a surprise authorities fail to save us when fires strike - but neighbours do

News: Bass beat beats diabetes

by Helen van de Pol Faulty bodies fired with sound waves.

Rock. Meeting programmed cells. ‘n’ Roll. Releasing insulin.

Only bass notes pierce flesh Like ancient rhythms Our ancestors Danced and sung Bodies Strong.

Ode to the Trypanosome

by Louise McAteer

There's forty million of you in this flask, Yet to my eye the liquid's clear until The microscope reveals a seething mass, A writhing shoal adrift in 20 mL. Each squiggle wriggles in a frantic dance, Creating clone from clone by perfect fission.

You stealthy cheat, you monstrous elegance!

Who lurk in vein and lymph and interstitium.

Unwanted interloper, thieving scab!

My ancestors and yours fought deadly battle – An arms race won by man but lost by cattle, Who still succumb to you. Here in the lab You flail with frenzied fervour, wild to shake The antibodies that assail, but take It easy, tryp, and have no fear: There are no cruel antibodies here.

You do not flail in vain, though, little tryp!

There's promise in this research partnership; The rivets of your enigmatic tail May yet, when understood, expose a frail Spot in the armour of your lethal kin Or novel lines of study underpin.

– But if someone a trillion times my size Looked down on me with scientific eyes, Would they likewise see something out of place, Hard-wired to flee the foes I'll never face, Or rather as a cog in – dare I hope – Some grand and worthy scheme beyond my scope?

Rats have imaginations

by Penny Peck Scientists played a game with us rats, Experimenting with our minds, To see if we remembered The way to the test goal.

They techd us up and Found we daydream – Just like them.

Magic Minds!

Salt of the Earth

by Isaac Bolton In darkness I offered a warm embrace, Dormant crystal lips that once held secrets, Nights of silence now sprinkled in sleepless, I dream in circles to escape day’s race.

Pacifist named poison pushed past precipice, Screaming tongues now lost on stardust siblings, Or ears now blocked to their known misgivings, Guilty, perhaps, I dream Persepolis.

Hands held on heart as iced eyes glaze over, I grasp at gravel through teeth newly gritted, Surrender in saline solitude and sorrow.

Apologies lost delays composure, And options well known still left unpermitted, Await this incurable loss of tomorrow.

Seagrass: breathing new life into the lungs of the world

by Jane Flint Bridgewater

Dark below the jade green waves, Hoong Island, Sierra Leone, shadow meadows reveal themselves.

We delve for strands of wet green weed, soft stubby sprouts to slippery ribbons, detect a quiet trickle of oxygen for shallow fish schools.

Many millions of years ago, flowering plants migrated oceans’ way, keeping roots, leaves, flowers, seeds - carbon from the atmosphere. Like mangroves, kelp forests and coral reefs, they save our healthy seas, grass meadows more resilient than seaweed in waters around 150 known countries. Seahorses, crabs, shrimp lurk in thick grasses, seeking refuge beneath the swollen canopy.

Manatees and turtles stop to munch algae covered leaves.

Sponges, clams, sea anemones nestle between the blades of grass.

These ecosystem engineers reduce erosion during storms, bury carbon, and human seagrass missionaries send boats away.

Silent communication

by Georgia Papadimitriou Can the brain really tell its secrets before death?

In tiny neural whispers, hidden truths take their breath.

Cells release cues, in times of despair, small extracellular vesicles revealing mysteries so rare.

What is the stress, as life hangs by a thread?

The brain: silent witness, with messages still unread.

Special Relativity

by Zsófia Szalavári How do we think about space and time?

It is the ticking of a clock And the moving of a train Einstein’s ideas were new Moving clocks run slow Speeding trains shrink Twins age in A blink.

Right?

Starlight star bright

by Kathryn Boast

I gaze in wonder at the stars above, The distant glowing orbs that prick the sky.

I think about the tiny flecks of light, And how they come to end up in my eye.

Released perhaps a thousand years ago, A hundred trillion miles from where I stare, Heat and pressure urging fusion on, Resulting in the stellar white-hot glare.

Out in all directions streams the light, Sprinting night and day through empty space At seven hundred million miles an hour, Until it finally finds my upturned face.

You could have hit the rocks or empty sea; I thank my lucky stars that you hit me.

Talking Head

by Ivars Šteinbergs At the Anatomy Museum in Riga The corner of my one eye is as sharp as a paper knife.

