Poetry Planet - 2013 SFPA Poetry Contest

The show will go has gone up Wednesday 22 January 2013 ca. 10:00 GST! Alas, it is a botched version, having omitted the winning dwarf length poem by Lorraine Schein! The corrected version (minus all the great fiction on the StarShipSofa version) can be listened to through the SFPA site here.

Yes, I'm finally getting this edition of Poetry Planet out to the world. It's been in the works for a long time and basically on hold while I worked on several other projects. Poetry Planet No. 12 showcases the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place poems in three length categories in the 2013 Poetry Contest sponsored by the Science Fiction Poetry Association. This was my donation to the prizes for the contest. You can listen here on StarShipSofa No. 321. You'll find it at about the 1:18.00 (one hour eighteen minutes). (edit: go ahead and listen to it for the fiction though!)

The poems you'll hear on the podcast are:

Dwarf length (10 lines or less):
 

3. "A Butterfly in Costa Rica", by Mary C. Rowin

2. "The Spell No One Said at Her Birth", by Jennifer Schomburg Kanke

1. "Dorothy’s Poem", by Lorraine Schein (please listen!)

The Short form poems (up to 49 lines): 

3. "Wolf’s Four Question", by Megan Arkenberg

2. "The Martian’s Wife", by Helen Patrice

1. "We Pay Our Fare in Apples Here", by Megan Arkenberg

And the Long Form poems (50 lines and above):

3. "The Dyson Tree’s Promise", by Bryant O’Hara

2. "Hungry as Living Sorrow", by Jenny Blackford

1. "The Girl Who Tipped Through Time …", by Robert Frazier

I give biographical information about each poet during the course of the podcast and also brief anecdotal background to the poems themselves. I encourage you to listen to these poems twice! The second time you can skip through every thing non-poetic!

 Some of these poets' names (at least) will be familiar to you, if you follow speculative poetry or have listened to Poetry Planet or read my blog at Amazing Stories regularly. Since I don't want to clutter the podcast with linkage, please find below recently published works by each of the poets and where you can find their websites and blogs etc. Please help support these poets and visit their sites and read more of their poetry. They work so hard!

Megan Arkenberg - Blog and Bibliography/News.
"Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" (fiction) appears in The Lorelei Signal, January-April 2014.

"Necromancies" (poetry) appears in the Fall 2013 issue of Goblin Fruit.

Jenny Blackford - Website  and Blog.  

Chapbook The Duties of a Cat, from Pitt Street Poetry 2013.

Star*Line Editor's Choice: Their Quantum Toy .

Robert Frazier - ISFDB Entry. Paintings. Collection Phantom Navigation. 

 Star*Line Editor's Choice: Lost in Holographic Storage.

Jennifer Schomberg Kanke - Website , Literary Quotes Blog, Celebrities and Writing Blog

Interview: “Editor’s Corner #1: Jennifer Schomburg Kanke for The Southeast Review” VidaWeb, February 19, 2013

“Salvia, Reblooming” The Journal of Compressed Literary Arts. Fall 2013.

“Upon being Asked for a Scary Poem” Medulla Review, Spring 2012.

Bryant O'Hara - Soundcloud poetry. "In the Era of the Silent" in Eyedrum Periodically. 

"How to Fix the Poet" feature about Bryant.

Helen Patrice - Blog

Poetry Collection: A Woman of Mars

Diane's review of A Woman of Mars

Mary C. Rowin - Blog

"Yellow Curve" in VerseWisconsin

Lorraine Schein - Book: The Futurist's Mistress from Mayapple Press

Anthology: Alice Redux Editor Richard Peabody

"Merlin" in Strange Horizons

"Three Glass Shards" in Enchanted Conversation

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Narration Fixation #2 - Poetry (+playlist)

I was recently interviewed on a video podcast dedicated to narration, specifically (in this episode, and because I was the guest) on pod-casting poetry. It was fun. I didn't hem and haw too much... I recite Ann K. Schwader's Rhysling Award winning poem "To Theia" about two-thirds of the way through.



Enjoy!

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Amazing Stories: 2013 Recap - My Year in Science Fiction Poetry

My latest post for Amazing Stories went up today. In it I take a look back at 2013 in respect to my activities with Science Fiction Poetry, on Amazing Stories and elsewhere. You'll find links to everything (I hope!), in case you missed anything! :-)

A snippet:

...This has been an amazing journey for me. When I decided to try my hand at reviewing SF Poetry, it was a purely altruistic endeavor. I thought surely there must be others out there, who, like me, aren’t poets themselves, but love poetry and would like to read more. Poets are usually reviewed by and for other poets. But I thought genre poets needed a spokesperson who was not “one of them”. Now, why I thought I had any business becoming that person, I don’t know, but I was on a mission. At first, I’m never quite sure what to write about the poetry I read, but when I put pen to paper (quite literally), something flows out. Whether it’s any good or not, I couldn’t say. I may not have the structured learning of an English major but I have learned so much (on the job) reviewing poetry, and in the interviews, and I hope that at least my enthusiasm comes through....

Go here to read the whole post and enjoy!

I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to another amazing year in Science Fiction Poetry!

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Amazing Stories: Speculative Poetry Round-up January 2014

I'm on vacation visiting family in Montana. I'm doing my best not to spend tons of time online and on my phone (and being marginally successful) but deadlines will be deadlines and my regularly scheduled post for Amazing Stories was due yesterday. It came out this morning, 1 January 2014: 

Speculative Poetry Round-up January 2014. Poetry around the web by Ann K. Schwader, Lisa M. Bradley, Brian Garrison, Bruce Boston, Dennis Lane and Beth Cato. Plus an article about poetry by Isaac Asimov. 

http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2014/01/speculative-poetry-round-january-2014/

Enjoy!