Call for Submissions for AstroPoetry Competition

 

Abell 2261

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ of Michigan/K. Gültekin;

Optical: NASA/STScI and NAOJ/Subaru; Infrared: NSF/NOAO/KPNO

Call for Submissions for AstroPoetry Competition!

The Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester invites submissions of cosmologically-themed poems for a competition run in conjunction with NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory in Harvard. The competition is open to all students studying Creative Writing at the University of Leicester, and the deadline for entries is Friday 12 February 2021. The winning entry will be published on Chandra X-Ray Observatory's remarkable and world-famous blog. The competition grows out of our second-year undergraduate module, Using Stories, as part of which students explore how scientific discoveries, themes and images can inspire new writing. 

What you have to do

The challenge is to write a poem, no longer than 30 lines, inspired in some way by one of the news stories on Chandra X-Ray Observatory's blog, which you can see here. The nature of this inspiration is up to you - it might be a matter of theme, imagery, language, or a mixture of these things, just so long as it's clear that the poem is connected in some way with the original news story. You should submit your poem as an email attachment to Jonathan Taylor (jt265[at]le[dot]ac[dot]uk) by the deadline, including the weblink to the specific news story to which your poem relates. 

Some guidelines

• You need to be a student taking at least one module in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester to enter.
• You should specify which news story on Chandra's blog your poem relates to.
• Entries will be judged by Jonathan Taylor at the University of Leicester. The judge's decision is final. 
• The deadline is Friday 12 February 2021. 
• The winning entry will be published on Chandra's blog; runners-up may be published on the Creative Writing at Leicester blog. 

Previous competitions

You can read the winning poems from previous poetry competitions we have run with Chandra X-Ray Observatory in 2016 here and 2017 here. You can read the runner-up poems from the 2017 competition here. You can read some poems Jonathan Taylor wrote for Chandra here, here, here and here. 

Thanks

Thank you to Dr. Peter Edmonds and everyone at NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory for their kind help in running this unique competition.