so some of you might be wondering what is poetry doing in a conversation in support of the factual and that's a fair question but this is also of course a conversation about communication it is about truth's compass and truth's persuasion and for that the microscope and the metaphor imagination and observation are not separate science and art both began as all things human do with prehistory and the earliest myths were set into meter and rhyme to help them be memorable before there was paper and writing to help with that they were also attempts to find meaning and order in what William James described as the blooming and buzzing confusion of the pre-conscious world cave paintings recorded What mattered mammoths Lions pregnant horses human hands Material Science begins with knowing which Stone to nap but also what can you do with ocher and the imagination is the proto-faculty of hypothesis making Now 50 000 years or so later things have speciated a bit like Darwin's finches we turn now to science for questions that have answers we turn to Art and to poetry for questions that have no answers but still require response both offer what they always have done a way to go on both are acts of Discovery both are distillations they take complex thoughts and put them into symbolic systems that are portable repeatable given from person to person culture to culture time to time and both of them are things that we do ordinarily all the time because human beings are curious and because Discovery is a joy but they are also needed most direly in times of disaster and crisis and last both of them borrow from each other's strengths a poem won't be worth keeping if whatever lightning is in it doesn't strike the actual ground of our lives and the world a scientist is most excited by what they don't yet know so poets for science began as a response to a steepening crisis of Silence we haven't talked much about silence here today we've talked about misinformation and disinformation there's also censorship and you might remember that on the fifth day of the last Administration January 24 2017 the White House took down from its website all information about climate change and ordered every scientist who worked for the federal government not to speak of their work in public without pre-approval by the end of that day I had written a poem of course I sent it to several research science friends they sent it to other friends and three months later I was on the mall here in Washington DC saying it allowed to 40 or 50 000 people at the March for science while my partners at the WIC poetry Center were hosting a tent covered inside and out with human-sized banners of poems that spoke to every different area of Science and inviting people to write their own people would come in they would see this tent with poets for science written on it do a double take come over start reading and their faces would change their breathing would change and so I am going to read you the precipitating poem on the fifth day on the fifth day the scientists who studied the rivers were forbidden to speak or to study the rivers the scientists who studied the error were told not to speak of the air and the ones who worked for the farmers were silenced and the ones who worked for the bees someone from deep in the Badlands began posting facts the facts were told not to speak and were taken away the facts surprised to be taken were silent now it was only the rivers that spoke of the rivers and only the wind that spoke of its bees while the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees continued to move toward their fruit the silence spoke loudly of silence and the rivers kept speaking of rivers of Boulders and Air bound to gravity earless and tongueless the untested rivers kept speaking bus drivers shelf stalkers code writers machinists accountants lab techs cellists kept speaking they spoke the fifth day of Silence facts are foundational reality is foundational no animal ignoring the actual will long survive but the presence of poetry at the March for science was not about advocating a particular practical action it was about advocating for a feeling the sense of shared lives shared Fates shared existence if you want to change a culture emotion is foundational too and people will only work to save what we love what we feel part of the pack of the fabric of and kinwith and so Francis of Assisi wrote in his Canticle of brother son and sister Moon and Walt Whitman wrote in Leaves of Grass every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you that none of us ends at our skin is a truth of both poetry and science before I give the stage to David Hassler and the academies of mirzan fellow scientists for a bounding demonstration of hope I will finish with four quotes first John Keats beauty is truth truth beauty that is all you know on Earth and all you need to know next Rachel Carson yeah Rachel Carson who was surely the most effective science Communicator of our era accepting the national book award for the sea within us if there is poetry in my book about the sea it is not because I deliberately put it there but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry the 19th century philosopher and polymath scientist Herbert Spencer those who have never entered upon scientific Pursuits no not a tithe of the Poetry by which they are surrounded and last Michael attia the Lebanese British Fields medal mathematician and theoretical physicist in the broad light of day mathematicians check their equations and their proofs leaving no stone unturned in their search for rigor but at night under the full moon they dream they float Among the Stars and wonder at the miracle of the heavens they are inspired without dreams there is no art no mathematics no life thank you thank you Jane so I had the privilege for this Summit of leading three online poetry workshops with four of the mirzaian fellows here at the National Academy of Science in the Nobel Laureate Elizabeth Blackburn I met them for the first time five weeks ago online what Jane said that microscope and the metaphor are not separate she didn't tell you one of my favorite quotes of her the microscope and the metaphor are both instruments of discovery what is it that a poet poetry for science can discover I believe is what I would call the emotional truth of science a way to give voice to the felt experience of what it is when we peer through the lens of our microscopes with awestruck observation um and so in our sessions we read three of our poems for science that are in the gallery exhibit poets for science we charged the air uh to both guide our writing and to prompt and Inspire us so the poem we're going to read you in a moment is inspired by Gary Snyder's poem for all Jane's own poem optimism and um Camille dungey's poem characteristics of life the writing that followed became our own way of integrating what we know in our heads our knowledge of science with the emotion we feel for science in our hearts our poems were inherently hopeful for like all poetry as Donald Hall says poems are the unsayable said so now I'd like to invite the resign fellows to come out to to perform kavi chintam Mariella Garcia Arredondo and nafisa andrabi [Applause] we're going to share for you what we discovered through the instruments of metaphor and the imaginative imaginative language of poetry a collective poem that we script that we scripted drawing from our own individual voices origin story after Camille dungey's characteristics of life ask me if I speak for myself and I will say what is a self but a tangle a cobweb of stories Generations deep stitched together by Earth's fibers nothing I speak is without the trace channeled scablands of every path carved before me a single molecular origin story the tiniest wriggling organism invisible in its still dark pond water can tell us truths that Inspire yet how can I speak for the molecules dancing in each living creature calling back and forth I eavesdrop on their gossipy chatter ask them to explain but mostly they take the fifth ask me what I know of the morning banter of the Blue Jay the scrub jay the coin of Dubs and I will tell you I know only the meaning I make of their song how can I speak for the soil welcoming all hugging seeds that spring forward and shoots bursting with black and ready colors that envelop our skin and keep our bellies fed more and more I have come to trust in the circularity of a tree how it yearns itself out of the soil from Sprout to seedling to sapling then rots and returns to the earth when I trust the coffee shop stranger to watch my backpack I leap into the woven net of ties between us we catch each other holding doors open offer our hands and greeting each of us the same Stardust rearranged I speak to unself myself to tell the truth of the origin story we share with our planet a truth lost too often in rushing days and racing thoughts a truth coursing through the ventricles in my heart Whispers of ancestors trees and oceans foreign I speak for the Earth and the Earth speaks through me our narratives cannot be untangled foreign wow yes to poets for science