{"id":285,"date":"2011-06-11T11:45:16","date_gmt":"2011-06-11T11:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=285"},"modified":"2011-06-11T11:45:16","modified_gmt":"2011-06-11T11:45:16","slug":"heidi-willamsons-and-breathe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/heidi-willamsons-and-breathe\/","title":{"rendered":"Heidi Willamson's 'And breathe'"},"content":{"rendered":"

And breathe<\/span>

Venter Institute scientists have created<\/span>
the first synthetic bacterial genome.<\/span>


As the scientist\u2019s apprentice<\/span>
draws his hand back from the dish<\/span>
the harsh strip-lighting announces<\/span>
every shadow in every crevice.<\/span>
 <\/span>
His fingers retract from the act,<\/span>
retreat towards his body, while his lungs<\/span>
lift and fall unnoticed \u2013 their own miracle<\/span>
of engineering a fact too far for the physician<\/span>
 <\/span>
who the next day will photograph<\/span>
and hang them on the wall and point<\/span>
here is a defect, and here while shock<\/span>
fixes the face of the scientist\u2019s apprentice<\/span>

breathing in daily who knows what<\/span>
life rising from the dish.<\/span>



*Heidi Williamson<\/span> is a Norfolk based poet with an interest in science. Her first collection <\/span>Electric Shadow<\/span><\/a> (Bloodaxe, 2011) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.  In 2008-2009 she was poet-in-residence at the London Science Museum\u2019s Dana Centre. She is currently poet-in-residence at the John Jarrold Printing Museum.<\/span>
 <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And breatheVenter Institute scientists have createdthe first synthetic bacterial genome.As the scientist\u2019s apprenticedraws his hand back from the dishthe harsh strip-lighting announcesevery shadow in every crevice. His fingers retract from the act,retreat towards his body, while his lungslift and fall unnoticed \u2013 their own miracleof engineering a fact too far for the physician who the next day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}