When I, a dedication, was cut open, there was as much candour as flirty secrecy. I only have the left, i.e., the logical, hemisphere, therefore, being entirely rational, I know that "intelligent design" is the most boring answer to the most interesting question.

Undressed to the nerves, I feel, beyond touch, the moment I press into your mind to finally speak in dreams – the voice of your closest relatives – releasing bubbles in formaldehyde.

Photographed, I multiply, entwined with cameras and phones by invisible mycelium. I'm not here, but the faces of you who approach my jar like a mirror that’s meant for truth, but never says it, rather stays mute like a professor, having asked a trick question. Eyelid, the sphinx's wing, closed, ear to the glass, I listen to guesses of excursionists; every day they pull my lips a nanometre closer to a smile.

Translated from the Latvian by the author

The Ballad of PM10

by Sarah Osborne

I am coughed from the engine’s mouth, Hot breath on rubber feet.

Grabbed by the throttle with no care, Microscopic yet indiscreet.

Soaring into still summer’s air, From embryo to child.

Trace metals searching for their kin, Pedestrians beguiled.

And so deep into lungs I go, Carbon black at my core.

Macrophage armies gather troops, A presence I deplore.

Gatekeepers to my journey’s end, Intending to destroy, Inflaming tensions from within, Their being brings no joy.

Yet I the cancer grown by man, Appears to get the blame.

If only cars were left at home, Would we be spared this pain?

‘No’ I hear a vehicle shout From a nearby city street ‘Electric is the future, We’ll make particulates obsolete.’

Still truth be told upon this night More research must be done For ev – idence of their health effects Has only just begun.

The Map is Not the Territory (after Niels Bohr)

by Richard Marshall

When I speak of atoms I must do so as a poet my task is not to tell you what is and what is really so Rather I speak as I can of what is known of what we can say and you must do the real work Making connections and conjuring images that give life to mere mathematical models when I speak of atoms as a poet.

The tree that weeps

by Alex Davey Do you ever think, on the mindless commute – rolling along, cushioned from bumps, that gripping the road, keeping you safe – is the sap of cauchuk, the tree that weeps?

Two billion tyres manufactured and sold, used and discarded each prosperous year; each begins life as the milky sap, tapped from the trunk of cauchuk, the tree that weeps.

Product of empire, Wickham’s contraband from new world to old in a smuggler’s hold, marched o’er a continent: mile after mile engulfed by cauchuk, the tree that weeps.

And still it grows: a forest the size of Denmark destroyed in my lifetime and yours, as tiger and elephant, leopard and gibbon cry out for cauchuk, the tree that weeps.

Do you think of the farmer tending his trees, slicing the bark, catching the sap, supporting his family – if markets agree; enslaved by cauchuk, the tree that weeps?

Do you ever think of surgical gloves?

Of the soles of your shoes or bright, bright balloons?

What’s the alternative, fossil fuels?

Or forever cauchuk, the tree that weeps.

things you can do with a research paper

by Abhisha Gulati

read it stare at it for 466 minutes, look at what lives inside, wave your hand at the 24 women it tells you drink water from dusty prison pipes, brush your teeth with the gay biologists working in Alaska to reduce climate change, compute t tests on love and loneliness, set the children they implement their intervention programmes free in a green playground, knead cookie dough for the Muslim men who protect their families and oppose all wars, cook gajar ka halwa for the author, tap on the participants’ shoulders and thank them for shrinking themselves to fit in the boxes of an A4 sized sheet question caste, gender, religion, culture, the socio-cultural context of the paper stare at it for 233 minutes write it

To Write A Mathematical Proof

by Fiona Robertson Build pages of equations.

Draw threads from every rule you remember.

Stack and substitute, tie lines of letters—and yourself— in intricate knots until, in a moment… all resolves.

Your pages distil from scrawled chaos and crossing out to one of the perfect equations you’ve grown up knowing.

In those moments, you get a glimmer of the structure underpinning everything: the things which are so true only symbols can describe them— poetry or mathematical notation— which give you keys to the backstage of the universe.

You understand at last that your stirred coffee spins by the same rules as the swirl of galaxies.

A hidden structure seen for a heartbeat before chaos floods back in— like seeing the face of a god in the mirror— your place in all things.

