Category: Chemistry

In the final part of our interview with Mary Soon Lee about Elemental Haiku (check out Parts One and Two), we discuss writing for various format, her current and future projects, and Star Trek!

I’ve read that when you moved to the USA you weren’t able to get a work visa and started writing TV scripts. What made you want to write for TV and then what prompted the move towards fiction?

Mary Soon Lee: I was a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I knew that they were considering scripts from people without screenwriting credits. The idea of getting to write a Star Trek episode was very appealing to me. I wrote three scripts, and learned a great deal in the process, though none of them sold. Beyond Star Trek, I wasn’t drawn to writing for television, so I switched to prose. I don’t think I’ll want to write for television in the future, though it’s not quite certain. In 2015-2016, I did write a handful of short pieces in script format as part of a novel-length epic fantasy told in poems.

Next Generation is the only Star Trek series that really clicked with me, are you looking forward to the new Picard series?

Mary: I am indeed looking forward to the Picard series. I re-watched both the original series Star Trek and the Next Generation series with my daughter, and a lot will depend on whether she likes the Picard series. (These days, I very rarely watch television shows without one or more of my family. When left to entertain myself, I read.)

Scripts and poetry both have a certain conciseness in their language, do you feel like writing those early scripts helped your poetry as well as your prose?

Mary: It probably did help. I think that most writing, and indeed reading, helps you become a better writer. At the time, I was most aware that the scripts helped me with dialogue. N.B. Concision is one of the things that I love in poetry, a quality that can be found in poems that lack rhyme or other formal devices.

You have degrees in mathematics and computer science, an MSc in astronautics and space engineering and spent time working as a programmer before becoming a writer. Do you miss the more technical career?

Mary: I enjoyed programming in much the same way as I might enjoy solving a puzzle, but I don’t miss it. On the other hand, I would have loved to contribute to science or the space program, and in some small way writing science poetry approaches that. I’m currently working on a collection of astronomy poems, as well as other poetry and fiction.

Since you’ve mentioned it I was going to ask about upcoming work. Let’s start with the astronomy poems, can you tell me a little more about the collection?

Mary: I’ve been working on the astronomy poems intermittently for over a year, writing a few at a time. At the moment, all the titles begin with “How to.” For example, there’s “How to Be a Star,” “How to Speak to Pluto,” and “How to Fathom a Light-Year.” The poems vary widely in style and tone. A few rhyme, most do not. They deal with the planets and stars, black holes and people with a connection to space. To date, sixteen of the poems have been published individually, but I would like to eventually gather them all together in a book.

I’ve read and enjoyed a couple of your ‘How To’ astronomy poems and did wonder if there was a plan behind them. The periodic table has an obvious end point, how will you know when you’ve reached the end of the project?

Mary: I’m not sure! There are some topics I feel should be covered, such as having a poem for each of the planets in the solar system. Beyond that, it’s far from clear. I’m also undecided on whether to include any astronomy poems that don’t fit the format of being a “How to” poem.

You’ve written a fantasy epic presented in the form of poems – Crowned: The Sign of the Dragon, Book 1. What made you want to tell a longer narrative through the form of poetry and what are your plans for the rest of the series?

Mary: I wrote “Interregnum,” the opening poem from “The Sign of the Dragon,” at a time when I was just returning to writing fantasy after years of writing mostly mainstream poetry. And I rediscovered that writing could be both all-engrossing and a joy. When I wrote that first poem, I thought it was a standalone piece, but the character of the sixteen-year-old boy tugged me back, and I wrote more and more poems about him. A lot of the later arc of the story is implicit in the first poem, though that wasn’t clear to me then. I’ve now written Xau’s whole story, which comes to over three hundred poems, and it is in the hands of my agent (the superb Lisa Rodgers).

It must be a nice feeling to have the whole of Xau’s story written, do you think you’d want to take on any other longer narrative projects like this in the future?

Mary: I would love to write another long narrative work, whether in poetry or prose. At the same time, it was a hugely absorbing project, so part of me wants to delay until my daughter is older. (She’s fourteen. She doesn’t need attention the way a young child does, but I like her company and I’d like to be available when she’s at home.)

Do you find the process of reviewing the books you’ve read on Goodreads helps your own writing and do you have a recommendation from the last year?

