Poetry review – THE CHEMISTRY OF EMOTION: Madeleine O’Beirne responds to a joint collection by Fiona Perry & Stephen Paul Wren
The Chemistry of Emotion
Fiona Perry & Stephen Paul Wren
Turas Press, Dublin, 2026
ISBN 9781913598624 print edition
ISBN 9781913598631 e pub
98 pp £14.00
It is exciting to come across a collection of poems demonstrating so eloquently that the disciplines of science and poetry are not, as might sometimes be thought, disparate, but are instead complementary, and able together to strengthen human understanding.
Outlining their approach in the introduction to The Chemistry of Emotion, Fiona Perry and Stephen Paul Wren have written,
Emotion is a nebulous concept, and science is a logical enterprise.
. Our research in both fields encompassed analysis of academic
. papers on the chemical basis of specific emotions, as well as
. representations of science in art, all inevitably filtered through
. the prism of our individual personal histories.
The Chemistry of Emotion is a carefully structured collection examining a range of thirteen emotions and states of being. The range includes those we would hope to experience, such as joy, amusement and hopefulness, and also the less comfortable disgust, envy and agitation.
There is an adroitness in the discourse between the two poets, not so much a conversation but more a carefully balanced exchange and interplay of themes and responses, with a lightness of tension between each. Some emotions are approached with humour, others with poignancy and compassion. All are treated with commitment and honesty.
Prize-winning poet Fiona Perry has ahown in all her published work a highly attuned intellectual curiosity and an impressive depth of understanding for every subject she approaches, be it history, mythology, sociology, music, art or science. Her aptitude for writing ekphrastic poetry, demonstrated in numerous poems within this collection, is exceptional. Even a passing reference to an artistic work, as in ‘The Antidote to Loneliness’, offers powerful illumination.
to feel compassion is to enter Rothko’s chapel
and open up in response to the blooming
black roses of another’s suffering.
In his poem ‘Orchard Echoes’, Stephen Paul Wren seems to offer a childhood vision of the scientist and poet he is to become.
This muse is made of future aims.
I kick neurons in backyard games.
A scientist of distinction, an accomplished poet and founder of the online group Molecules Unlimited, which specifically combines poetry with the chemical sciences, Wren has an admirable ability for balancing prestigious academic research with the comprehensible communication of scientific theory. Examining the complexities of emotion through the lens of molecular science, in poetry, feels a natural progression in his work, and one that he handles with confidence.
His scientific and linguistic precision find fascinating ground in pathos. Writing on the theme of Sadness in ‘Blue’, he begins,
The colour of cries pulls me across drums.
This is where epithelia straddle
loss and positivity. Tear ducts foam.
The imagery of the poem is visceral, the acknowledgement of the conflicting emotions, and the body’s holding in of tears, understated in these lines but in each tercet gathering momentum, with the persistently repeated ‘colour of cries,’ until the climactic final stanza,
All my nerve fibres
ring with determination.
Machines of grief sway.
Perry’s poem ‘Plum Brandy’, a response to the painting by Édouard Manet, acknowledges similarly the visceral pull, ‘the heaviness and thump’ of melancholy.
It bloats like overripe fruit,
dimples then splits, rack-stretched
by ambiguous force.
But where Wren’ s depiction of sadness is filled with nervous anguish seemingly trying to gain control and losing it, this poem, beginning with the implicit counterbalance of ‘Maybe’, responds to the dreamy, more reflective visual image of the young woman portrayed by Manet, and suggests a softening of emotion.
As it elongates, you consider
your options, dress in shell pink
sip plum brandy, chase dopamine
consolation.
The moods of the two poems, and the directions they take, are almost opposite, but the points at which they touch create a magical connection in the poets’ discourse.
Neither poet baulks at the theme of Anger. When Perry writes about the tragedy of Belfast’s Anne Maguire in ‘A Redacted Angelic Debrief After an Atrocity’, the emotion is palpable within the imagery, the sound and the style of her poem.
show us ravaged Belfast / soaring yellow giants / tangi rumbling /
graffiti pleas for justice /
wild bonfires eating up the night / inform us of your people’s sorrows
In Wren’s poem ‘Plumes’, which explores his mother’s childhood suffering, the anger is held closely within a tender narrative that, while it depicts clearly the sense of threat, also offers hope of redemption.
Little feathers, light touches on drizzle, vectors
of love, girl looks through hostelry windows, forlorn,
a lemon-crested smile, glances at kegs of beer.
The section on Tranquillity highlights both poets’ aptitude for reflecting content in form. Wren’s ‘Uncrossed Knives Surpass All Understanding’ comprises a series of enjambed couplets that, underlaid with the image of the uncrossed knives, creates a positive if unsteady drive forward, the white space between the couplets adding to the sense of effort to move from being ‘broken to unbroken.’
I become aware of miracles that
grease my wheels, turn chemical cycles, and
keep my pulses bright.
