Prose at perihelion: Poetry as a medium for public understanding of space

Abstract

The ongoing intersection of science and the humanities reflects a broader movement known as “H-STEM,” which integrates humanistic inquiry with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to foster more holistic approaches to scientific discovery and innovation. Through the multidisciplinary lens of H-STEM, this analysis explores collaborations between poets and scientists in Dark Matter: Poems of Space and synthesises thematic findings on how space poetry can potentially impact public understanding of astronomy. Using an emergent coding approach with two initial coders and a third code calibrator, we present a close reading of the poems and the poets’ reflections on their collaboration with scientists, and discuss the common thematic elements found in the 15 commissioned poems in Dark Matter. Four predominant themes stood out during the emergent coding process: Visibility, Time, Distance, and Size. Our analysis highlights how space poetry can translate concrete scientific themes into indeterminate poetics, transforming stable, earthly categories into something less certain and situating the human experience within the vast frameworks of time and place.