Poetry at Georgia Tech:
From the Atlanta Journal Constitution…
Amid all the courses in bioinformatics and global economics, algorithms, combinatorics and optimization — look it up — the next generation of engineers and computer scientists is reading, even writing, poetry.
That makes perfect sense to Wayne Clough, president of Georgia Tech and a Ph.D. in civil engineering.
“The pursuit of science and technology is just as creative a process as poetry and the arts,” Clough says. “Both require intensely creative people who can think outside the box, look at the same things everyone else sees and imagine something more, and put the pieces together in new ways.”
For alumni who still might be wary of such right-brain activities, Thomas Lux, director of the Poetry at Tech program, offers a presentation every year called “Engineering a Poem.”
“We’re trying to diminish the stereotype of the poet as some dreamy bozo who wanders around and then all of a sudden gets struck by inspiration,” says Lux. “Poems are made things. They have everything to do with intense emotions … but poems are made things. They don’t just happen.”
Cheers to that (via Arts Journal).