Poetry Meets Physics

Rae Armantrout Reading and in-Conversation with Physics Professor Ben Buchler

Join us for an evening of poetry featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning poet from the US Rae Armantrout.  

“… Armantrout has become one of the most recognizable, and one of the best, poets of her generation" (Stephanie Burt, Boston Review, 2002)

This is a unique opportunity to hear renowned poet Rae Armantrout read from her body of work. She will present selections from her ‘science’ poems and other works, including readings from her latest collection, Go Figure (Wesleyan UP, 2024). The reading will be followed by a Q&A session with Professor Ben Buchler, an expert in quantum and nano-optics from ANU. Discover how poetry and science can converse in unexpected and thought-provoking ways. 

"Trying to read a book by Rae Armantrout in a single sitting is like trying to drink a bowl of diamonds. What's inside is all so shiny & clear & even tiny that it appears perfectly do-able. But the stones are so hard & their edges so chiseled that the instant you begin they'll start to rip your insides apart." (US poet Ron Silliman, blog)

 Rae Armantrout

Writing for the Poetry Foundation, David Woo says that Rae Armantrout’s recent book Finalists (Wesleyan 2022) “emanates the radiant astonishment of living thought.” Charles Bernstein says, “Her sheer, often hilarious, ingenuity is an aesthetic triumph.” Her 2018 book, Wobble, was a finalist for the National Book Award that year. Her other books with Wesleyan include Partly: New and Selected Poems, Just Saying, Money Shot and Versed. In 2010 Versed won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and The National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2007 she received a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. Her poems have appeared in many anthologies and journals including Poetry, Conjunctions, Lana Turner, The Nation, The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, Bomb, Harpers, The Paris Review, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology, and The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine. Retired from UC San Diego where she was professor of poetry and poetics, she is the current judge of the Yale Younger Poets Prize. A new book, Go Figure, has recently appeared from Wesleyan University Press.

 Prof. Ben Buchler

Ben completed a PhD on the electro-optic control of quantum measurements in 2002. This work led to one of the early demonstrations of quantum teleportation. He then took up postdoctoral position in Zurich working on nano-optics where he measured the quantum properties of single molecules as they emitted light. Returning to the Australian National University in 2006, Ben began working on quantum memory experiments that aim to trap and release the quantum information stored in photons.  This research program continues within the Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC2T), of which he is a chief investigator. Recently, Ben became a partner in a global network of quantum sensors looking for signs of dark matter. This effort aims to solve one of the biggest problems in modern physics, where it appears that 85% of the universe is made of material we have never observed.

Street Two | Unreserved | Duration 90 minutes
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