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Likestarlings is a place for talking in poems. We pair poets with poets and they write a sequence of six new works by responding in turn to one another. Our palaver blog goes beyond poetry to discuss collaboration in theory and in practice. Please take a look, and feel free to add comments, opinions and suggestions here. Read poems here
 

dateline: Suffolk, England, May 16, 1791 *
 
in veil of tears
to whose fault
do you ascribe
the drowned vault
 
Alessandro Volta throws the switch
that illuminates a venerable text
hand-coloured, light-flooded
interconstellationary wave
tingles on the tongue
 
of which we speak
through fantastical device
dependent chaotically
on quasi-divine algorithm
of a suppurating sun
 
the natural philosopher engages matter
in terms to give us pause
force fissure in the zeitgeist
 
saints are sculpted boys
below the waterline
efflorescence of recovered paint
in borrowed time
mementi mori, moisture
forcing up the floor
we count the bedes
 
right-lateral side-slip
compressional forces
expressed as uplift

* day of the most severe quake yet to strike Connecticut;
in Pisa, Volta commences experiments with Galvanism