Abstract:
A comparison of the working methods and inspirations of poets (and writers of literary prose) with those of scientists. The talk will include readings and quotations from various poems, mainly by poets who have experience of scientific investigation, including Miroslav Holub (poet and research immunologist from Czechoslovakia), Iggy McGovern and Sir William Rowan Hamilton (poet-physicists from Ireland), and various poets and essayists from around the world with a deep interest in biology. I will also touch on writers, including Samuel Beckett and Italo Calvino, who used literature as a form of investigation. 
 
Speaker: Dr Jane Robinson
Jane Robinson, an Irish poet and biologist, has a PhD in Biology from the California Institute of Technology. Her first poetry collection ‘Journey to the Sleeping Whale’ published by Salmon Poetry in 2018 won Ireland’s Shine Strong Award for the best debut collection of 2018.