Reaction to Meeting John Glenday and reading his poem
Eric Priest

Joining John for lunch was a real privilege, which was much more a meeting of minds than a clash of cultures. I described what it is like for me to go about making scientific discoveries and he did the same for constructing poems. It was amazing to find how close the two activities are.

John seemed to have a keen awareness of and care for the world around him and a desire to understand what is going on in depth and then to wrestle with ways of communicating his insights in new and pithy ways. For me as a theoretical solar physicist there is a strong desire to understand the enormous complexity and subtlety of the many processes going on in the Sun.

Stimulated by observations of the Sun, lots of ideas are continually floating around in my conscious and subconscious mind, and occasionally, when I wake up in the morning or am walking in the hills or working in the garden, one of them will take on a life of its own and crystallise. I then know in general terms the way I want to go, but have to spend many weeks discovering the detailed steps, using all the skills and mathematical techniques at my disposal - and often I will be lead in unexpected directions on my journey to a fuller understanding. Indeed, the creative process of making poetry for John seemed very similar, including the initial spark of inspiration, the hard work (often taking a couple of months !) and the sense of the poem taking on its own life.

Reading John's poems afterwards was also a great delight. His words are carefully weighed and full of new and subtle meanings, often surprising and only revealing themselves after pondering and re-reading. Many of them are concerned with life and death and with time.

So I waited expectantly for the poem to arrive by email - and was not in the least disappointed. It is clearly in John's style and has many of the common features of his earlier poems. At first I was surprised at how unscientific it is (wilfully so, as John remarked), but I do like it a lot. The Sun, not even mentioned by name in the poem but clearly its theme, has captivated me for my whole scientific career. The poem has a
much more positive feel than many others that John has written in response to the real difficulties of modern life - while not denying the reality of those hardships, this poem reflects to me the importance of humanity and the daily support we are given.

The poem is short - but the words are precious and economical and I enjoyed savouring the depths of meaning and implication (not unlike the mathematical equations that describe the Sun). It is a combination of a love poem and a religious poem, with a hint of myth thrown in. I liked the idea of the one who is always there even though not seen and the thought of being ferried back to the beginning, to the start of a new day or to the source of life.

So thank you, John, for a memorable experience. You mentioned that 3 or 4 other poems are in limbo having been sparked off by our meeting, so I can't wait to see them too eventually.