The 2025 Brilliant Poetry Competition Shortlisted Poems: Jasmine Zhang

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.

Emergency Room

by Jasmine Zhang

To be frank, quantum physics
makes for terrible metaphor. Of course
the human experience contains
multitudes. Try writing down
the wavefunction for grief, or for kissing
someone you love on the mouth

Or, for the angry blue sky, the
bloodwork, the body arranged
on the stretcher, catatonic in
its dreaming. I fail to find solace
in the pulse-finding machines,
the sterile clockwork of it all

In the waiting room I consider
the thought experiment
about superposition. The nurses
discuss a birthday party while
you possibly die in this bed

I have scorned the study of the living
for its imprecision and even now 
I hold onto theories relevant only
at scales we cannot touch. But 
I can’t look away, as if superstition 
will keep you here

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