Warming Warning

by Brigitta Schmid Like boiling frogs we float in our pot ignorant and heedless while the temperature rises underestimating the pressure while the temperature rises relying on coal and on oil and on gas while the temperature rises lusting for cement and iron and steel while the temperature rises cutting down forests and concreting soil while the temperature rises consuming and wasting plastic and food while the temperature rises letting lights burn all through the night while the temperature rises Like boiling frogs we drift in our pot unwary and careless while the temperature rises the balance of nature is deeply disrupted while the temperature rises patterns of weather are harmfully changing while the temperature rises species go extinct, biodiversity shrinks while the temperature rises oceans are warming and ice sheets are lost while the temperature rises But like boiling frogs we stay in our pot hesitant and spiritless while the temperature rises and rises until it’s… … over. and. DONE !

Ways of Seeing

by Rebecca Baird

The towel isn’t red, it’s purple that much is clear to see.

But he’s adamant as a mead-soaked peasant in ye olde England.

It’s bloody red! It isn’t.

It’s Roman and regal, purple as Thursdays, as 5pm. Babe, that’s Barney-back, it’s bruise-bloom.

But with his basketballer build is it any wonder he sees only lanky light? Stretchy photons that spike maroon with drunken burgundy, bending round mountains each time the sun slinks under the horizon? With eyes so blue, is there any room for more of that short, sad sine wave to break on the beach of his retina? Is this science or a love poem? Smiling, he scoffs, hoists the white flag of Google, the everything-reflection of humankind.

Tells me stuff just eats light and pukes up the excess. All we see is everything something didn’t keep. Simple, really. An apple eats up all the red and Newton’s hit on the head by a fire-bright idea. Bees see ultraviolet, he reads, and I say that’s a poem for another time. Besides, the towel’s still purple. So we scroll through some more about rods and cones, and I see that beach in high season, thousands of parasols catching rays and casting shade in the periphery. Finally, we come upon the headline that illuminates: Women see more colours than men. So I’m right, I say; I am a terrible winner. He shrugs. I mean, it’s still red to me.

Lucy Aphramor. I am a radical dietitian and spoken word poet. I encourage people to imagine new, compassionate, ways of thinking about food, health, bodies, and knowledge-creation that nourish personal and collective flourishing through social transformation. This involves interrupting the deep logic of coloniality, in and beyond Science, by undoing binary thinking – or queering. I am a researcher at Coventry University and co-director of the Trans Nutrition Academy. shade b previously worked as a researcher, in behavioural ecology and comparative psychology. they currently engage in various forms social and environmental justice work. this poem is based on research by Daniel Aldrich into the important role of strong, well-connected, interdependent communities in disaster recovery, where official authorities and infrastructures are often inadequate. as disaster frequencies increase, governments refuse to address the root causes and continue prioritising private profit over people and planet. we need radical change.

Rebecca Baird is a Dundee-based poet and journalist. Her poetry has appeared in publications including The Rally and Wasifiri online magazines, Folklore Publishing’s 2020 Secret Chords anthology and The Voyage Out Publishing’s These Windows collection. With an academic background in both physics and creative writing, she is fascinated by the ways that science and humanities subjects can intersect to give us a fuller picture of the world and one another.

Kayla-Jane Barrie is an experimental poet and abstract artist who fuses themes of the environment and humanities into her creative work. From Ontario, Canada, she hosts online and in-person writing workshops that support others in finding their creative voice while looking at the micro and macro elements of the universe. Visit her Instagram @kjabstractexpressions and website https://www.writewithkj.ca/.

Dr Kathryn Boast is a science communicator working at King’s College London. She has a background in physics, having previously studied and worked in the Physics Department at Oxford University. She likes using any tools she can get her hands on to share science, from interactive installations to colouring books. Although this is Kathryn’s first foray into science poetry, she has written poems for fun for many years.

Isaac Bolton is a science communicator currently working in healthcare communication in Cambridgeshire. Having completed an undergraduate degree in Biomedical Science with German, Isaac then went on to study a master’s degree in science and health communication at the University of Manchester. During this degree Isaac’s research investigated how emotion, specifically anger, can play a significant role in perceptions of climate communication.

Elizabeth Bridges is a Biochemistry student at the University of Southampton with an interest in women’s health research. Meiosis is a key type of cell division that produces germ cells and is a process that fascinates the author. In 2023/2024, she is doing a placement in STEM public engagement at ISIS Neutron and Muon Source and plans to use the ‘Science Communication through Poetry’ course to increase accessibility in science.

Yemurai Chaza is a clinical researcher and poet, with training in medicinal chemistry.

