Present-day astronomy, vast, complex, is looking through darkness to distant objects and times. Yet its discoveries aren't exclusively scientific: from Pluto's moons to Curiosity Rovers, the sky remains a place where math meets myth. Now, in Zero Kelvin, Richard Norman's poetry probes the new heavens that are being generated daily by astronomical research.

An image appears in the crafted glass. The same image that will shrink to fill a contact lens. The same horror in an instant

of losing irretrievably an heirloom. It's only natural stars recede from the expectation of a billion gazes.

But everything is stored. The night returns restored projected from the data [...] theology, the study of dark matter,

conclusively has proven the well of hell is zero Kelvin. Movement ceases,

molecules foetally curl into themselves. And at the lowest circle of our galaxy a black hole squats.

O wondrous Goatse of another realm! Radio source, mass of four million suns, beams out pure revelation.

Cults worship at its altar [...] And models show the diodes rapidly receding

and the backlit screen expanding, and the transudation, and something dug up from deep within

that will not act and will not leave, a thing that makes a truce with space,Present-day astronomy, vast, complex, is looking through darkness to distant objects and times. Yet its discoveries aren't exclusively scientific: from the moons of Pluto to the Doppler effect, the night sky screens a place where math meets myth. Now, in Zero Kelvin, in scenes that shift from the mountains of Goma to the mountains of the moon, from galaxies that feast upon their neighbours to a solar sail unfurling above Earth's orbit, Richard Norman's poetry probes both newly glimpsed corners of the universe, and the myths which bring them into focus.

Experiment

It is a human urge- to orbit backwards at great speed. Experimentally, you do it and then the crack of lightning, the open-ended snowflake, splits the sky. Just as the sculptor cut the fat off space, you going backwards renders time. Seconds drop like filings when a magnet is turned off.

Praise for Zero Kelvin

"All at once the elements collapse and expand, become inseparable and remote, beautiful and terrifying — this is what Richard Norman's poems do to us. We feel stars, those tiny suns, as words blazing through the page; like dust or sand they leave a residue in our thoughts, worlds deep, so we might inadvertently carry them to work, or to the bed of a lover. Here is where language consumes us, absolute and intangible, between reality and myth." -Leigh Kotsildis, author of Hypotheticals

Richard Norman's profile page

Richard Norman lives in Halifax. He has recently published poetry in 'The Malahat Review, The Puritan,' and 'CV2', among other Canadian journals. 'Zero Kelvin' is his first collection.

"Weighty with metaphor" - The Telegraph-Journal