New Columnist Takes Us Out Of This World

One can’t help but think heavenly thoughts when they see some of the light post banners on Zionsville’s Main Street right now. The banners feature haiku poetry superimposed over photos of the galaxies from the Hubble space telescope. The poets who wrote those haikus and IUPUI Physics Professor, Dr. Andrew Gavrin, will lead an Out of This World Walking Tour Sunday, with a stop at each banner. At each stop, the poet will read his or her work and Dr. Gavrin will talk about the image on the banner. The banners and the event are sponsored by Brick Street Poetry, Inc.

One of those haikus was written by Carmel poet Rosaleen Crowley. The banner with her poem is on the light post near Black Dog Books at Oak and Main.

The walking tour begins at 7:30 p.m. at the corner of Cedar and Main streets. It travels south on the east side of Main Street to Bub’s Burgers and Ice Cream, then crosses over to the west side of Main and heads north again. It ends at the SullivanMunce Cultural Center where there will be refreshments and a celebration to mark the end of National Poetry Month. The public is invited. No registration is needed. Just show up at any point along the tour or at the SullivanMunce after the tour.

The end of the Out of This World Tour is just the beginning of a larger project about outer space in which Brick Street Poetry is taking part. NASA’s Artemis program, which intends to land humans on the moon again in 2026, will be sending instruments to the moon in the years prior to 2026 through Commercial Lunar Payload Service partners. On some of those trips to the moon, there will be time capsules with contents representing cultures from all over the world. These cultural items – arts, literature, poetry and more – will be in digital form on Nanofiche, which is a nickel-based form of microfiche that was chosen because it stands up in harsh environments and claims to last forever. You can read more about Nanofiche here: https://www.archmission.org/nanofiche

The cultural items on Nanofiche will be held in a capsule called The Lunar Codex that will serve as a museum to serve future astronauts who come to the moon way station on their way to Mars.

One of those flights is scheduled to take place in June of this year. So far, it’s still on schedule. The flight will carry, among other cultural arts, a collaborative poem written by 10 Indiana poets about Indiana’s rivers. The poem, titled “Following the Rivers’ Flow,” was written by Indiana poets Joyce Brinkman, Mark Neely, Orlando Menes, Shari Wagner, Donald Platt, Kevin McKelvey, Mitchell Douglas, Matthew Brennan, Marcus Wicker, and Laurel Smith. The poem was first published in 2016 by Brick Street Poetry in a book about Indiana’s Bicentennial titled, “Mapping the Muse.”

As more flights go up over the next few years, there will be more Brick Street Poetry on board, including a book called The Polaris Trilogy featuring poetry from all over the world in every language. Lead editor for the Polaris Trilogy book, Brick Street’s Joyce Brinkman, said all languages are represented because people from all over the world are expected to travel to Mars in the future and the Lunar Codex museum will be on the moon to serve all of them as they lay over on their way to Mars. At press time, the flight that will carry The Polaris Trilogy is scheduled to launch in late 2024, but that is subject to change. For more information on the Lunar Codex project, visit this website.

As for now, get a taste of what is yet to come with Brick Street’s outer space project. The haikus of eight Indiana poets with images from the Hubble telescope are on display through the end of April in Zionsville.

-Susan Miller is a long-time Hamilton County journalist, poet and author. She is a co-founder and former board member of Brick Street Poetry, Inc.