Mary: My book reviews aim to report my reaction as a reader, rather than attempt something more scholarly. Even so, I think the process does help me assess what I like — or dislike — and that may well help my own writing. I have many recommendations, but will try to restrain myself. In the past year, the book that I’ve loved most is “A Brightness Long Ago” by Guy Gavriel Kay, a quiet, reflective, beautifully-written fantasy. On the science poetry front, I very much liked Simon Barraclough’s “Sunspots,” which is a collection of poetry themed around the sun.

Finally, I’m curious about your website and twitter profile picture – can you tell me a bit about it?

Mary: Do you mean the little antenna being? That dates back at least as far as the 1980s when I was a first-year mathematics student at Cambridge University: I would draw the antenna being in my lecture notes. N.B. I’ve been blogging about my mail on the web since 1995 — my website is antiquated and alarmingly close to its original version. I’m hoping it will soon be thoroughly updated.

Well I hope the little antenna being makes it onto the updated website! Thank you so much for talking with The Sciku Project about Elemental Haiku and your writing, it’s been an absolute pleasure.

Mary: Thank you very much for all your questions and for your friendliness! I very much appreciate your enthusiasm for the haiku.

I wish you all the best for your next writing endeavours and I’m looking forward to whatever you share with the world next. Thank you.

Check out The Sciku Project’s review of Elemental Haiku and Parts One and Two of our interview if you’ve missed them.

You can find out more about (and order) Elemental Haiku here. Images and text reprinted with permission from Elemental Haiku: Poems to Honor the Periodic Table Three Lines at a Time by Mary Soon Lee copyright © 2019. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.

The Sciku Project was lucky enough to chat with Mary Soon Lee about her collection Elemental Haiku and in the second part of the interview we discuss revisiting the poems and the process of converting Elemental Haiku into a book (you can check out the first part of the interview here).

The book is being published two years after you originally published the poems in Science. How did it come about?

Mary Soon Lee: A while after the haiku had been published in Science, Lisa Rodgers, my agent (JABberwocky Literary Agency) submitted them to editors at places such as Penguin, Random House, and Simon & Schuster. Without Lisa, I wouldn’t have had any idea where to send a project like this. Several of the editors expressed interest, and I spoke to them on the phone. Then Lisa and I discussed the resulting offers, and I decided to work with Lisa Westmoreland at Ten Speed Press. (Yes, both my agent and my editor are called Lisa, and so is the book’s designer, Lisa Bieser.)

I like the design of the book, the presentation and additions enhance the poems without overwhelming them. How closely did you work with Lisa Bieser and Iris Gottlieb?

Mary: I am also very happy with the design of the book. Lisa Westmoreland was the one who recommended that I add explanatory notes to accompany the haiku. As for the illustrations and layout, Lisa Bieser suggested possible artists, and I picked Iris Gottlieb as my favorite — I love Iris’s work! Then I came up with an initial list of possible illustrations to accompany the haiku. After that, the rest of the design effort fell to Lisa and Iris.

You mentioned that Lisa Westmoreland suggested the explanatory notes for each haiku, how did you find the process of writing these? I’m guessing your love of concision helped to keep these brief, although I imagine for some of them there was a temptation to provide more background?

Mary: Writing the explanatory notes felt much closer to “real” work than writing poetry or stories. I tried to double-check the facts I’d used about each element, and then to find a clear but brief way to present the information. I didn’t want the length of the notes to overwhelm the haiku. So I didn’t attempt to summarize every interesting point about an element, only those touched on in the corresponding haiku.

What was it like revisiting the poems for the book – were there any that surprised you?

Mary: I still remembered the haiku well enough that they didn’t surprise me, though, for older work, it can be almost surreal to re-read what I’ve written and to see it as another person might see it. I also revised about a dozen of the haiku, in some cases making very slight changes, in others writing entirely new versions. In a few instances, both the original haiku and the new version are included in the book.

With the elements in the book that have more than one haiku it feels as if the original version published in Science is a bit lighter than the newer version, often more about the word itself. Was there a deliberate attempt to ensure that all the haiku were in some way informative?

Mary: My book editor, Lisa Westmoreland, was the one who, wisely, suggested writing more serious versions of the most frivolous haiku. While I harbor some fondness for the original versions (particularly the one for yttrium), I think it was good to add less flippant versions. N.B. After decades living in America, I still sometimes use British spellings by mistake, and that’s doubtless why two of the original haiku referenced the variant spellings for aluminum/aluminium and sulfur/sulphur.

