Poems about the universe: from the sub-atomic level to the cosmic, from bacteria to complex life and exoplanets.

The physicist Richard Feynman challenged poets to step aside from metaphor and capture the stark magnificence of the universe. Spurred to action, James Thornton opened himself to wonders and dived deep into the intricacies of science.

Let his poetry open your eyes.

Complete with an essay on Poetry and Science.

About the Author
James Thornton is a poet, Zen Buddhist priest, and founder and president of ClientEarth, the leading global not-for-profit law group. As a lawyer, with the Earth as his client, James sees that 'Nature speaks in the grammar of science'. He is a Conservation Fellow of the Royal Zoological Society. The New Statesman named him one of 10 people who could change the world. Irish-American, born in New York, James is also the author of Client Earth (Scribe 2018), co-authored with his husband Martin Goodman, which received the Judges' Selection, Business Book of the Year Award 2018, and the Green Prize for Sustainable Literature from Santa Monica Public Library. He has twice won Leader of the Year at the Business Green Awards. For his legal work, The Financial Times awarded him its Lifetime Achievement Award. His writing includes two novels, a book of spiritual practice, and three volumes of poetry. He was a judge for the 2020 Laurel Awards for Ecopoetry. He lives in London and Los Angeles.

Reviews

"In this unusual and exceptionally interesting work, James Thornton speaks as both a poet who has colonized science and a scientist who speaks a poetic tongue." - Edward O. Wilson

"A brilliant introduction to the endless wonders of our universe, from quantum levels to the cosmos. It opened my eyes to many marvels and oddities." - Eberhard Fetz, Professor of Physiology, Biophysics, University of Washington

"Poets sometimes flinch at the idea of footnotes. Poems, they think, should be perfect small worlds of their own. The Feynman Challenge upends this aesthetic. Like the Pompidou Centre, it wears all its workings on the outside. Plunging into the sea of scientific knowledge, it comes up grinning and glittering with droplets of lovely information. This is a generous book, happy to serve the curiosity, the wonder and humility of science, happening here and there in words that simply send a shudder -Two black holes are about to marry, a billion years ago - through our sense of time and space." - Philip Gross, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize

Book Information
ISBN 9781909954892
Author James Kevin Thornton
Format Paperback
Page Count 136
Imprint Barbican Press
Publisher Barbican Press
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 1290mm * 100mm