Follow us on Twitter or Like us on Facebook
  • Home
  • The Poets
  • Events
  • Gallery
  • fault line

Pippa Goldschmidt

Pippa Goldschmidt grew up in London, and now lives in Edinburgh. She is a graduate of the Masters course in creative writing at the University of Glasgow, has a PhD in astronomy and worked as an astronomer for several years at Imperial College, followed by posts in the civil service including working in outer space policy. In 2012 Pippa was awarded a Scottish Book Trust / Creative Scotland New Writers Award. Her first novel, The Falling Sky (Freight, 2013) was runner-up in the Dundee International Book Prize.

Visit Pippa Goldschmidt's website.

Order Be the First to Like This
From the unofficial history of the European Southern Observatory in Chile

When our war is over
we go to Chile 
buy a mountain in the desert
build telescopes 

with the power to detect
a naked flame on the Moon

Here
the sky curves closer to the Earth
galaxies lightyears away
are observed
young stars shrouded in dust
are revealed
new comets
are discovered
recorded
catalogued

But we can’t look at everything
the Moon is too brigh
Jupiter burns our camera

we avoid explosions in the South

We run out of things to see
so we invent new things
dark matter to stop galaxies flying apart
dark energy to speed up the universe
but we can’t find these dark things

Our telescopes have the power to detect
a naked flame on the Moon
or a light shone by a soldier
into the face of a prisoner
in a camp not far from
here

Here the lone and level sands stretch far away
but I’m no Shelley writing Ozymandias
I’m only Goldschmidt et al.
I publish what I see

I can’t see the dark things
planes bombing the presidential palace
explosions in the South
camps hidden from view

This is one problem which we cannot solve –
find x
where x is equal
to the number of people
buried in the desert
not far from
here


‘The Unofficial History of the European Southern Observatory’ © Pippa Goldschmidt. ‘The Unofficial History of the European Southern Observatory’ from Where Rockets Burn Through: Contemporary Science Fiction Poems from the UK © Pippa Goldschmidt. Reprinted by kind permission of the author and Penned in the Margins, 2013. 

Pippa Goldschmidt reads 'From the Unofficial History of the European Southern Observatory in Chile'.

Pippa Goldschmidt read 'Physics for the Unwary Student'.

Pippa Goldschmidt reads 'The Ballad of the Immortal Gene'.
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.