She contributes to the development of effective therapies and people focused healthcare practices by collaborating with researchers, institutions, and organisations in clinical research. She has an interest in science communication and community engagement to support and encourage learning and understanding of science through creative methods such as poetry.

Alex Davey is a scientist at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Originally from London, she is now honoured to call Scotland her home. Alex is married with three children: two bright, strong-willed daughters and one beautiful boy, who passed away in 2021 at the age of seven and is the inspiration for much of her writing. She is happiest in her garden, which she shares with two greedy guinea pigs.

Kathy Fawcett is an educator, researcher, public engagement practitioner and climate activist. With a background as a plant scientist, sixth form leader and science centre education manager, Kathy currently lectures in science communication at UWE Bristol.

She has a particular interest in formal and informal education settings; creative and human-centred learning and in exploring ways to connect people to the climate emergency that promote agency and action.

Jane Flint Bridgewater writes poetry in her retirement from medicine and cardiology practice in West Midlands, where she championed holistic patient care. A longstanding interest in humanities and nature focusses her writing, and she has published poems communicating science in Consilience. As a mother to twins, she is working on a themed collection. She also composes verses to interlace with harp music. Áine Flood is a Science Communicator and Educator. With a background in physics, she has worked on a wide range of projects from citizen science in solar physics, art and science exhibitions, engaging young people with science, and producing public outreach evenings. With a strong interest in science and fascination of the world, this is Áine’s first foray into poetry writing, encouraged by participation in the ‘Science Communication Through Poetry’ course.

Dave Garbutt is a self-described ‘failed biologist, like Keats’. He was born in N London less than a mile from Keats House and lived in Reading for 20 years where he researched and then worked as a Programmer and later IT consultant. He has lived in the Basel area of Switzerland since 1994 with his second wife, second daughter and Jana, his first Schnauzer. Dave has been writing poetry as long as he has been birding; he co-founded the writing group ThinRaft in Reading in 1990 and attends its Basel branch since 1996.

Abhisha Gulati is a 19-year-old bestselling poet, author, and research assistant at the Culture, Health, and Emotions Lab of Pennsylvania State University. She is also a final year undergraduate student of Psychology at the University of Delhi. Her debut collection, She is an Enigma became a #3 bestseller in the Asian Literature section of Amazon within three days of release. Her interests lie at the intersections of creative writing, poetry, and psychological research. Her favourite themes to write about are gender, culture, emotions, identity, and self.

Eva Haas holds an honours degree in biological sciences from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in microbiology from the University of Manchester. She has always been fascinated by the beauty and complexity of life and loves to explore its various facets in her work as science educator and research communicator, and, as of late, through poetry.

Lee Haines is a vector biologist who is often found jaw-agape in wonder while looking at insect body parts through a microscope. By night, this nocturnal scientist enters the creative flow of hybridizing art with science, that is until the wide-eyed Scottish fold blinks morse code for “dawn has arrived”. If only humans could thrive like bullfrogs without sleep.

Dr Anna Joyce (she/her) is an academic working in London, whose research focuses on the importance of sleep for cognition. Outside of work she enjoys poetry, playing piano, running and yoga. She lives in South London with her husband, two small children, and a little black cat. https://www.linkedin.com/in/drannajoyce/ Yanyi Lu grew up in China and now lives in northern Sweden. She's a creative technologist and interaction designer, experimentally crafting for the poetic tech. She earned a master’s degree in computational arts from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Her work combines technology, ecology, and creativity, showing a reflection of human and non-human relationship. Some of her works have been published and showcased in the international design award, art exhibitions and journals like HCII, Nordes, and ACM SIGGRAPH. Website: yanyilu.xyz.

Richard Marshall is a freelance science communicator based in London. He studied Engineering at University of Surrey and Photojournalism at University of the Arts. He worked in travel, business communication and photography before teaching maths, ethics, and critical thinking to engineering students at London South Bank University.

He now presents science shows in primary schools and curates SciComm events for adult audiences, including a monthly event in a London pub.

Louise McAteer is a biochemist, science communicator and education researcher from Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. Her doctoral research was on the African trypanosome, T. brucei, a single-celled eukaryotic parasite that causes sleeping sickness in humans and nagana in livestock. A harmless subspecies of the trypanosome (or “tryp”) is also a useful model organism in molecular biology. Louise sees poetry and science as ways to create order out of apparent chaos.

