One Million Poems: Global Collaboration through Astronomy and Experimental Poetry

“One Million Poems” is a project coordinating a global collaboration among members of the general public and other specialists from various fields, through experimental poetry and astronomy. The project aims at transforming the cosmic space into a theatrical stage in which the relational movement of celestial bodies creates transient conceptual and poetic synapsis by attributing a concept, a sentence or a  word to each celestial object. The movements of asteroids, the Moon and comets are choreographed by laws of physics and their effect ripples down to Earth, greatly affecting all life on our planet. Yet, these movements are hardly perceived as part of our terrestrial experience. If we imagine the extension of our terrestrial awareness into the solar system and into the cosmos, the celestial objects inhabiting outer space become part of our human understanding and experience of life on Earth.

"One Million Poems" echoes several philosophical theories and poetics. A primary source of inspiration for the project is the poetry of the Oulipo group, among other contemporary styles, founded by French poets and mathematicians, and consisting in combining words according to pre-determined structures, typically following mathematical reasoning. The words, structured under such constraints, bloom with hidden poetic meanings, freeing themselves from literal connotations. The project is also informed by dark skies awareness and dark skies appreciation, inviting participants to delve into the hidden narratives of the night skies that have been deeply connecting humans to the cosmos, and that are too often shadowed by light pollution.  "One Million Poems" aims at highlighting the extension of our human presence into the cosmos through an experiential and participatory process, accessible to people from all over the world. By collaborating with amateur and professional astronomers from around the world, the project opens the curtains of our planetary theatre for the public from around the world to experience and interact with the movements of celestial objects inhabiting outer space as a subjectively and collectively meaningful event. For the project, celestial objects, including the Moon, asteroids, comets, stars, are attributed individual fictional meanings, symbols or sentences by citizen scientists and other members of the public. Members of the international public can collaborate in creating words or sentences in different languages or in imaginary languages, weaving transcultural poems. As the words become associated and dissociated by the soundless movements of celestial objects across the sky, they generate transient meanings, flickering poetic and conceptual associations, like in Raymon Queneau’s book “One Hundred Million Poems”.