Poetry Meets Science

The physicist, Paul Dirac, certainly had a low opinion of poetry (and perhaps poets too). He said something like:

“ In science you want to say something that nobody knew before, in words which everyone can understand. In poetry you are bound to say something that everybody knows already, in words that nobody can understand.”

Now, at the risk of dissing  a Nobel prize winner,  in the Science Gallery, to boot, I don’t completely agree. Experiments with structure and with form  such as rhyme and rhythm play an important part in poetry, just as experiments  do in science,

Watch the rest of my talk at Ignite at Electric Picnic here

(Please ignore the festival hair and general dishevelment)