Zero Kelvin - Softcover

Norman, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1927428459 ISBN 13: 9781927428450

Publisher: Biblioasis, 2013

Synopsis

Present-day astronomy, vast, complex, is looking through darkness to distant objects and times. Yet its discoveries aren’t exclusively scientific: from the moons of Pluto to the Doppler effect, the night sky screens a place where math meets myth. Now, in Zero Kelvin, in scenes that shift from the mountains of Goma to the mountains of the moon, from galaxies that feast upon their neighbours to a solar sail unfurling above Earth's orbit, Richard Norman’s poetry probes both newly glimpsed corners of the universe, and the myths which bring them into focus.

Experiment

It is a human urge
to orbit backwards at great speed.
Experimentally, you do it
and then the crack of lightning,
the open-ended snowflake, splits the sky.
Just as the sculptor cut the fat off space,
you going backwards renders time.
Seconds drop like filings
when a magnet is turned off.

Praise for Zero Kelvin

"All at once the elements collapse and expand, become inseparable and remote, beautiful and terrifying this is what Richard Norman’s poems do to us. We feel stars, those tiny suns, as words blazing through the page; like dust or sand they leave a residue in our thoughts, worlds deep, so we might inadvertently carry them to work, or to the bed of a lover. Here is where language consumes us, absolute and intangible, between reality and myth." Leigh Kotsildis, author of Hypotheticals

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Present-day astronomy, vast, complex, is looking through darkness to distant objects and times. Yet its discoveries aren't exclusively scientific: from Pluto's moons to Curiosity Rovers, the sky remains a place where math meets myth. Now, in Zero Kelvin, Richard Norman's poetry probes the new heavens that are being generated daily by astronomical research. Theology Objects crossing or approaching the orbit of Neptune ... are given mythological names associated with the underworld. - "How Minor Planets Are Named," International Astronomy Union [...] Theology, the study of dark matter, conclusively has proven the well of hell is zero Kelvin. Movement ceases, molecules foetally curl into themselves. And at the lowest circle of our galaxy a black hole squats. O wondrous Goatse of another realm! Radio source, mass of four million suns, beams out pure revelation. Cults worship at its altar. The faithful pray: Do not leave your house - sit quietly and listen. An LED illuminates the ether in the vitrine. And models show the diodes rapidly receding and the backlit screen expanding, and the transudation, and something dug up from deep within that will not act and will not leave, a thing that makes a truce with space, a relic of the underworld.

About the Author:

Richard Norman lives in Halifax. He has recently published poetry in The Malahat Review, The Puritan, and CV2, among other Canadian journals. His first collection is forthcoming from Biblioasis.

About this edition

• Publisher: Biblioasis
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1927428459
• ISBN 13: 9781927428450
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 72