For Global Astronomy Month 2020 (155): Inertia of Inertia (1)

By Andrei Dorian Gheorghe, Valentin Grigore and Florin Alexandru Stancu (design); photos from the SARM collection

Published: Monday, July 20 2020 20:42

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In the summer of 1993, Valentin Grigore founded the annual cultural-astronomical event of the Romanian Society for Meteors and Astronomy (SARM), “Perseids”, in the town of Targoviste and the Voivodes Hill, as the main meeting place for amateur, semi-professional and professional astronomers in Romania, and the nucleus for his concept, astronomy-culture-art-education-society.

In the summer of 1995, SARM invited Andrei Dorian Gheorghe for a recital of astropoetry (including his favorite “Hypothesis”) at the Art Showroom of the Targoviste Mayoralty in the national astronomy colloquium of the “Perseids”.

Soon after the “Perseid” event, Andrei Dorian Gheorghe and Valentin Grigore united their previous experiences in the poetry of the Cosmos and astronomy, and founded an astro-humanistic program with astronomical poetry - which they named “astropoetry” - in its centre, in combination with astronomical photography, arts and traditions - a fusion which they generically named “cosmopoetry”.

In the summer of 1996, SARM organized, in the same place and also during the “Perseid” event, the first edition of the Cosmopoetry Festival, inaugurated by Valentin Grigore’s “State of Sky”.

“Famous astronomers
try to explain
the cosmology of matter.
In the meantime
a child
from another state of existence
is keeping in his hands
the whole Universe,
as if it were a toy.”
-Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
(“Perseids 1995”, excerpt of “Hypothesis” - composed in 1981)-

“The sky -
a miracle of all times
delighting the mortals' eyes,
inspiring poets,
giving birth to so many dreams
and challenging so many prying minds.
The starry sky is
the Creator's gift to the people,
to banish their fear of darkness.
When it misses,
the night is hard and oppressive.”
-Valentin Grigore
(“Perseids 1996”, excerpt of “State of Sky”)-

In the abnormal summer of 2020, SARM - now a devoted member of Astronomers Without Borders - begins to celebrate 25 years from the official launch of the cosmopoetry program (which contributed in its history to projects of the International Meteor Organization, NASA, ESO, International Astronomical Union etc.) not through a succession of public astro-humanistic galas, but by creating another series of episodes for the AWB Astropoetry Blog, as part of the great efforts of this global community to keep alive the condition of astronomy during the current world crisis.

Cosmopoetry -
a never-ending program
for good and bad times

Praising the great skies
a never-ending program -
cosmopoetry
-Andrei Dorian Gheorghe (summer 2020)-