Kathryn J. McCullough is a science writer based in Memphis, TN, USA, and a recent graduate of the Science Writing master’s program at Johns Hopkins University. Her passion for the social sciences and elevating voices, experiences, and perspectives within the disability community guide her work. She describes her approach as one grounded by words and inspired by science.

Angela McG is a German-born writer of poetry and creative non-fiction living in rural Scotland. Her background is two health sciences degrees (BSc, MSc) in plant medicine and occupational therapy. She is neurodivergent and lives with chronic illness and disability. Angela wants to open science to connect with far more diversity and lived experience than it currently reflects.

Nuala O’Flynn works at the University of Hertfordshire as the School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science, Outreach and Public Engagement Manager. In her role, Nuala runs a STEM school outreach programme for children aged 7-14 from underrepresented backgrounds and has led some exciting projects that connect the public with astronomy research. Outside of her role, Nuala loves to travel, cook delicious vegan food, and attempt to find slivers of nature in London.

Sarah Osborne is a teaching assistant and mum of four from Harrogate, North Yorkshire. Prior to this role, she worked as an Environmental Health Officer before undertaking a PhD examining the impact of exposure to ultrafine particles on cardiovascular health. She has been writing poetry for two years and has been published in various anthologies and magazines. Her aim is to promote the benefits of poetry in a primary school setting.

Born in Athens, Greece, Georgia Papadimitriou is a chemistry graduate who transitioned into neuroscience research. In the lab, she combines her foundational knowledge of molecules with a deep passion for unravelling the intricacies of the brain.

Beyond the lab, Georgia sheds the rigidity of protocols, channelling her scientific passion into engaging science communication and fostering dialogue in accessible and versatile ways.

Penny Peck is the Communications and Postgraduate Manager at the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge. Before signing up for the ‘Science Communication Through Poetry’ course, her experience of poetry was mainly confined to rhyming verse, which she finds easy to generate. She is now working on nonets and other formats. She has recently obtained a Postgraduate Diploma in Science Communication from the University of Cambridge.

Sophie Quick is a scientist living in Edinburgh. Her PhD and post-doctoral research were in neuroscience, focusing on the blood-brain barrier. She now works in research communications for a charity. Science poetry used to be her revision technique and is now revisited with a new understanding of what it can achieve.

Fiona Robertson is a poet from NE Scotland who studied Theoretical Physics before disability ended that path, and now works on accessibility and equalities in politics. She has a poetry and practical tips zine for newly disabled people called Your Life Is Not Over: A Book Of Apocalypses And How To Survive Them and one on workplace accommodations with cats. She has performed at Hidden Arts, the Fringe, Edinburgh’s Radical Book Fair and many more.

Brigitta Schmid was born in Lower Austria and is living in Vienna (Austria). She has studied Biology, Palaeontology, Management of Protected Areas and History and has been working as science editor at the Natural History Museum Vienna for several decades. She started with communication through poems and fairy tales of her own composition about ten years ago. As a member of the Science Communication Department, she has intensified science communication through poetry during the past three years.

Ivars Šteinbergs, PhD, is a poet, critic, and translator from Riga, Latvia. His second book Jaunība (Youth), published by Neputns in 2022, received the Annual Latvian Literature Award in 2023. A Fulbright grantee (2017–2018), a researcher at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia, and a lecturer at the Latvian Academy of Culture. He has translated various foreign poets into Latvian, including

Louise Glück, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Sharon Olds, and Jan Wagner. His own poetry has appeared in English, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Finnish.

Zsófia Szalavári is a Viennese graduate of Astronomy and Science Communication from Leiden University. Having been drawn to wanting to understand every detail about how the world around her works ever since she was a child, she later pursued the study of stars, planets, and space. Even more than studying these, she enjoys sharing all the intriguing knowledge that scientists have about them and likes experimenting with ways and forms to do so.

Helen van de Pol has been a science communicator in Australia for over 25 years both freelance and in adult education. At the University of Melbourne, she led Communications for the joint $100m IBM/Victorian Government/University Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative. She has been Chair, Victorian Coordinating Committee, National Science Week and a Councillor, Royal Society of Victoria, chairing its Outreach Committee. She now reviews her colleagues’ work here: rescience.ghost.io.

Tessa Zonneveld (2000) is a bioinformatician from the Netherlands. During her studies, she broadened her horizon with various interdisciplinary courses and projects. Aside from research, she is passionate about science education and communication of any form. She always tries to include this alongside her research projects, for example through teaching genetics to Medicine students and participating in the outreach committee of the scientific network GENE Amsterdam.