Euroscience Open Forum 2012

Venue: The Schrödinger Theatre, Fitzgerald Building, Trinity College, Dublin

Map: http://goo.gl/vB4jQ

http://sciencemeetspoetry.eventbrite.ie

"Science meets Poetry” is a unique feature of the ESOF meetings: it was born in Munich, was considerably extended in Barcelona (2008) and came to maturity in Turin (2010). It aims to bring contemporary creative poets into the midst of a scientific meeting to discuss the two-way relationship of poetry to science and how each benefits the other. Both of the previous meetings led to the publication of a book of proceedings by Euroscience. 

The event is NOT an occasion for all and sundry (even the invited speakers) to read selections of their own poems. Rather, it focuses on general themes, of interest to both scientists and poets, and in particular, to ESOF delegates. Distinguished poets from all over the world have participated in the previous meetings. The Science meets Poetry session of ESOF is now well-regarded in many literary circles and enhances the reputation of science. 

This third incarnation of the event will feature four evocative and provocative talks:

Dublin: a European capital of Poetry
Dublin can claim, through such household names as James Joyce, William Butler Yeats and Oscar Wilde, to be one of the major haunts of poets on the planet. Further to this glorious history, what is the literary landscape around Dublin today?
Maurice Riordan (contemporary Irish Poet)

The Two Williams: Hamilton and Wordsworth
Can the scientist be a poet, or the poet come to terms with science? A physicist and poet analyses the epistolary exchanges between two lifelong friends: a great scientist who longed to be a poet and a poet who rejected the technology of his time.
Iggy McGovern (Professor of Physics and Poet, Trinity College Dublin)

The Gothic myths, Romanticism and the birth of Ecology
From the amateur scientists Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Percy Bysshe Shelley, via Lord Byron and Mary Shelley’s gothic fantasies to Wordsworth, is Romanticism the source of the ‘Green Movement’, and how does the love-hate relationship between science and poetry feed into poetry today? As seen by a contemporary French poet.
Chaunes* (poet) alias Jean-Patrick Connerade (Emeritus Professor Imperial College London, President European Academy of Sciences Arts and Letters)

The Science of Love and the Love of Science
How much of love is molecular, determined by genes and laws of selection, as argued by some biologists today, and how much is it unique, nurtured by the human species through its artists and (especially) its poets? A young contemporary poet, author of a recent play centred on the myth of  Dom Juan, takes up the challenge posed by modern biologists on behalf of the poets.
Christophe Goarant Correa de Sà (Poet, teacher, Société des Poètes Français)