Sing a Song of Science

 

 

 

Who would hold a passport from a country that exists only in the dimension of time? What does running a 217 km ultra-marathon have to do with the biological clocks ticking in our bodies? Is time travel possible? And the question of questions: Can we reverse the direction of entropy?

These questions and more have been addressed by many though poetry and creative writing. The results of their musings can now be found in the annual edition of Shirat Hamada (The Poetry of Science) 2014, edited by Yivsam Azgad, and published by the Weizmann Institute of Science and the organization “Shirat Hahaim L’Zecher Ofer Lider” (Song of Life in Memory of Ofer Lider).

Containing writing by well-known authors and poets as well as scientists who write poetry, over 70 writers contributed to the volume. In addition, artists and curators have added their insight and views on the situation here and now. These include pieces on the relationship of popular Israeli poetry to Israeli society, the evolution of our language, the genome and the Universe, a nostalgic look back at the beloved comic character “Shrulik,” the aesthetics of birdsong, the search for divinity in the work of Michal Neeman, the erotic poetry of Palestinian writer and poet Fatmi Diav, and much more.

The book opens with the creative works of the winners of the 2014 contest held in memory of Prof. Ofer Lider, who believed that writing poetry could bring new insight to the scientific venture.

The book is in Hebrew. For more information, please contact the Weizmann Institute Pulications and Media Relations Department 08-9343856    News@weizmann.ac.il