I have a poem going to the moon.
No, really: way back at the beginning of 2022, I sent a poem in response to a call from Brick Street Poetry for an international collection of original poetry to be included in the Lunar Codex, a library of contemporary creative works that will be housed in three operational sites on the moon. The Polaris Trilogy: Poems for the Moon is slated for launch with NASA’s VIPER mission to the lunar south pole in late 2024. To my immense surprise and delight, my poem was selected.
The Polaris Trilogy includes work from all seven continents (researchers stationed in Antarctica contributed several poems) and dozens of nations and languages, several of them Indigenous. Brick Street plans a series of podcasts featuring poets who wrote in a language other than English, reading their poems in the original and then in English translation. (I’m almost as excited about this as I am about the whole lunar thing – I can’t wait to hear those poets and their work!)
Lead editor Joyce Brinkman talks about the Codex and Lucy Park reads her poem from the anthology, first in Korean and then in English translation in this interview by Susanna Song for the Sejong Cultural Society. Bonus feature: learn about sijo, an ancient Korean poetic form!
Although the nickel-based microfiche edition is reserved for the lunar mission, The Polaris Trilogy is available in paperback here on earth at Amazon. Click on the sample to read the foreword by project founder Samuel Peralta and the introduction from lead editor Joyce Brinkman.
Links:
NASA’s VIPER mission: https://www.nasa.gov/viper
Susanna Song’s interview with Lucy Park and Joyce Brinkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDK0STIKHN0
Amazon purchase page for The Polaris Trilogy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWS61PV
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