I also spent hours in the library pawing over books on cosmology and astronomy. When I was a little boy I used to lie on my back on the huge unlit playing field in front of my house in Huddersfield and marvel at the night sky, the Milky Way (which was very visible on the darkest, clearest nights), the bright planets and the satellites (which I hoped were alien spaceships). I think I was into space before I knew anything about the science behind and around it. Interview with Simon Barraclough Where did your interest in space sciences come from and what led you to combine it with poetry? Laboratorio revels in the poetry of science and the science of poetry. Plus the intellectual appetites of silverfish. In these pages you will find experimental sequences collaborative pieces one-off lyrical gems moving and humorous meditations upon cosmology, history, the Multiverse, scientific careers, the engineering of spacecraft, and the limits of language. Laboratorio presents the fruits of this year-long experiment and also showcases two guest poets who developed links with the lab. While happy to find inspiration for his own work, his chief aim was to discuss, disseminate, and generate poetry with the staff and students of the lab. In 2014, poet Simon Barraclough spent a year visiting UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Surrey.

Laboratorio by Simon Barraclough