World's largest collection of chromatography poems!

Or at least, I'm pretty sure this is the world's largest collection of poems specifically on chromatography. Anyway, they can be viewed here, here, here, and (12 of them) here.

This, of course, is all good work from the Science Creative Literacy Symposia, we held a few weeks back. This is the output from one of the sessions, which involved working with plant material to isolate things like chlorophyll and other pigmented compounds via silica chromatography.

I'm actually very impressed with these pieces, since a lot of them read very well (although note that I'm no poet by trade or training). Below is one of my favourites, but check out the links above to read them all (especially if you have a thing for chromatography and column work).

COLUMN CHROMATOGRAPHY

Needled twigs, frozen crushed
Mixed with ethanol.
Separated, chunks from liquid,
Poured into a tube,
Left to sit a while.

Separated colours
Under UV light
Neon orange mixed with red
Where chlorophyll is plentiful.

Like a sunset at the beach,
On a summer trip.
The brilliant colours
Lie the sun, when it actually looks like
A fiery sphere.
The sun, sandwiched between layers,
In column chromatography.

~Claire Senn