In a recent essay for 3Quarksdaily, I describe my fascination with short poetic forms such as haiku and landays (short Afghani folk poems) and how these traditional Asian forms of poetry can serve as means to create English-language poems that relate to science and our lives as academic scientists.
Example of science-related haiku:
Mitochondria
Grainy threads in cells,
powerhouses of life are
harbingers of death
Example of a landay:
Tenure Trek
Sirens of tenure captivate us,
chained to hallowed halls of academic freedom.
Please check out the essay, which includes additional haiku and landays. It also contains excerpts from a wonderful issue of Poetry Magazine about Afghani women and how they compose and share landays as a form of lyrical resistance, finding beautiful and cutting verses to describe their struggles and hardships.
I hope you will be inspired to compose your own haiku or landays related to science. It would be great if you could either include your compositions as comments at the end of this Scilogs post, or share them via Twitter using the hashtags #ScienceHaiku or #ScienceLanday. I intend to collect your science-related haiku and landays and publish them in an upcoming Scilogs blog post. Please make sure that you provide a reference at the end so that I know how to credit you, i.e your name, your Twitter-handle, etc.
Image Credit: Basho’s Flowers (by Adam Shaw via Wikimedia Commons)
The Next Regeneration 
