BY THE TIME THAT Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin walked on the Moon in 1969, the Cyclopean eye of Sir Bernard Lovell’s radio telescope at Jodrell Bank, Cheshire, had been fixed on the heavens for a dozen years. It was the only telescope on Earth able to monitor the flight of the rocket that launched Sputnik I, the Soviet probe that sped into space in 1957. This was its first success, and its moving gaze followed all subsequent Sputniks, Lunas and Apollos. For a long time it was the largest eye in the world.

This year it celebrates its 50th anniversary, a momentous occasion because while Jodrell Bank is part of astro-history, now it is to make literary history. This it will do by performing an unprecedented poetic act. It will “bounce” a poem off the Moon.

Poets have a thing about what Philip Larkin sourly called the “lozenge of love”. Shakespeare mentions the Moon more than 170 times. The lunatic, the lover and the poet, he says, are all equally moonstruck. She’s everywhere: Monday, month, menstrual, measure – all take their etymological bearings from her. She affects tides, wolves and lovers. The Crescent is to the Muslim what the Cross is to the Christian. And the Virgin Mary stands on a crescent moon.

The First Move Literature Festival (June 15-17), celebrating the telescope’s birthday, is moon-minded too. It is holding a competition to choose the Moonbounce poem. Here science and the arts, the “two cultures”, decisively converge, the poem will be beamed up, then Sir Bernard’s radio eye will catch the returning echo in its socket 2.5 seconds later. We will hear it go up, and (unsettlingly) we will hear it come back, experiencing a new kind of formal closure.

Fly your poem to the Moon

Michael Schmidt launches a writing competition combining art and science

BACKGROUND

• Phase by Joanna Clark

• First word: Erica Wagner

• Her word: Jeanette Winterson

Related Internet Links

• First Move Festival blog

Pippa Goldschmidt, an astronomer who is studying for a masters in writing at Glasgow, explained the time lag in lay terms. “The 2.5 second delay in the bounce-back is because of the finite speed of light,” she said.

“Radio waves travel at the speed of light. The speed of light is 300,000 kilometres per second, so the signal will take a certain amount of time to get to the Moon and then to bounce back. It is this delay, and the fact that you know how fast the radio signal is travelling, that allows you to calculate the distance to the Moon from Earth; which is about 385,000km.”

How will poets handle this? Will it be like reciting (as Seamus Heaney did when a boy) into a well? Will they reinvent the echo poem or exploit the gap in time that space provides? Will the words go up in one key and come back in another, transformed by the pocked lunar surface, the way that two rackets make a different pop when they exchange a tennis ball? Will the words come back reversed, as in a mirror? Will Poe’s Ravencome back Never, or versa vice?

But be warned: the Moonbounce might have to be postponed if the wind speed is high and the telescope has to be parked so that it doesn’t sail away. But Tim O’Brien, an astronomer and a judge of the poetry competition, is reassuring. “The telescope is most susceptible to high wind when it’s pointing low down towards the horizon. Since the Moon will be quite high in the sky mid-afternoon on Sunday June 17, it’s less likely that we’ll be scuppered.” On Moonbounce Day, the only way is straight up.

- For the First Move programme visit www.jb.man.ac.uk. Book tickets on 01477 571339. The Times is the media partner and the festival is part funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

How to enter

This competition is now closed.

Poems should be no more than 28 lines (the lunar month is just over 27 days long), and should address Time and Place – the themes of the First Move festival. Entries must be emailed to bookscomp@thetimes.co.uk by 10am on Friday June 8 2007, and should include a name, telephone number and address.

The judges are Michael Schmidt, editorial director of Carcanet Press, editor of PN Review and Professor of Poetry at the University of Glasgow; Elaine Feinstein, poet; Erica Wagner, literary editor of The Times and festival co-director; Teresa Anderson, Head of Public Understanding of Science and Engineering at Manchester University and festival co-director; and Tim O’Brien, senior lecturer in Astrophysics at Jodrell Bank.

The prize includes travel to and from Jodrell Bank for the winner and one companion, two nights’ accommodation, and free entry to festival events.

The winner will be notified on June 13. The Moonbounce will take place, conditions allowing, on Sunday June 17 at 2pm. The winning poem will also be posted on TimesOnline on June 16 and printed in PN Review. If the winner is under 18 they must be accompanied by an adult at all times. If the winner is unable to attend, or the Moonbounce is postponed, the winning poem will be Moonbounced by one of the judges.

The competition is open only to UK residents. One entry per person. Entries must be the original unassisted work of the author and not previously published. Prize includes accommodation, travel, and entry to the festival – all other costs are responsibility of the winner.

Entrants will retain copyright in their submitted entries, however by entering, all entrants licence Times Newspapers Limited a worldwide royalty-free perpetual licence to publish and use each entry in any and all media (including print and online) especially TimesOnline. TimesOnline reserves the right to publish entries other than the winning entries, and publication does not necessarily mean that the entrant has won a prize.

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