The Universe Is Personal: Leaping, Connecting, and Meaning

Beyond the boundaries of traditional themes and arenas for poetry lie avenues of exploration open to all of us. Through poetry we can connect patterns within our daily experience to patterns in the distant cosmos: from the inner workings to the outer reaches of tool sheds, forests, kitchens, laboratories, and nebulae. Poetry gives us a way to launch our senses and curiosity virtually anywhere in the universe, allowing us to discover links and meaning between the intimate, distant, mundane, and profound.

Poet and recovering engineer Lisa Rosenberg holds degrees in physics and creative writing, and was a Wallace Steger Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. Her debut collection, A Different Physics, received the Red Mountain Poetry Prize, released in 2018. Lisa worked as an engineer in the space program, was active in aviation as a private pilot, and later founded a technology marketing consulting practice. In 2017-2018, she served as Poet Laureate of San Mateo County, California. Widely published and anthologized, Lisa’s poems explore natural and cultural landscapes, the art of making, and the drive to question inherited models. She is a frequent speaker on the confluence of arts and sciences, bringing shared tools to the urgent discourse on our modes of inquiry and enterprise. She looks forward to continuing this work in an upcoming Djerassi Residency for Scientists and Artists.