World Poetry Day 2018: Video of Stephen Hawking reading 'Relativity' by Sarah Howe

The poem delves into how the mysteries of space and time can be so uncommunicable to scientists that they can only be expressed through the language of metaphor and poetry

On World Poetry Day, it seems only apt to reflect on how its work can infiltrate every corner of the mind.

That art and science can have such a harmonious union, for example, as represented in a reading by the late Stephen Hawking of Sarah Howe's poem "Relativity", itself dedicated to the famed scientist and his work.

The collaboration, originally created to celebrate 2015's National Poetry Day, delves into how the mysteries of space and time can be so uncommunicable to scientists that they can only be expressed through the language of metaphor and poetry.

Writing for Gonville & Caius College at the University of Cambridge, Howe explained that this reliance on the literary was "a recurring theme of my chats with scientific colleagues, who in their teaching come up with analogies to explain complex ideas for their students, or phenomena taking place at a level we can't see."

“They were conscious too of how these metaphors can mislead, making the known and the unknown seem more alike than they really are. I wanted to explore that tension in ‘Relativity,’ whose title points to Einstein’s celebrated theory of 1915, a hundred years old this year.”

Howe was shortlisted for a Forward Prize for her first poetry collection, Loop of Jade.

Hawking's family released a statement in the early hours of last Wednesday morning confirming he'd passed away in his home in Cambridge, including words from his children - Lucy, Robert, and Tim - which read: "He once said: ‘It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.’ We will miss him forever."

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