In 2023, CQT was a venue for the poetry project “Not Only Lines” organised by the National University of Singapore Centre For the Arts (NUS CFA). Following the partnership, CQT launched a poetry call, inviting CQTians to submit their best literary pieces. Contributions came from across the Centre: from professors to PhD students, and from our technical and admin teams. While the poems selected from the open call are now being played in rotation on screen at the CQT lobby, the full set can be viewed here.
Down to the black hole by Peter Sidajaya
There’s one who long ago to a black hole went
To hide and keep her secrets far away
She had been called by name of Alice then
Whose secrets darkest were too vile to say
But little did that piteous woman know
There’s one who long before had seen her plan
For long before her diary was thrown
So long has he observ’d the black hole then
The radiation too, had he kept them
The photons that came from that black hole there
Nor now won’t quantum gravity stop him
For has the dynamics he stripped down bare
The only thing that is hidden from Bob
Is the wretched secret of his dear Alice
Alas, woe to her! Oh dear Alice,
For on this earth there’s nothing that is hidden,
No concealed things, shall not ever be brought
Into the light in front of men again
To shout upon the housetops here on out
* This poem is based on the paper by Hayden and Preskill (https://arxiv.org/abs/0708.4025)
Echos of the unknown by Nur Azizah
Distant realms apart
Entwined by silent secrets
Hidden and untold
From 0's and 1's to Infinity by Nayanthara Prathap
Up until an age we knew 0’s and 1’s
Nothing more, nothing less.
Yet with every bout of innovation,
We embarked upon a fresh revolution.
They called it the next generation
Of tech with every passing revolution.
From limitless data consumption
To establishing boundless connections.
Have we seen it all, you ask?
Wait until you see magic.
The magic of superposition,
Of entanglement, of teleportation,
Of states, of uncertainty, of qubits.
The world has yet to see magic
In real life, in real time.
So gear up!
Because this is going to
Sweep us off the floor.
Wait until you are to see life
Beyond the realms of 0’s and 1’s.
Wait until you see the magic
Of bits dancing in a delicate ballet,
Of quantum states, colouring the
World using a different palette
With infinite shades and a
Multitude of patterns.
Ode to my only original idea by Valerio Scarani
I am hiking these days
On a popular mountain
Adding small detours
To the listed trails.
Still my thoughts go to those years
When I walked where nobody before
In that vale from influences hidden
Which without me the world would ignore.
To be now where many are,
Many were, and many will be
Is pleasant company indeed.
But have I perhaps missed my call?
Photons by Han Rui
In your eyes I see,
Reflections of me you saw,
They connect us all.
Like a wave they act?
But no wiggles on the path.
Between us they dance.
Poem without ChatGPT by Kwek
The humdrum of a Monday morning
Outside the window where I sat
Life bustles like crazy on a big yellow crested tree
I tried to write a quantum poem
But can I do better than ChatGPT?
Let me try
A quantum poem
ought
to
be
tiny.
It is here just below…
See it?
And entangled,
see below
And breaks all non-contextuality inequalities
Qubit cannot tahan by Berge Englert, Han Rui, Dai Jibo, Martin-Isbjörn Trappe and Alexander Hue
There is a qubit in Singapore,
Idling hard at the computer’s core.
When MRT drives by,
Magnetic field is high.
Qubit cannot tahan, works no more.
Qubits by Alexander Ling
The Pure and The Entangled by Wu Shuin Jian
The Sea and the Voyager by May Chee Loke
Rhythm of wave knows no rest
Like her love
Boundary unclear
At a frequency she sings
Storm surges when observed
Collapsing into a random state
All for the observer to stay
Ideality never exists
She watches as he disentangles
Nothing she can really do
For she is the sea of possibilities
That only becomes reality in his presence
No matter how peculiar
Cat of Schrödinger is his heart
A dice played
Certainty invalid
With a broadband he listens
Confusingly awestruck when observing
He never able to understand
Afar from any intuitivity and sensibility
Noise is interfering
Decoherence and low fidelity inevitable
As adventure is his nature
And he is the voyager of curiosity
Who will never settle at one observation
No matter how peculiar
Twin Cinema Poem by Imran
Conversation between a monk & physicist about Quantum Entanglement
Monk:
We interpret
through the lens of the spiritual
and ancient wisdom
a confirmation
of reality beyond physical world
Spiritual teaching
together with
introspections
help to understand
interconnectedness
in oneness
of existence
Physicist:
Quantum Entanglement as we view
a natural phenomenon
by the laws of physics
through mathematical models
and observations
We rely on
empirical evidence in
understanding the principles
of Quantum world
and observations
from scientific
data we derived
