Background/Question/Methods Though poets and scientists both use language to communicate complex ideas, often their messages are lost to each other and broader audiences. But what if we look for poems from the texts of science and natural history? What would we find? What if scientists read these poems as means to see their work in a new light? In my first collection of poems, "A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes" (2015), I confronted head on some of my own ecological research through various forms, including found poems from my own scientific articles. "Parasitic Oscillations" (2022) my second collection of poems, examines various aspects of living and practicing as both a poet and ecologist in the Anthropocene. It interrogates (rather than tries to extinguish) the inevitability of cyclic variation (“parasitic oscillations” from signal processing) caused by feedback in the amplifying devices of both poetry and science. A new question emerges: how might we utilize these feedbacks to bring multiple understandings of the world closer together? Feedback is examined through several interacting currents and recursive structures: my own work between the arts and sciences, living between North American and Indian cultures, and examining contemporary environments through the lag effects of the past.
Results/Conclusions I will read 3-5 poems found from my own scientific articles and from those of other scientists. Poetry and Science do not exist simply in intersections, but are interdependent and mutually reinforcing processes towards discovery of our world and our place in it.
