Dr Anne Bishop

Bringing together two of my great loves, science and poetry, has opened up new realm of joy in my life.

Entering the Science Poetry Community

In Nov 2024 I completed the “Communicating Science Through Poetry” course run by Dr Sam Illingworth, Associate Professor at Edinburgh Napier University. I am now delighted to be part of a community of science poetry practitioners exploring how poetry can be used to communicate science and can be co-created to explore science-related themes.

Poems about cholera

A poem that I wrote during the course, called “Cholera Control”, was included in a collection “Entangled Stanzas” that’s hosted on the Scottish Poetry Library website.

For 2025 World Poetry Day I was inspired to write a poem about the bacteria that cause cholera, and global efforts to eradicate cholera disease, which I’ve posted along-side historic and current accounts of the rapid and devastating impacts of this disease.

Public poetry performance

My first science-related poem to be performed in public is called “Xenexton”, inspired by bioartist Anna Dumitriu’s wonderful work of the same name, “Xenexton”. Her art work, and my poem, reflect upon amulets that tried and failed to ward-off plague in the 1500s and a newly developed vaccine that truly can prevent plague. My Xenexton poem was performed at the Romanian Science Festival in September 2023.