Feynman Challenge
Description
A poetry collection that leads the reader into the wonders of scientific discovery and the intricacies of the natural world.
The collection's title? Richard Feynman, the 20th Century's most dashing physicist, set poets a challenge: Science is not just mystery but truth, and they should tackle it. From the mating of sea slugs to the discovery of gravity waves, The Feynman Challenge sees James Thornton focus poetry on the realms of science and environment. Poems are sourced with the scientific articles and papers whose narratives and wonders they explore, to help readers whose interest is spiked to travel further. The collection opens with James's essay that examines the interplay of science, poetry and the natural world, from Lucretius to now.
More details
Person
The New Statesman named James Thornton as one of 10 people who could change the world, and he won the Financial Times Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2021, he was a judge of the Laurel Prize, for the world's best collection of ecopoetry. Irish-American, James is also the author of Client Earth (Scribe 2018) which won a Business Book of the Year Award. James is founder and president of ClientEarth, the leading global not-for profit law group. This is his third collection.
'James Thornton speaks as both a poet who has colonised science and a scientist who speaks a poetic tongue.' - E.O.Wilson
'Weaves quiet perception and poignant reflection on humans, animals, and landscape into a shimmering pattern of southern French light.' - Olafur Eliasson
Content
- Intro
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Census of deep life
- Embodied semantics
- Of mice and scorpions
- Rumination and forest bathing
- A dozen ways to make a living
- The future of clouds
- The jaguar sometimes bites
- Symbiont real estate
- Páramos
- The apex predator guild
- Your inner fish
- Tomb blossoms
- Long ago and under water
- Traumatic matings
- Quartet with parasites
- The dead fish of Chad
- The lodger
- Like milkshakes
- Hungry daughters
- The rolling of the dungball
- Head of glass
- Fringed with teeth
- E.O. Wilson's favourite ant
- Eminent Britons
- Aerial wars
- Penis Envy
- The news about Neanderthals
- Conquering Earth
- A century of gorging
- A bulletin from our branch
- Warm wet and quantum
- New equilibria
- The rules of loss
- Spat
- Chiropterans
- Count those lost
- Coelacanths among us
- Q is for cryptography
- Ringdown
- The end of time
- Too few to fill the sky
- Never forget red dwarfs
- The biggest star
- Cosmonautika
- A time will come
- By grace of the solar wind
- A map of peculiar velocities
