Site Visit: Simons Center for Geometry and Physics
Stony Brook University

Inaugural Poet-in-Residence

October 16-20, 2017
April 16-20, 2018

VISIT DESCRIPTION

After meeting theoretical physicist Luis Álvarez-Gaumé at CERN, he invited me to the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University, which he directs in addition to his other work. During my first visit to the Simons Center in October 2017, I spoke with visiting theoretical physicist Giuseppe Mussardo about topological quantum computing, a conversation that led to my development of World Lines: A Quantum Supercomputer Poem, which uses a theoretical model of a topological quantum computer as a poetic form. My activities during my first visit included attending presentations by Mussardo and artist Lisa Park as well as attending a dinner with my fellow guests, our hosts, and friends of the Simons Center.

When I returned in April 2018 as the inaugural poet-in-residence at the invitation of Dr. Álvarez-Gaumé and Lorraine Walsh, visiting associate professor of art and art director and curator for the Simons Center, I wrote and presented my first draft of World Lines. Philosopher and author Robert Crease, professor and chair of the Philosophy Department at Stony Brook, discussed beauty in scientific experiments at the same event. The next day, Dr. Crease and I attended a lecture on metaphor with visitor Alexander Nehamas. Dr. Gary Mar, founding director of the Philosophy Department Logic Lab and Stony Brook’s Asian American Center Bridge, the catalyst for Stony Brook’s Charles B. Wang Asian American Center, gave me a special knot device (below) that evokes some of the technical and poetic dimensions of my poem, World Lines.

Just an hour after Dr. Crease and I presented at the Simons Center, we attended the Della Pietra Lecture Series presentation by theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics along with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish for the discovery of gravitational waves. There was also a dinner for Dr. Thorne, where I had opportunities to interact with physicists, including Martin Roček, professor of theoretical physics at Stony Brook and member of the C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics. In addition to these activities at the Simons Center, I discussed my second book, Multiversal, in a poetry workshop taught by Lindsay Adkins, then a candidate in Stony Brook Southhampton’s MFA Program in Creative Writing.

More about World Lines: A Quantum Supercomputer Poem can be read here.