Writer, publisher and editor Michael Harlow has had one of his poems included in a book which has been included in a time capsule sent to the moon.
Fellow poet and World Poetry Festival organiser Rei Barroa, a colleague in the United States, was contacted by Nasa to collate poetry from around the world for the Lunar Codex project, Harlow said.
New Zealand had to be included and Harlow was selected to contribute. His poem Our World was included in the anthology The Polaris Trilogy, which had been included in two launches, he said.
The Lunar Codex mission is to archive human achievement in art, writing, music and film, in time capsules on unmanned missions carrying commercial payloads. The project is in conjunction with SpaceX and the United Launch Alliance.
There are seven time capsules each launched by a different mission. There are works from 261 countries and territories, including Antarctica, and 149 indigenous nations from North America, Eurasia and Australia.
The project is founded by American physicist and writer Samuel Peralta.
It was a passion project and no artist was paid for their contributions, he said.
"Our hope is that future travellers who find these time capsules will discover some of the richness of our world today ... It speaks to the idea that, despite wars and pandemics and climate upheaval, humankind found time to create art, found time to dream," Dr Peralta said.
Harlow, who moved to New Zealand from the United States more than 50 years ago, has been a Katherine Mansfield Merton and University of Otago Robert Burns fellow as well as finalist in the New Zealand Book Awards. In 2018 he was awarded the Prime Minister’s Award of Literary Achievement.
He has led an extraordinary life from his upbringing in the United States, living in Turkey as a Fulbright Scholar to working as a Jungian therapist.
A prolific reader and writer, he is working on his memoir.
