THE SCIENCE OF POETRY: A READING

Six poets will read work that engages with scientific disciplines such as physics, mathematics, biology, and ecology. These readings will Involve the audience in a discussion of the embodied, material consequences of experimental engagements for both scientists and poets.  

Stephanie Strickland’s 10 books of poetry include How the Universe Is Made:  Poems New & Selected (2019 Ahsahta) and Ringing the Changes, a code-generated project for print based on the ancient art of tower bell-ringing (Fall 2019 Counterpath). Her other books include Dragon Logic and The Red Virgin: A Poem of Simone Weil. She has also published 11 digital poems, most recently "House of Trust," with Ian Hatcher, a generative poem in praise of free public libraries, and "Hours of the Night," an MP4 PowerPoint poem probing age and sleep, with M.D. Coverley. Strickland’s work across print and multiple media is being collected by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University.  http://stephaniestrickland.com

Karen Leona Anderson is the author of the poetry collections Receipt (Milkweed Editions) and Punish honey (Carolina Wren). Her work has most recently appeared in Pleiades, Little Star, Alaska Quarterly Review, ZYZZYVA, The Best American Poetry, and other journals and anthologies; her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Grant. She is an associate professor of English at St. Mary's College of Maryland.

Adam Dickinson is the author of four books. His latest book, Anatomic (Coach House Books), involves the results of chemical and microbial testing on his body. His work has been nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and the Raymond Souster Award. He was also a finalist for the CBC Poetry Prize and the K.M. Hunter Artist Award in Literature. He has been featured at festivals such as Poetry International in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and the Oslo International Poetry Festival in Norway. He teaches at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.

Kristin George Bagdanov earned her M.F.A. in poetry from Colorado State University and is currently a PhD candidate in English Literature at U.C. Davis. Her poems have recently appeared in Boston Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Puerto Del Sol, and other journals. Her poetry collection, Fossils in the Making, was published in April 2019 by Black Ocean. Her second book, Diurne, won the 2019 Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and was published by Tupelo Press in September 2019. She is the recipient of fellowships from Phi Kappa Phi, Lilly Graduate Fellows, and the Vermont Studio Center. She is the poetry editor of Ruminate Magazine. More at kristingeorgebagdanov.com

Amy Catanzano's writing moves between a range of genres and disciplines, often with a focus on the intersections of poetry, experimental art, and branches of science such as physics and astronomy. She is the author of three books including Starlight in Two Million: A Neo-Scientific Novella, recipient of the Noemi Press Book Award in Fiction, and Multiversal, winner of the PEN USA Literary Award in Poetry and the POL Prize from Fordham University Press. She is also the author of the chapbook World Lines: A Quantum Supercomputer Poem and the digital poem, Wavicles, among other works. She is an associate professor of English and poet-in-residence at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. She has conducted research for her writing on-site with scientific research centers and scientific collaborations including at CERN in Switzerland and on the Dark Energy Survey at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. In 2018, she was the poet-in-residence at the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University.

Will Alexander works in multiple genres. In addition to being a poet, he is also a novelist, essayist, aphorist, playwright, philosopher, visual artist, and pianist. Alexander’s books include Asia and Haiti, The Sri Lankan Loxodrome, Compression and Purity, Sunrise In Armageddon, Diary As Sin, Inside the Earthquake Palace, Towards The Primeval Lightning Field, and Mirach Speaks To His Grammatical Transparents. He lives in The City of Angels.