Your Haiku in Space!

NASA is looking for haiku to include on a disk to be carried into space by the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft. While only three poems will go to Mars, all entrants will be listed on the disk. Winning poems will be determined by popular vote. July 1st is the deadline. GO!

(Thanks to Sky News HD for the story.)

Here's the submissions info, and an article from NPR on the topic (the title says "NASA Seeks Poets". How often is that going to happen? GO GO GO!)

The Science of Christmas

Santa's been here and gone already (due to time zone issues), much to the delight of the children in this household. It's not a holiday here though, so my kids are truant as I've kept them home, and their father is off to work, meaning that the gifts under the tree (other than Santa's) are still wrapped and will remain so till my husband gets home.

In the meantime, I'm listening to astrophysicist Neil De Grasse Tyson explain to NPR's David Greene the science behind Rudolph's red nose (couldn't have been blue, it turns out), speculate about whether or not St. Nick uses atmospheric separators, and discuss how Santa travels through wormholes to enter homes without chimneys and to visit all households in such a short time.

Plus more scientific Christmas explanations.

Enjoy.

The News in Verse

NPR's All Things Considered has a new project called "Newspoet": once a month they will invite a poet to spend the day with them; their guest poet will finish that visit by writing a poem about the day's news. The inaugural poet was Tracy K. Smith (great choice!) who wrote about Nigerian women fleeing the violence that resulted from attacks by a radical Muslim sect in the northern part of their country.

Listen to an interview with Tracy K. Smith about her process of culling a poem from the day's news, and hear or read the project's first completed poem at the link above. You can also read the article that inspired Smith.

Novelist's Novel Strategy

The NPR story of young novelist Amanda Hocking who couldn't attract an agent, but sold more than 1 million ebooks via Kindle, making her more than that number of dollars, is available here. She advocates a work ethic for writing. See if this is the strategy for you, assuming you're a novelist, I guess. (Though I'd love to see a poet do it.)

No Theme

I just read that D. A. Powell is placing his papers in Emory University's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Books Library. I've never researched using a writer's papers, so maybe this is a dumb question, but what are these papers? Early drafts, notes, journals, correspondence, that sort of thing? Doesn't he still need them? And doesn't he mind people going through them while he is still alive? Just wondering....

Also, Marie Howe is interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air today. Click on the link to hear her discuss the loss of loved ones, growing up in a large religious family, and all sorts of topics you can easily relate to (or I can, anyway). Hear her reading of a generous number of poems, including "What the Living Do," and you can read a few more poems at the NPR page, such as one of my favorites, "After the Movie."

There is no theme to today's post. No theme at all. Except poetry, that broad one.