Natural Curiosities: Poems of Exploration, Antarctica

Coles Katharine, Salt Lake City UT

Investigators

Abstract

The project centers around the author's proposed visit to Palmer Station, which will serve as the location for obtaining the raw material to produce a series of poems--called Natural Curiosities--the purpose of which is to bring to readers a sense of the continent and its creatures as well as to represent and consider the mind at work on what it sees, in the acts of exploration and passionate thinking related to Antarctica. The writer considers Palmer Station, with its remote and dramatic geographical setting, the length and nature of the journey required to get there, the richness of its animal life, and the nature of the research being conducted there, to be an ideal venue for the project. The artist?s goal is to explore and to reveal the sense in which science, like all artifacts of culture and intelligence, is a fundamentally human endeavor, driven by the humanity and passion of its practitioners. The author also hopes to contribute to the increase of scientific literacy by bringing the wonders of Antarctica and Palmer Long-term Ecologial Research project site there to as wide a public as possible, including especially the literary public, which generally that may see science and its practice as somehow alienating or off-limits.