It’s official, Valentine’s Day is over for another year. While the roses may have wilted for some, we’re still feeling the love big time thanks to the romantics who entered our ‘Declare your Love for Science’ poetry competition.

We were overwhelmed with creative entries, including ballads, limericks and even a haiku. Congrats to our winners, whose poems are published below.

Amy is walking away with an anatomically-correct heart pendant – four chambers, mammalian, complete with major blood vessels. Meryl has won a pair of his-and-hers chromosome towels monogrammed XY and XX respectively, while Experimental Error is the proud new owner of a simple but elegant DNA pendant.

Want to keep the love going? Read about some of the research we’re doing that has real heart.

By Amy Edwards

My Science (as adapted from Dorothea Mackellar’s My Country)

I love my field of science,

Of animals and brains.

Of ordered chemicals and camping

Is running in my veins,

Strong love of furry creatures,

Birds high up in the skies,

I know, and I will share it

My goal’s the Nobel Prize.

I love the life of Zoo-ol,

A world of living things,

Of behavioural ecology,

Of cuts and bites and stings.

I love the outdoor field trips,

I love the animals of the sea,

The fluffy and the slimy -

The School of Zoology for me!

By Meryl McKerrow

Oh my valentine

Have my heart for I have three

Cephalopod

By ‘Experimental Error’

Each day, before I meet my love,

(Before I go to greet my love)

I cuddle my cat and kiss my daughter,

Bathe in osmotically purified water,

Shave with Ockham’s sharpest razer,

Don my skirt, lab boots and blazer,

Smooth my skin with nanoparticles,

Check my feeds for break-through articles,

Set controls and start my trials,

Update my Procite reference styles,

Ensure I’m ready, in full compliance

With the needs of my love: meticulous Science.