Perry’s poem ‘The Red Vineyard, after Vincent van Gogh’, evokes not only the glorious autumnal colour of Vincent’s painting, its flames, its crimson, but also, through the stepping of the stanzas, a sense of the placing of figures across his painted canvas. The vineyard is filled with sound and movement, and above it
the sun is a thick-nacred pearl
its bleached vitality
casting sugar spells
In the final stanza the poem finds settled, tranquil form,
the grapes already dreaming
of their nectar transformed
to solids, to gentle acid,
to water, to wine,
borne of crystalline schist.
The final theme described in The Chemistry of Emotion is Gratitude. Perry’s poem ‘Cloud Gate’ is a prayer to Anish Kapoor’s sculpture in Chicago, which was itself inspired by liquid mercury. The poem offers a deeply perceptive interpretation of the sculpture’s ability to lift and transform us through its reflection and seeming limitlessness.
… What is within is without. What is without is within. The
gleam of your surface is an infinite ocean. May we profit in per-
petuity from your constant communion with the sky.
Wren’s poem, ‘Linkages’, has a similarly ethereal quality as he writes,
I count the sands of gratefulness.
As genetic gates learn to bless,
A gold cat looks through a skylight.
The deft almost-repetition of the first stanza draws the poem, and the collection, to a perfect close.
A distant star feels like it’s near.
Asleep on shores. Linkages. Here.
It feels important finally to mention the cover design of the book, a fascinating photograph of a molecule, taken by PhD student Emma Collins. The image is viewed through a microscope and seems to reflect in its crystalline intricacy the beautiful bonding together of chemical and emotional atoms.
This generous collaboration between two poets, this skilful communion of their shared knowledge and observation, together with their desire to explore the scholarly with creativity and imagination from their own individual perspectives, has led to an adventurous experiment and a highly successful one.
To offer a conclusion to their investigation, The Chemistry of Emotion illustrates powerfully the very tangible connections between science and art. Both poets have excelled in their ability to combine their ideas, their experiences and their voices sensitively, to demystify complex emotions and to offer up the personal with openness and empathy in order to cast light upon the universal. I can recommend it.
An editor for many years, Madeleine O’Beirne has more recently felt drawn towards writing for herself, and in 2020 she began to write poetry. Her writing has been published by ArtfulScribe, A Space Arts and the Hampshire Cultural Trust, and most recently her poem ’Summer 76′ has been included in Safety in Numbers, edited by Gill Connors and published by Yaffle Press.
Jun 17 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – Fiona Perry & Stephen Paul Wren
Poetry review – THE CHEMISTRY OF EMOTION: Madeleine O’Beirne responds to a joint collection by Fiona Perry & Stephen Paul Wren
The Chemistry of Emotion
Fiona Perry & Stephen Paul Wren
Turas Press, Dublin, 2026
ISBN 9781913598624 print edition
ISBN 9781913598631 e pub
98 pp £14.00
It is exciting to come across a collection of poems demonstrating so eloquently that the disciplines of science and poetry are not, as might sometimes be thought, disparate, but are instead complementary, and able together to strengthen human understanding.
Outlining their approach in the introduction to The Chemistry of Emotion, Fiona Perry and Stephen Paul Wren have written,
Emotion is a nebulous concept, and science is a logical enterprise.
. Our research in both fields encompassed analysis of academic
. papers on the chemical basis of specific emotions, as well as
. representations of science in art, all inevitably filtered through
. the prism of our individual personal histories.
The Chemistry of Emotion is a carefully structured collection examining a range of thirteen emotions and states of being. The range includes those we would hope to experience, such as joy, amusement and hopefulness, and also the less comfortable disgust, envy and agitation.
There is an adroitness in the discourse between the two poets, not so much a conversation but more a carefully balanced exchange and interplay of themes and responses, with a lightness of tension between each. Some emotions are approached with humour, others with poignancy and compassion. All are treated with commitment and honesty.
Prize-winning poet Fiona Perry has ahown in all her published work a highly attuned intellectual curiosity and an impressive depth of understanding for every subject she approaches, be it history, mythology, sociology, music, art or science. Her aptitude for writing ekphrastic poetry, demonstrated in numerous poems within this collection, is exceptional. Even a passing reference to an artistic work, as in ‘The Antidote to Loneliness’, offers powerful illumination.
to feel compassion is to enter Rothko’s chapel
and open up in response to the blooming
black roses of another’s suffering.
In his poem ‘Orchard Echoes’, Stephen Paul Wren seems to offer a childhood vision of the scientist and poet he is to become.
This muse is made of future aims.
I kick neurons in backyard games.
A scientist of distinction, an accomplished poet and founder of the online group Molecules Unlimited, which specifically combines poetry with the chemical sciences, Wren has an admirable ability for balancing prestigious academic research with the comprehensible communication of scientific theory. Examining the complexities of emotion through the lens of molecular science, in poetry, feels a natural progression in his work, and one that he handles with confidence.
