n ancient Greece poetry was the language used to describe scientific discovery. In 19th century Britain, groundbreaking scientists like Darwin read and wrote poetry. In the 20th century, the novelist CP Snow was a  scientist specialising in chemistry. Science imagines what might be there and then proves it exists. Poetry uses imagination to describe those things imagined first and existing second. What happens when poets and scientists meet?

Frances Clarke, one of the University’s Interdisciplinary Research Coordinators, started the project in 2012 in collaboration with colleagues in the Creative Writing discipline in the Faculty of Humanities and it ran as part of Interdisciplinary Research Week, an annual showcase of research held every year to demonstrate the university’s commitment to interdisciplinary approaches. It was so successful – and enjoyable, that it has run each year since. Frances and the creative writing team pair postgraduate scientists from faculties across the university with poets.

Here you can see the results of these volatile interactions as literary skills meet such things as the structure of turbulence, second generation bioethanol applications, the environmental sustainability of rail travel, optical power transmission fibres, 3D printed Replicas, the limits of nanofabrication, Lake Chilwa in Malawi, dark energy, ballroom dancing, childbirth, shell-bearing amoeboeid protists, photo-based memory aids, photonic  bandgap fibres, the Sumatran subduction zone accretionary prism,  a matter-wave interferometer, how to cool nanoparticles, Immunodominance and computational prediction of crystals.