cliu

Wee sleeket cowran tim’rous beastie

  • He/Him

As part of my practice I’ve been trying to memorise poetry. I definitely feel like reciting something from memory is a totally different experience than simply reading it from a book (or from a phone screen). Your mind finds little nooks and crannies is the words that aren’t always apparent from a cursory read. Anyway I thought I would start posting poems here once I’ve finished memorising them. If anyone has any suggestions for good poems/poets (especially something with a nature theme) I’m always looking for good ideas!

Here’s my first memorised poem, by William Blake:

Hear the voice of the Bard,
Who present, past, and future, sees;
Whose ears have heard
The Holy Word
That walked among the ancient trees;

Calling the lapsed soul,
And weeping in the evening dew;
That might control
The starry pole,
And fallen, fallen light renew!

'O Earth, O Earth, return!
Arise from out the dewy grass!
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumbrous mass.

Turn away no more;
Why wilt thou turn away?
The starry floor,
The watery shore,
Is given thee till the break of day.



I use the bird site a lot for work. In fact I’ve come to really rely on it for finding out about all the cool stuff other scientists are doing. I don’t really see that changing any time soon, partly because it would be so difficult for an alternative to achieve the same kind of critical mass, partly because science twitter science bird site is fundamentally pretty conservative and not many of the scientists I follow seem concerned about the new bird king.

When I joined cohost I guess I was hoping to find some cool non-science people interested in the things I don’t post on the bird site about (see hashtag soup) and I wasn’t planning to post much at all about my research area (epigenetics). But now there are cool science people on this site! Which is great! But that means I have to think about what I want from this blog. Do I want to post about science here? Do I want to write for other scientists like I would on the bird site? I’m definitely enjoying some anonymity, which sort of precludes posting about my actual work in any detail. Something for me to keep pondering