Scientists Turn to Poetry to Heal Grief and Spark Wonder

When palliative care physician Danielle Chammas lost a long-time cancer patient last year, she came home and wrote a poem called "Her Defiance" that captured the woman's final moments with family gathered around. The verse, later published in a medical journal, described her patient as "the leaf clinging fiercely to the tree" before releasing to fly.

Chammas works at the University of California, San Francisco, where she co-directs the Poetic Medicine program. The center hosts weekly online meetings where clinicians, patients, caregivers, and community members from around the world gather to listen to poems and write their own, creating spaces for healing and connection.

"The humanities are foundational to my ability to do my clinical work," Chammas explains. Poetry helps her "truly accompany somebody through something unthinkable" just as much as understanding how pain medications work.

Science and poetry might seem like opposites, one rooted in facts and the other in feelings. But researchers writing verse say the two fields blend beautifully, offering fresh ways to understand complex problems and communicate wonder.

Mathematician Colleen Farrelly sees poetic patterns in her work with topology, the study of geometric properties. Last September, when hurricanes Humberto and Imelda swirled 800 kilometers off Florida's coast, she wrote a poem about the Fujiwhara effect, where two storm systems dance around each other and feed off each other's energy.

"I really like being able to explain math to lay audiences that way," Farrelly says. Her poem, published in Rattle magazine, made a rare meteorological phenomenon accessible to everyone.

Engineer Fionn Rogan works on Ireland's transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy at University College Cork. He composes three-line haiku poems in his head during his 10-kilometer bicycle commute, finding that poetry helps him "engage the head and the heart" when tackling complicated climate challenges.

Why This Inspires

These scientist-poets follow in the footsteps of greats like physician William Carlos Williams and mathematician Ada Lovelace, who invented "poetical science" combining abstract math with imagination. They're proving we don't have to choose between logic and creativity, facts and feelings.

Poetry taps into "the multitudes that are in us," Chammas says, opening minds beyond binary thinking of good or bad, healthy or sick. By pouring scientific knowledge into verse, researchers find new solutions while making the invisible world of molecules and the wonders around us accessible to everyone.

The growing movement shows that the best science doesn't just measure the world but helps us see it with fresh eyes and open hearts.