Poets and storytellers, take the world in your hands. Our universe, as revealed to us through science, contains mystery and invites contemplation. Imaginative writing is a natural place to explore our strange and wonderful world and to reflect its beauty. If, as physicist Neils Bohr put it, a physicist is an atom’s way of looking at itself, a poet is an atom’s way of spinning in front of the mirror. In this class we’ll discuss a wide range of literature influenced by scientific ideas, and we’ll generate material for poems and stories with guided exercises and imitation. Writers will leave with designs for new projects, along with a deeper appreciation of humanity’s two most important endeavors: science and art. Be prepared to build what poet Marianne Moore called “imaginary gardens with real toads in them”!

About the instructor:
Jessica Reed’s chapbooks are Still Recognizable Forms (Laurel Review Greentower Press) and World, Composed (Finishing Line Press). Her recent work has appeared in The Journal, Conjunctions, Quarterly West, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Bellingham Review, New American Writing, Waxwing, [PANK], Inverted Syntax, DIAGRAM, Annulet, Scientific American, Chicago Review online, The Fourth River, The Indianapolis Review, Crazyhorse, Exposition Review, Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing, and elsewhere. She has written poetry reviews for Jacket2, Annulet, and Green Linden. She has degrees in poetry and physics and has taught science poetry in Saudi Arabia and China as well as in the US. She teaches a seminar at Butler University on Physics and the Arts. She grew up across the US, from the Mojave Desert to the Chesapeake Bay, and now lives next door to her parents in rural Indiana with her husband, solar panels, worm composting, and chickens. https://www.jessicareed.info/