Tomorrow evening we will open our new Star Pavilion with the inauguration of the Garner Lectures – a programme that will explore the ways that science interacts with culture. The inaugural Lecture itself will be given by Alan Garner, the writer who has lent his name to the series.
Alan lives very close to our site and his work and life has been inextricably linked to Jodrell Bank since he moved here in 1957.
We are delighted, today, to be able to post a previously unpublished poem by Alan Garner, in anticipation of his lecture.
HOUSE BY JODRELL
Across the field astronomers
Name stars. Trains pass
The house, cows and summer.
Not much shows but that.
Winter, the village is distant,
The house older
Than houses and night than winter.
The line is not to London.
Unfound bones sing louder,
Stars lose names,
Cows fast in shippons wise
Not to be out. I know
More by winter than by all the year.
And a night to kill a king is this night.
© Alan Garner