Yeah, I think that's fair. Julie and I had some interesting discussions about the role of science in poetry and wonder. And of course, we thought of the the Whitman poem as you mentioned, I think Julie had some really good thoughts about that. Because we have two poems here in these nine that are both basically about the Hubble Space Telescope. If you don't mind, I'm going to go on to the next of these it's from someone else who's been heard many times on the show, so we'll go to that now. That's true but it leaves out the wonder you'll find in many of the collections poems, it includes works from some of the 20th and 21st centuries greatest poets. We can thank Julie Swardstad Johnson and Christopher Cokinos. Julie's senior library specialist in the University of Arizona Poetry Center, she authored the 2019 poetry collection, Pennsylvania Furnace among other works and served as Artist-in-Residence at Gettysburg National Military Park. Her University of Arizona colleague Christopher, is a professor of English who also teaches Science Communication. He is the author of Hope Is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds and The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars. Hi, I'm Sasha Sagan author of, For Small Creatures Such as We and this is The Crew of Apollo 8 by Elaine V. Emans. "Shall we call them poets for having observed on their earliest times around the moon that it seemed to be layered with a grayish white beach sand with footprints in it? Or geologists for having reported to us the six or seven terraces leading down into crater angriness? Or shall we call them some new breed of bird for having swiftly flown weightless and unfearing and sharp eyed into the dark unknown? Yet words to tell of their skill and diancy are as weak as water and their return and being earthlings with us again are what most matter." Chris, what is the reaction been to the book so far? I know that from what I have received, that it has been pretty near ecstatic and very welcome.

Inside this wonderful resource, you’ll find a set of four immersive poems that you and your lower key stage 2 learners can read together as part of a space-themed lesson or unit. Children can experience blast-off as an astronaut, soar through the solar system and reflect on the wonder of the moon, all in just one lesson. If you’d like to help kids get inspired and write their own space-themed poetry, then perhaps you’d like our Space Word Mat. Once children have read through the rhyming poems, they can then use this word mat to find interesting adjectives and verbs for their own poems. Space and poetry might seem like an unlikely combination at first. A lot of people seem to think that space is purely in the realm of science, while poetry is about more subjective and ‘flowery’ things. But in actual fact, poetry and space aren’t light-years apart - space can be a limitless source of creative inspiration for poets and creative writers!

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Why not explore the rest of our Space Resources for English Lessons to make your KS1 English lessons fun and exciting for your students? Whether exploring the vast expanse of the universe or delving into the depths of human potential, the subject of space offers endless opportunities for poetic expression.

Blast off into the unknown and discover a galaxy of KS2 poems with this space KS2 resource from Pie Corbett. Isn't that the case? Also to hear these read it does bring something more to them than just hearing them in your own head. It occurred to me that we had to get together some time and have a little space poetry jam on stage there at the University of Arizona someday. I hope you'll consider that.I think that's what we're trying to get at in that section of the preface that, what Whitman saying about going out and being in the mystical moist night air we agree with that sense of looking up to the sky kind of seeing and experiencing what we can see and what we can imagine our way into. But that also, like you said Matt, the work of scientists, the charts and the numbers are also really important, that's the fact-based part, giving us the information to then really imagine, even beyond that. They are largely Americans, not entirely, I mean, we're going to hear one by Pablo Neruda before too long, there is tremendous diversity among them though. You mentioned that there are so many more of these that it sounded like maybe there might be room for a second volume with more of a global focus of down the line?