Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Poets and Poems: John Latham and “From Professor’s Murasaki’s Notebooks”


John Latham is a research scientist, specializing in cloud formation. He’s received several medals from the Royal Meteorological Society, founded the Atmospheric Physics Research Group at the University of Manchester, and has served as a senior research fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

John Latham
He is also a poet and novelist. His latest poetry collection, From Professor Murasaki’s Notebooks on the Effects of Lightning on the Human Body, may win the prize for the most unusual poetry title. It’s a title with a scientific sense; it almost sounds like the title of a research paper published in Nature. And the first few poems in the collection suggest a scientific theme – poems with titles about lightning, the chemistry of fog, and the forms and qualities of ice.

But that’s not where Latham goes. Where he does go is to the familiar territory of relationships. But it’s a journey marked by a practiced eye, an intense gaze, and a sensitive understanding.


To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

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