Congratulations, J.A. Grier! Your 7-7 lines were selected as the winning entry in the “Star Stuff” collaborative haiku contest. Here it is: the final poem!
Star Stuff
by Christine Rueter and J.A. Grier
The “star stuff”* in me
is in you, too, eddying
with lighter atoms.
Big Bang hydrogen, super
nova iron, fire our blood.
A very big thank you to our 2 judges–Francis Reddy and Tony Berendsen–for their time and efforts!
Francis Reddy is a science writer on contract to the Astrophysics Science Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. He is also the author of Celestial Delights: The Best Astronomical Events through 2020, which was published in 2012 by Springer.
Tony Berendsen is a Star Guide, Poet, and owner of Tahoe Star Tours. He uses Astro-Poetry to help people understand the starry skies, and our place in the Cosmos.
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The contest rules (retained for sentimental value):
Renga is a form of collaborative haiku with a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable structure. A single writer initiates the poem with the first 5-7-5 stanza and welcomes other writers to provide the 7-7 stanza. For fun, I wanted to initiate an astro-renga in honor of Global Astronomy Month 2012 (GAM2012) and National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) and invite anyone who wants to participate to do so.
Anyone can submit the 7-7 lines! For the sake of all renga participants, please include your lines as comments to this post so that others can see what has been submitted. I will “close” the renga to submissions at 5 pm EDT on May 4, 2012. I have two independent judges lined up to pick their favorite from the submissions. The final renga will be published on this blog and the submitter given co-credit with me in the by-line.
If there is enough enthusiasm for this renga process, I’m happy to start another renga and potentially alter the format to allow for a multiple stanza renga.
Look forward to reading your 7-7 lines!
*As Carl Sagan famously said, “we are made of ‘star stuff’.”