In 1995, the Romanian Society for Meteors and Astronomy (SARM) initiated the Cosmopoetry Multiproject, which became international soon after that.
Beyond its cultural-educational role in attracting people to astronomy, this multiproject has had two main purposes:
1. To fight for the identity of astronomical poetry—moving from simply being a festive component in world literature (as it had been for a long time) to a distinctive and organized literary/astronomical genre called “astropoetry”;
2. To promote a related concept called “cosmopoetry” and based on astro-photo-art-poetry combinations conceived as fluent (individual or collective) stories.
In this respect, the “Cosmopoetry – SARM and Friends” group in association with Astronomers Without Borders will try, through the Olympicosmopoetriada, a new and superior representation of this concept.
To illustrate what can be done to implement this idea, here is a list of significant web projects that can be assimilated within the cosmopoetry concept:
1. ”Revolutionary” stories:
-The Best of SARM (over 70 web pages)
-Astravantgarde
2. Individual stories:
-Echoes of Light (by Calin Niculae)
-The Dragon Astrotrilogy (by Dan Mitrut)
-Us and the Sky (by Valentin Grigore)
-Death of Meteors (by Cristina Tinta Vass)
-The Road of Conjunctions (by Alex Conu)
-Distant Memories (by Calin Niculae)
3. Stories by couples of authors:
-Three Astropoetical Sketches (by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe and Calin Niculae)
-The Sarmizegetusa Archeoastropoem (by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe and Gabriel Ivanescu)
-A Visit to the Royal Greenwich Observatory (by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe and Valentin Grigore)
4. Collective stories:
-Passports for a Heavenly Expedition
-Comet McNaught Haiku
-Moon and Fellows
-Newton and the Striking Apple
-World Astrotipuritura Championship
-SARM’s Intercontinental Astro-Ecologic Verse Tournament
-Favourite Constellations
-The 14th Annual Astropoetry Show at the International Meteor Conference
-European Winter Astro-Story
-A Talk between Two Total Lunar Eclipses
5. Mega-stories:
-Astropoetry to the International Year of Astronomy 2009
-Astropoetry to the Global Astronomy Month 2010
-Expedition to El Gran Telescopio Canarias
Regarding the concept of “competition:” This project starts from a basic Olympic principle that it is important not to win but to participate. The Olympicosmopoetriada will not include competitions of works in the sportive sense, but will be instead a collective story harmonizing individual works—in which the only competition will be that of the creators with themselves.
The special idea of this project is that the former sanctuary of gods, Mount Olympus, should not be seen only as inspiration for the Olympic Games or various scientific Olympiads, but, through the mythological-astronomical legends from around it, Mount Olympus is also an invaluable source for creative astrohumanism that can be connected to contemporary astronomy.
So, for Olympicosmopoetriada 2012, we are ready to receive astropoems, astro-photo-poems, astro-art-poems, poetic images or combinations of images on cosmic themes from contributors worldwide of all ages at the following address: sarm.ro (AT) gmail.com
Project coordinators: Andrei Dorian Gheorghe and Valentin Grigore.
Project deadline for submissions: April 30, 2012.
Project launch: May 2012
http://www.cosmopoetry.ro/gam2012/
