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NEW: The Tangled Bank: Love, Wonder, & Evolution has launched!

The anthology, which marks the 150th anniversary of Origin of Species, features over 100,000 words of speculative fiction, poetry, artwork, and essays about evolution.

An international line-up of nearly 50 contributors includes Sean Williams, Brian Stableford, Patricia Russo, Carlos Hernandez and Anne Bryan.

Just US$4.99, The Tangled Bank is now available for download as a PDF at http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/the-tangled-bank-love-wonder-and-evolution/8340048

Check out "Darwin's Daughter" by Christopher Green (a free short story from the anthology)
http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/darwins-daughter/8339953

For more information, visit the website, or our Facebook or Twitter pages.
Tangled Bank Press http://thetangledbank.com/

Darwin sonnets

Darwin's Loft

Extract from the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
Chapter one. On the breeds of domestic pigeons 'Believing that it is always best to study some special group, I have, after deliberation, taken up domestic pigeons. I have kept every breed that I could purchase or obtain, ... I have associated with several eminent fanciers, and have been permitted to join two of the London pigeon clubs. The diversity of breeds is astonishing.'     Click here to look at an excellent site on Darwin's Pigeons



He watched men take a pigeon in the hand
examine feathers, beak, each feature traced
in their mind's eye, each new potential scanned,
the offspring judged, selected, each one placed
appropriately in pies or breeding schemes.
Men homing in to make their dreams come true
bewildering varieties of dreams -
white fantails, tumblers, pigeons racing through
the dynasties of Egypt, Persia. Doves
to speed the news from bloody fields of war
to flutter strut and coo in courts of love
When Darwin's doves had fledged, like hopeful Noah
he launched them on the stormy sky to rove
and roost in places that he never saw.

            Bonded to Barnacles

Extract from the Autobiography of Charles Darwin‘On October 1846, I began work to work on Cirripedia (Barnacles) When on the coast of Chile, I found a most curious form,. ..... I worked steadily on the subject for the next eight years,... I proved the existence in certain genera of minute males complemental to and parasitic on the hermaphrodites. .... my work was of considerable use to me, when I had to discuss in the Origin of Species the principles of a natural classification.’ Darwin received a gold medal from the Royal Society for his work on barnacles

Eight years he worked on barnacles; bizarre,
this straining at dissections so complex.
What goose would hatch and lay him golden eggs
rewarding work his strength could hardly bear?
On shoreline rocks and flotsam, live or dead,
the drifting, one eyed shrimpy infants pour
a glue, attach their heads; six walls immure
them upside down. On rising tides they spread
a net of feathery legs to sieve the sea.
He trawls for species, some are parasites,
cut down to leg-less sacs, and others hold
some tiny hangers on that prove to be
bags of sperm with penis, husband mites.
To crown it all they hang his neck with gold.

Anne Bryan

You may print any poems or prose by Anne Bryan for your own use or to pass on to a friend, but please don't copy the poems or prose into assignments, magazines, newsletters or web sites without permission or acknowledgement. Ask for permission by E mail

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Darwin biography, as impartial as I can make it, without fundamentalist 'religious' disapproval or overzealous 'scientific' trumpeting of his work.

Monumental worms, a poem on earthworms, the subject of Darwin's last book

Sonnets on Darwin's work: 'Bonded to Barnacles', on the animals he studied for eight years, and 'Darwin's Loft', on the pigeons in the Origin of Species.

A Simple Guide to Evolution - a short history of evolutionary ideas

Evolution and Religion a discussion of the impact of evolution on religion

Darwin's Voyage two poems on Darwin's five year long voyage on HMS Beagle.

'Space with Wordsworth' explores the idea that science is hostile to poetry.

'Unsung by Singers' considers the scarcity of poems on science.