'Three hot drops of salmon oil': the artist and the self in the aftermath of Chernobyl

This essay is a transcript of my address to the international conference ‘Remembering Chernobyl: 1986–2006’, held in Marostica, Italy, on 11 March 2006, and organised by the Institute for Research into Social and Religious History. In the context of my contribution to a film marking the twentieth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster (Heavy Water: a film for Chernobyl), I deploy my experience both as poet and physicist to open and examine crucial new interfaces between technology, industry and creativity. I reject the defensiveness found in many quarters of the nuclear/non-nuclear debate, in favour of a personal, exploratory, imaginative contact between socio-industrial tragedy and the self. My aim is to show how an artist's vision and sensibility, far from being merely personal, irrelevant or exterior to the energy debate, can be brought squarely and fiercely to its centre.