Our Aug 20 meeting information is:
Meeting is at 7:30, connect any time after 7:15;
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Topic: A Cosmic Treasury: Reviving a long-lost manuscript of astronomical poetry
During World War II, ace librarian Beatrice W. Welling assembled an anthology of poems about the heavens. Included in her manuscript were verses by some of the best-loved poets in the English Language. The voices and the cadences feel familiar, but the poems, since they are rarely anthologized, feel fresh.
Female poets are well-represented, as are Canadian poets. Welling attempted to provide as much variety to the verses as possible, consciously including “hymns, lyrics, sonnets, quatrains, rhyming couplets, blank verse”, and a number of other forms.
Welling organized the collection so that there would be at least one poem for each week of the year. Where it made sense, poems would appear at an apt time in the calendar year — the Orion poems are grouped in December, for example.
Had the manuscript been published in 1944, it would have been one of the world’s first anthologies of astronomical poetry. The manuscript was never published, and was forgotten.
Seventy-five years later, the manuscript was re-discovered.
Join Mark Tovey, who is in the process of editing Welling’s manuscript into a soon-to-be-released book of art and poetry of the night sky. He will tell the story of the manuscript’s re-discovery by Peter Jedicke, and paint a picture of Welling’s remarkable life, giving a visual tour of the people and places that may have inspired her to assemble this collection.
All interested are welcome to attend!
Speaker
Mark Tovey did his BA at Western University, where he was the recipient of the Gold Medal for English & Linguistics. His PhD in Cognitive Science was from Carleton University. He was a Fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, and is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in History at Western University. He has a particular interest in the ways in which public history can be combined with public astronomy. Tovey led the design of the three historical exhibit rooms in the Cronyn Observatory at Western University, and sits on the History Committee of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Mark Tovey edited the first book on the use of collective intelligence for solving global challenges.