Combining Poetry and Science to Create Scientific “Thesis Poetry” as a Tool for the Communication of Science

Abstract

Research scientists are expected to communicate their science to the lay public. However, lay people need scientific literacy in order to understand science. Both science and poetry are aspects of culture that connect people and might be able to expand their reach by incorporating elements of each other. “Thesis poetry” based on the IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) scientific paper format could promote understanding and empathy between scientists and the lay public, and foster and improve scientific literacy. This article proposes a thesis poem format incorporating empirical and personal logic and data drawn from original papers as a tool for the communication of science.

Creative communication – using poetry and games to generate dialogue between scientists and nonscientists

“…Poetry can be an effective way of communicating science to various publics [13][14][15][16]. Indeed, my own interest in using poetry as a medium for communication was developed via my weekly blog (https://thepoet ryofscience.scienceblog.com/) and accompanying podcast (https://scipoetry.podbean.com/), 'The Poetry of Science', where every week I read a scientific article and then write a poem that aims to communicate this science to a wider audience (see Fig.…”