The original poem for yttrium made me laugh, I’m glad it was included as well as the new poem. Two of my favourites are nitrogen and sodium which as poems are very different but I think capture the essence of the whole project. They’re relatively early in the table and I wondered if I particularly like them because I’m more familiar with the elements themselves. Did you find your approach changed or that the poems were harder to write as you got further towards the end of the periodic table where less is known about the elements?

Mary: I worried the poems would become hard to write as I neared the end of the periodic table, but in the end it wasn’t as difficult as I’d feared. While I had fewer pre-existing ideas and while there was less information to draw on, those restrictions meant I spent less time flailing around, wondering what to focus on. The information that does exist is fascinating: the effort to synthesize new elements and to learn what we can of their chemistry.

Do you have a favourite element, poem or illustration – are they the same? I believe fluorine (F, 9) was a favourite when you first published in Science, has this changed?

Mary: My favorites shift, but answering for my current mood: I have soft spots for the haiku for helium, potassium, germanium, iridium, radium, and ununennium. I wouldn’t want to upset the elements by naming any favorites among those! Among Iris Gottlieb’s illustrations, I love the ones for helium and mendelevium, plus the space-related images (tellurium, neptunium, curium).

I like that you’ve included a selected bibliography at the end of the book – reading through Elemental Haiku reminded me how fascinating chemistry can be and there are a couple of books on there that I definitely want to read. What is the most interesting thing that you learned during the process of writing the poems and explanations?

Mary: I’m not sure that there is one specific thing, but in general the process reminded me that science is a marvellous endeavor, perhaps the best undertaking of humanity. I liked learning a little more about the history of chemistry and about specific scientists, such as Dmitri Mendeleev and Marie Curie. I was struck by how fundamental units are defined and re-defined. One unit, the kilogram, was redefined while I was editing the book! I also found myself drawn to anything that touched on space, such as the nucleosynthesis of the elements, and how the discovery of technetium in the spectra of red giants meant that it must have been synthesized inside those stars.

I can see how it would be hard to pin point a single fact, it’s easy to forget that the elements are fundamentally everything! Thank you for taking the time to talk with The Sciku Project.

Check out Part Three of our interview where we discuss Mary’s writing, upcoming work and Star Trek! In the mean time, if you’ve missed them you can check out The Sciku Project’s review of Elemental Haiku and Part One of our interview.

You can find out more about (and order) Elemental Haiku here. Images and text reprinted with permission from Elemental Haiku: Poems to Honor the Periodic Table Three Lines at a Time by Mary Soon Lee copyright © 2019. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.

In the summer of 2017 Science magazine published a collection of 118 haiku about the chemical elements by poet and writer Mary Soon Lee. Two years later Elemental Haiku is now being published as a book by Ten Speed Press, with added explanations from Mary and illustrations by Iris Gottlieb.

The Sciku Project was lucky enough to chat with Mary about the collection and in the first part of the interview we go back to the beginning and discuss the process of writing and publishing the poems in Science.

In the introduction to the book you say that one day you sat down and without any grand plan in mind wrote a haiku for hydrogen and the rest seemed to follow from there. What prompted you to want to write a poem about hydrogen and why did you choose to write it as a haiku?

Mary Soon Lee: I keep a list of ideas that appeal to me, and when I sit down to write, I will sometimes pick an idea from that list. Other days, the process is more haphazard. I am fond of a book called “The Daily Poet” by Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano, which contains writing prompts that may start my thoughts wandering in a helpful direction. Often I jot down semi-random words or notions in a notebook before settling on a topic. For 12/14/2016, the day that I wrote the hydrogen haiku, I have no scribbles in my notebook. I think the idea must have just popped into my head, including the decision to make it a haiku.

Why Science, was that Lisa Rodgers’ suggestion or did you have it in mind as you developed the project further?

Mary: Partway through writing the Elemental Haiku, it occurred to me that that they might appeal to scientists, and so I decided to try submitting them to a scientific journal before sending them to a conventional poetry market. Lisa Rodgers has given me many excellent suggestions, but this idea was my own.

Having been through the Science review process a couple of times (both successfully and not!), I’m intrigued by how they reacted to your submission and whether there was any review process involving chemists or indeed other poets?

