Scientific Papers: A Poem

Trained as a zoologist, David Morley expands on his perception of science to include poetry. This work conveys his perception that writing poetry is an empirically pure exercise. He believes “writing science and poetry are a single discussion of perception carried out with the same eye and ear, in the same laboratory of language. Sir Philip Sidney saw the poet as free of the trammels of fact; Morley feels quite the opposite: a poem must be answerable in how and what it observes as well as aware of and true to its own processes.

David Morley founded the Warwick Writing Program at Warwick University. He is an editor of The New Poetry and has received a Gregory award. He lives in Coventry, England.