August 16, 2022
The Lowell Observatory’s Star Stuff Podcast recently featured an interview with University of Arizona Press co-editor and poet Julie Swarstad Johnson, who recently served as Lowell Observatory’s Poet in Residence this summer.
Swarstad Johnson is co-editor of Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight, a trailblazing anthology of poetry that spans from the dawn of the space age to the imagined futures of the universe. The anthology offers a fascinating record of both national mindsets and private perspectives as poets grapple with the promise and peril of U.S. space exploration across decades and into the present. Tracing an arc of literary skepticism during the Apollo era and before to a more curious, and even hopeful, stance today, Beyond Earth’s Edge includes diverse perspectives from poets such as Robert Hayden, Rae Armantrout, N. Scott Momaday, Adrienne Rich, Tracy K. Smith, Ray Bradbury, May Swenson, Pablo Neruda, and many other engaging poetic voices.
Listen to the interview here.