Mary: I submitted the haiku to Science as if they were a normal article, though I think I included a brief explanatory note. Six weeks later, I heard back that they would like to run the haiku as a poetry feature in the Letters section. The editor, Jennifer Sills, suggested several small revisions, but they were of a poetic slant rather than a scientific one. (It may well be that they reviewed the science content of the haiku behind the scenes.) After their appearance in Science, my book editor, Lisa Westmoreland, was able to get a chemist to review the haiku. Happily the reviewer didn’t spot any errors. I should also mention that my husband is usually my first reader, and he read the haiku before I submitted them anywhere.

What reaction did you get when the poems were published in Science?

Mary: I received quite a lot of emails from people who’d enjoyed the haiku, which was lovely. There were also a few articles, including an article in the Wall Street Journal that quoted the haiku for lithium, carbon, and silver. Over time, I received more nice emails and a few permissions requests. For instance, Tarik Gunersel asked to translate the haiku into Turkish, and later published several of the translations. This summer, C&EN — Chemical & Engineering News — asked me to contribute an essay to a special feature on the periodic table. (The essay may be read here).

The haiku have multiple themes to them – some are about an element’s history, its usage, position in the table or its structure. Did you take several approaches for each element and decide on the best or did you go with what felt right for each element? Was it important to have a balance of approaches across the collection?

Mary: With a few elements, I knew the theme I’d choose immediately. For instance, I decided in advance that the haiku for potassium would be about it yearning for the halogens on the other side of the periodic table. In most cases, however, I began by looking up multiple sources about the element, and then considering which aspects to write about. As part of that process, I did indeed try to balance the collection. I wanted the haiku to vary in tone as well as subject matter, with some being more serious and some more frivolous.

How many haiku did you write for each element and are there any haiku that didn’t make the cut but that you would have liked to include?

Mary: I usually only wrote one haiku that I liked, but sometimes that meant writing several haiku that I abandoned. I don’t think there are any abandoned haiku that I wish had been included…. In the few cases where I liked two haiku for an element, they both ended up in the book.

I find haiku to be quite a forgiving medium for science writing – I think that it’s hard to write a truly terrible science haiku (although it’s also hard to write a good one). At the same time a lot of the researchers I speak to find poetry itself intimidating and then the conciseness of haiku especially so. To get them breaking through that mental barrier I advise them to begin by writing a few key words down about their research and counting the syllables, almost piecing together a poem like a puzzle. How did you approach writing the haiku themselves?

Mary: With haiku, I think I usually try to decide what I want to say first, and then try to find a way to express that as clearly, concisely, and poetically as I can. American haiku don’t always keep to the tradition of a 5-7-5 syllable count, but I like to do so. As you mention, the process can feel like fitting together puzzle pieces. Both with haiku and other poetry, I often look up words in a thesaurus to search for synonyms with different sounds or shades of meaning … or different syllable counts.

Do you have any tips for anyone wanting to write scientific poetry, and for scientific haiku in particular?

Mary: The Elemental Haiku are my first significant foray into science poetry, so it is a comparatively new venture for me. Beyond trying to research the scientific content carefully, I’m not sure I have science-specific advice to offer. There are a few things that have helped me more generally. Firstly, reading widely. Secondly, writing about what matters to me or interests me. Thirdly, looking for feedback to improve my writing. (I ran a writer’s workshop for about a decade; nowadays, I ask family members to give me feedback on my work.)

I hadn’t realised you’d run a writers workshop – how did you find the process of teaching writing and why did you stop?

Mary: I didn’t teach writing, just started and ran the workshop. We followed a format close to that used by the Clarion workshops, where the author stays quiet while the other members offer initial feedback on their story, followed by more general discussion. I tried to make sure that comments — especially negative comments — were restricted to the story rather than the writer. After the birth of my second child, my limited free time became even more limited, so I withdrew from the workshop.

I can sympathise – small children are (wonderful) time thieves! Thank you for taking the time to talk with The Sciku Project.

Check out the rest of our interview where we discuss the process of converting Elemental Haiku into a book (Part Two) and Mary’s other writing, upcoming work and Star Trek (Part Three). You can also read The Sciku Project’s review of Elemental Haiku here.

You can find out more about (and order) Elemental Haiku here. Images and text reprinted with permission from Elemental Haiku: Poems to Honor the Periodic Table Three Lines at a Time by Mary Soon Lee copyright © 2019. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.