Conversations with No-One

What do quarks and bosons have to do with faith? What does having a binary brain do for our sense of morality? Are the decisions we make in our life an expression of free will or simply the mysterious determined directives of creation? Are we self-determining creatures or just puppets?

Conversations with No-One is a collection of poems which trace the journey of one man, beginning in the seminary yet leading irrevocably into the worlds of neuroscience, quantum mechanics and genetics. It recounts a desperate search for personal meaning and purpose which turned into a three-decade long conversation with our humanity, from Gilgamesh’s search for immortality to Milo Wolff’s theory of the wave structure of matter. It reflects upon a journey through the wonder and horror of human existence, listening to the stories as they wrote our history, listening to the authors as they grappled with what it meant to be alive and conscious, to hear ourselves searching for answers to the questions which burned in our hearts and minds, to marvel at our remarkable ontology.

Conversations with No-One is a poetic, theological redaction of our self-apprehension informed by modern science, a view which challenges the very foundation of our cultural identity yet is in complete harmony with it. It is an invitation to ‘religare’, to go over again, and a reaffirmation of the ancient maxim ‘nosce te ipsum’ – to know yourself.

Gordon Smith is a Scottish-born Australian who holds a bachelor’s degree in theology from the Sydney College of Divinity and postgraduate studies in secondary education at the Australian Catholic University. Having previously been a chef and commercial pilot, his entry into the seminary began a journey of self-discovery lasting 30 years. The experience of this journey finds expression in his poetry. He is also an exhibited artist, working in the medium of three-dimensional poetic constructions. He currently lives in the Central West of New South Wales, Australia, in the magnificent Capertee Valley with his partner and two autistic sons.