His scientific and linguistic precision find fascinating ground in pathos. Writing on the theme of Sadness in ‘Blue’, he begins,
The colour of cries pulls me across drums.
This is where epithelia straddle
loss and positivity. Tear ducts foam.
The imagery of the poem is visceral, the acknowledgement of the conflicting emotions, and the body’s holding in of tears, understated in these lines but in each tercet gathering momentum, with the persistently repeated ‘colour of cries,’ until the climactic final stanza,
All my nerve fibres
ring with determination.
Machines of grief sway.
Perry’s poem ‘Plum Brandy’, a response to the painting by Édouard Manet, acknowledges similarly the visceral pull, ‘the heaviness and thump’ of melancholy.
It bloats like overripe fruit,
dimples then splits, rack-stretched
by ambiguous force.
But where Wren’ s depiction of sadness is filled with nervous anguish seemingly trying to gain control and losing it, this poem, beginning with the implicit counterbalance of ‘Maybe’, responds to the dreamy, more reflective visual image of the young woman portrayed by Manet, and suggests a softening of emotion.
As it elongates, you consider
your options, dress in shell pink
sip plum brandy, chase dopamine
consolation.
The moods of the two poems, and the directions they take, are almost opposite, but the points at which they touch create a magical connection in the poets’ discourse.
Neither poet baulks at the theme of Anger. When Perry writes about the tragedy of Belfast’s Anne Maguire in ‘A Redacted Angelic Debrief After an Atrocity’, the emotion is palpable within the imagery, the sound and the style of her poem.
show us ravaged Belfast / soaring yellow giants / tangi rumbling /
graffiti pleas for justice /
wild bonfires eating up the night / inform us of your people’s sorrows
In Wren’s poem ‘Plumes’, which explores his mother’s childhood suffering, the anger is held closely within a tender narrative that, while it depicts clearly the sense of threat, also offers hope of redemption.
Little feathers, light touches on drizzle, vectors
of love, girl looks through hostelry windows, forlorn,
a lemon-crested smile, glances at kegs of beer.
The section on Tranquillity highlights both poets’ aptitude for reflecting content in form. Wren’s ‘Uncrossed Knives Surpass All Understanding’ comprises a series of enjambed couplets that, underlaid with the image of the uncrossed knives, creates a positive if unsteady drive forward, the white space between the couplets adding to the sense of effort to move from being ‘broken to unbroken.’
I become aware of miracles that
grease my wheels, turn chemical cycles, and
keep my pulses bright.
Perry’s poem ‘The Red Vineyard, after Vincent van Gogh’, evokes not only the glorious autumnal colour of Vincent’s painting, its flames, its crimson, but also, through the stepping of the stanzas, a sense of the placing of figures across his painted canvas. The vineyard is filled with sound and movement, and above it
the sun is a thick-nacred pearl
its bleached vitality
casting sugar spells
In the final stanza the poem finds settled, tranquil form,
the grapes already dreaming
of their nectar transformed
to solids, to gentle acid,
to water, to wine,
borne of crystalline schist.
The final theme described in The Chemistry of Emotion is Gratitude. Perry’s poem ‘Cloud Gate’ is a prayer to Anish Kapoor’s sculpture in Chicago, which was itself inspired by liquid mercury. The poem offers a deeply perceptive interpretation of the sculpture’s ability to lift and transform us through its reflection and seeming limitlessness.
… What is within is without. What is without is within. The
gleam of your surface is an infinite ocean. May we profit in per-
petuity from your constant communion with the sky.
Wren’s poem, ‘Linkages’, has a similarly ethereal quality as he writes,
I count the sands of gratefulness.
As genetic gates learn to bless,
A gold cat looks through a skylight.
The deft almost-repetition of the first stanza draws the poem, and the collection, to a perfect close.
A distant star feels like it’s near.
Asleep on shores. Linkages. Here.
It feels important finally to mention the cover design of the book, a fascinating photograph of a molecule, taken by PhD student Emma Collins. The image is viewed through a microscope and seems to reflect in its crystalline intricacy the beautiful bonding together of chemical and emotional atoms.
This generous collaboration between two poets, this skilful communion of their shared knowledge and observation, together with their desire to explore the scholarly with creativity and imagination from their own individual perspectives, has led to an adventurous experiment and a highly successful one.
To offer a conclusion to their investigation, The Chemistry of Emotion illustrates powerfully the very tangible connections between science and art. Both poets have excelled in their ability to combine their ideas, their experiences and their voices sensitively, to demystify complex emotions and to offer up the personal with openness and empathy in order to cast light upon the universal. I can recommend it.
An editor for many years, Madeleine O’Beirne has more recently felt drawn towards writing for herself, and in 2020 she began to write poetry. Her writing has been published by ArtfulScribe, A Space Arts and the Hampshire Cultural Trust, and most recently her poem ’Summer 76′ has been included in Safety in Numbers, edited by Gill Connors and published by Yaffle Press.