![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dj9jqhxgw9833.cloudfront.net\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/04\/2adb799a-9813-44fa-b9df-1461f3d2eabb.jpg\")
As a poet and a writer, I love the Moon and its associated vocabulary: words such as \u2018moonset\u2019, \u2018celestial\u2019 and \u2018lunation\u2019. But my mind struggles with its more scientific aspects: the Moon\u2019s haphazard schedule; it only being called a quarter when half of it is visible; and the geometry of its rotation. To better my understanding, I combined science with poetry, writing a verse each night for a lunar month titled \u2018Between New Moons\u2019.<\/p>\n\n
In the lengthening November nights, I\u2019d check my Moon app and set out on late strolls up Bristol\u2019s urban hills in the direction of its azimuth, that\u2019s Moon-speak for bearing. I visualised it as a ship circumnavigating Earth, each night the planet having to rotate a bit extra to catch up. That explained why, from my fixed position, the Moon rose later each night.<\/p>\n\n
One evening with a friend, I cycled to Troopers Hill, which provided an uninterrupted ecliptic path overhead and a panorama of city lights glittering below. We watched the Moon\u2019s almost half-lit face play hide-and-seek behind clouds, now knowing first quarter was referencing the distance it had travelled on its orbit round our planet.<\/p>\n\n
On nights when sightings weren\u2019t possible, I explored the 17th-century map by Riccioli, enamoured by the plains he named as seas divided into good and bad weather.<\/p>\n\n
The Sea of Clouds, the Sea of Rains <\/em> The Moon revealed other ways science and literature have crossed paths. Throughout history, selenographers have named craters after astronomers, scientists and philosophers. There is one for Copernicus, whom I knew from Brecht\u2019s play Life <\/em>of <\/em>Galileo. <\/em>I\u2019d studied Poetics <\/em>by Aristotle, who is up there, too. I was overjoyed to see Haworth, but discovered it was for a Nobel chemist not the Bront\u00eb sisters. Nevertheless, for me, there was now a link to Wuthering <\/em>Heights <\/em>near the lunar south pole.<\/p>\n\n By week three, I was becoming obsessed. I\u2019m a night owl, so the Moon appearing around 1am wasn\u2019t a problem. In the garden I kept setting off a security light. Fortunately, my neighbours didn\u2019t see me standing on a plastic chair, my binoculars pointed in their direction because the last quarter Moon was above their roof.<\/span><\/p>\n\n The week of the waning crescent coincided with \u2018Museum of the Moon\u2019, a 7m-diameter replica of the lunar globe installed as an inflatable artwork at Bath Abbey. I got up close to Grimaldi, a crater I\u2019d peered at nights before. Back home, I caught up on Who <\/em>Do <\/em>You <\/em>Think <\/em>You <\/em>Are?, <\/em>with Judi Dench being told she was related to Tycho Brahe. I knew that name!<\/p>\n\n Tycho, the Moon\u2019s southern crater,<\/em> Then, with the lunar month ending, Bristol\u2019s planetarium showed Apollo <\/em>11 <\/em>and I watched the Moon landing. In astronomy, everything lining up like that would be called a syzygy. In literary terms, it was poetic.<\/p>\n\n Caroline Burrows is a professional poet and writer based in Bristol, who\u2019s been featured on BBC Radio 4. <\/p>\n\n Read more of her \u2018Between New Moons\u2019 verses on social media: @VerseCycle<\/p>\n\n Caroline Burrows spends a month making poetic observations of the Moon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":30940,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ub_ctt_via":"","purple_page_number":"25","purple_custom_meta_purple_page_number":"25","purple_seq_number":"1","purple_custom_meta_purple_seq_number":"1","purple_source_article":"article_25-1.xml","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_article":"article_25-1.xml","purple_source_issue":"May-2022","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_issue":"May-2022","purple_external_id":"May-2022-25-1","purple_custom_meta_purple_external_id":"May-2022-25-1","purple_issue_code":"|0000086552||","purple_custom_meta_purple_issue_code":"|0000086552||","purple_android_product":"com.im.skyatnight.204","purple_custom_meta_purple_android_product":"com.im.skyatnight.204","purple_ios_product":"com.im.skyatnight.204","purple_custom_meta_purple_ios_product":"com.im.skyatnight.204","purple_web_product":"","purple_custom_meta_purple_web_product":"","purple_publication_id":"075fab74-0a21-4201-866a-899d6c41c40c","purple_migrated":"","kt_blocks_editor_width":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[14],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/04\/2adb799a-9813-44fa-b9df-1461f3d2eabb.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"3","apple_news_title":""},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/04\/2adb799a-9813-44fa-b9df-1461f3d2eabb.jpg",1394,1018,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/04\/2adb799a-9813-44fa-b9df-1461f3d2eabb-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/04\/2adb799a-9813-44fa-b9df-1461f3d2eabb-300x219.jpg",300,219,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/04\/2adb799a-9813-44fa-b9df-1461f3d2eabb-768x561.jpg",768,561,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/04\/2adb799a-9813-44fa-b9df-1461f3d2eabb-1024x748.jpg",800,584,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/04\/2adb799a-9813-44fa-b9df-1461f3d2eabb.jpg",1394,1018,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/04\/2adb799a-9813-44fa-b9df-1461f3d2eabb.jpg",1394,1018,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Caroline Burrows spends a month making poetic observations of the Moon","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30942"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30942"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31634,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30942\/revisions\/31634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Swirled into an Ocean of Storms. <\/em>
When Moon\u2019s calm right-side ebbs and wanes,<\/em>
What\u2019s left works tempestuous forms.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
Has impact rays in multitude. <\/em>
To this one Earthly spectator, <\/em>
They look like lines of longitude.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dj9jqhxgw9833.cloudfront.net\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2022\/04\/Y2P900DFEEQ88M3689V5KBH81N48-1024x1024.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n