Cornell University already offers several courses nicknamed "Physics for Poets." Now poet Bridget Meeds has proposed just the opposite.

"I'll be offering a workshop called 'Poetry for Physicists,'" said Meeds, the first-ever poet-in-residence at Wilson Laboratory, home of the often misunderstood synchrotron, a so-called "atom smasher" in which elementary particles are annihilated and other elementary particles are created. "I see myself as an emissary between the scientific world and the public," Meeds said.

From March 27 to April 21, Meeds will spend two hours every morning of the business week in Wilson Lab with physicists and other lab employees. She'll take notes, write poems and present her "Poetry for Physicists" workshop at the end of her residency, and physicists will be invited to join in the poetry-writing process.

Then Meeds will "compose a snazzy little chapbook of about 10 poems," she said. And in September, when the chapbook is printed, she will hold a reading-lecture in the Mural Lounge of the Clinton House in downtown Ithaca.

The residency, workshop and public reading are all part of a $2,500 New York State Council on the Arts grant Meeds received through the Community Arts Partnership in Ithaca.

Last year Meeds pitched her proposal to David Cassel, associate director of the laboratory, and she found a receptive audience.

"It just seemed like an attractive idea," said Cassel, who sees the residency as a unique vehicle for making Wilson Lab more accessible to the public. "I discussed it with a number of people in the lab and was pleased with the reaction of my colleagues. This will put a new perspective on the mysterious place called the Wilson Laboratory and the synchrotron."

The principal machine in the Wilson Lab is the Cornell Electron Storage Ring - CESR - that actually collides electrons and positrons (the antiparticle of the electron), Cassel said. "These particles annihilate each other and produce other particles, particularly the 'beauty'

quark, which is the primary object that we study," he said. "The beauty quark is important because we believe that it is the key to understanding a phenomenon called CP violation, one of the three ingredients needed to explain the disappearance of the antimatter produced in the Big Bang."

Constructed in the mid-1960s, the synchrotron is mislabeled as an "atom smasher." Today the synchrotron serves as an injector for CESR - the source of electrons and positrons for CESR, Cassel said, adding that atoms are not smashed in the synchrotron, although similar facilities elsewhere do just that.

Cassel and Meeds held a series of meetings that shaped the project as well as the grant application.

"David was instrumental in helping to secure the funding as well as in designing the way the residency will work," said Meeds. "He's a flexible and creative person who values the artistic perspective."

Cassel took Meeds on a tour of the laboratory and introduced her to physicists and employees "who were very welcoming," said Meeds. Cassel also will join in the reading-lecture next September to offer "the scientist's-eye view of the poet-at-work," Meeds said.

Meeds currently works halftime as an administrative assistant in the Cornell physics department and travels to Donegal, Ireland, in the summers to teach poetry. She lays no claim to a knowledge of physics and said her work will greatly depend on the success of her collaboration with the folks at Wilson.

"While I don't speak math and my understanding of modern physics will be limited because of that, I fully expect that the physicists will take some time to explain their work to me, in English," Meeds said. "That's important, because along with being a poet I'm a taxpayer, and my taxes fund their work."

Collaboration is an important part of Meeds' previous creative enterprises: She co-wrote an experimental film that premiered at the Museum of Modern Art; co-wrote a light-opera premiered at the ArtsEdge Festival in Seattle; and co-wrote a song cycle with Rob Paterson, a composer in the graduate music program at Cornell, and Kenny Berkowitz '81, a local columnist and playwright.

Meeds received her undergraduate degree in English from Ithaca College in 1991. In 1994 she earned an M.A. in poetry through England's Lancaster University, studying in Belfast, Ireland. Her thesis poem "Light" was published by Faber and Faber in England in 1997, and by The American Poetry Review in 1998.

"As I go into Wilson, my brain will be a big piece of sticky flypaper - who knows what pieces of knowledge will stick, what poems will result?" said Meeds. "I'm hoping to spark new ideas. It seems quite remarkable that all circumstances work in concert to create this world where we carbon-based life-forms can thrive. Sounds like a subject for poems to me."