When Magic is Replaced with Science: Science Poems of David Morley

• Main Author: Merve SARI
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: Ankara University 2018-10-01
• Series: Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi
• Subjects: James Frazer; Magic; David Morley; Contemporary British Poetry; Science Poetry; Technoscientific Language
• Online Access: http://dtcfdergisi.ankara.edu.tr/index.php/dtcf/article/view/5173

In his seminal work, The Golden Bough (1890), Scottish anthropologist James Frazer argues that the phases of belief systems in different parts of the world can be divided into three. For him, the Age of Magic, is replaced by the Age of Religion which is then replaced by the Age of Science. Recent interests in contemporary British poetry confirm Frazer’s prediction. Due to postmodernism, which sidelined mainstream attitudes in poetry, and the rising influence of science and technology on the society, science poetry came into being in the latter half of the twentieth century Britain with writers like Hugh MacDiarmid, Edwin Morgan, Robert Crawford, W. N. Herbert, Allen Fisher, Peter Redgrove, Lavinia Greenlaw and Pauline Stainer. Anglo-Romani poet David Morley is one of the pioneering figures of British science poetry. Morley’s science poems aim to take science out of the laboratory into the public arena. Trained as a biologist, Morley in his poems underlines how interest in magic has been replaced by science in today’s technological world and emphasises science’s inseparability from contemporary experience. In addition to this, Morley employs the scientific method in writing a number of his poems, such as his field-trip poems, which rely on scientific observation and the acquisition of data. Thus, Morley’s poems can be read as scientific experiments in terms of their methodology and the analogies they raise. For him, technoscientific discourse, progressively invading mankind’s life, is not likely to disappear from the poetic arena, hence its presence is continuously acknowledged in his poems. In this light, this study will analyse British science poetry as represented in David Morley’s poems, which besides underlining the replacement of magic by science, also shows the poet-scientist in action, while collecting data and creating a poem based upon his findings.