The 2025 Brilliant Poetry Competition Shortlisted Poems: Ian Li
Brilliant Poetry is an international competition that invites participants from around the world every year to explore scientific discoveries and curiosity through poetic expression.
Aligned with the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), marking a century since the formulation of quantum mechanics, Brilliant Poetry aims this year to highlight the power of artistic expression, making the complexities of science accessible, beautiful, and profoundly inspiring.
During the call for participants, poets were encouraged to engage with the principles and paradoxes of quantum science, exploring their intellectual and human significance.
After closing the submissions on July 30, the jury started the selection process. In September, ten outstanding poems were selected for a shortlist that was announced early this month.
We are thrilled to publish each of them on the official blog of the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. Winners of the first, second, and third places will be announced on November 10.
Uncertainty
by Ian Li
She believes a physicist should always be on time,
but tonight, she’s late—
moonlight pooling on her bathroom’s checkerboard tiles
as her thumb eclipses the tiny indicator window.
For now, an unobserved result is both joy and pain,
her life’s wave function not yet collapsed.
For now, her entanglement with a chronically tardy economist
remains Schrödinger’s love, simultaneously broken and eternal.
But she fears superposition is a small step away from delusion,
so her neurons fire wildly, like electrons
excited to a higher orbit, contemplating a quantum jump
to a state of motherhood.
This is no shift between hyperfine states, it’s a leap
from theoretical to practical. Perhaps she won’t make it,
or perhaps she’ll quantum tunnel right through to the other side.
If only she could peel back the future to see if it all works out.
If only she were as reliable as a Cesium clock, immaculate
and cool and golden inside, despite a turbulent world outside.
She could keep time
with this oscillating heart.
Ian Li (he/him) is a Chinese-Canadian economist, developer, writer, and poet who started writing in late 2023 after a lifetime of believing he could never be creative. He also enjoys spreadsheets, statistical curiosities, and brain teasers. His poetry can be found in Small Wonders, Strange Horizons, and Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction, among many other venues.
For general questions about IYQ, please contact info@quantum2025.org. For press inquiries, contact iyq2025@hkamarcom.com.