Poetry Review - The Sex Lives of Monsters by Helen Marshall (Amazing Stories Mag)

The Elgin Award winning (2014) collection The Sex Lives of Monsters by Helen Marshall was one I'd been planning on reviewing in full (more than just the mini-review that I did in 2014 along with all the other Elgin nominated works). I also recorded 2 full poems (one of which is a series of 5 short poems on Billy the Kid) for your listening pleasure!

Poetry Review – The Sex Lives of Monsters by Helen Marshall

Poetry Planet No. 14 - Elgin Award Showcase 2014 Part 1

This week on StarShipSofa No. 367 you'll hear the next Poetry Planet. In it I showcase the winning and placing poetry collections of the Elgin Award 2014. I read at least one poem from each collection and talk a little about the collection itself and the poet. Below you'll find links to the collections and poets as well as the reviews I've done of the collections on Amazing Stories, which contain more audio examples.

Winner:
Demonstra, by Bryan Thao Worra.

2nd place:
Unexplained Fevers, by Jeannine Hall Gailey. Review on Amazing Stories (with more audio).

3rd place:
Dark Roads - Selected Long Poems, by Bruce Boston. Interview (Part 2) on Amazing Stories (with more audio from Dark Roads). Do check out Part 1 as well!

I'll follow up with the chapbook winners and honorees in a few weeks! Stay tuned!

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I have little excuse

Hello folks!

There's been a lot of activity here at Poetry Planet Headquarters (PPHQ), but I've had little time and and even littler head-space to process everything and report or announce. So, one thing at a time. In manageable doses. That's the ticket!

In a rush to read all the nominee books for this years Elgin Award, I was granted permission to post my article a day later than usual. So, that was last week Thursday. I wrote a short blurb about each of the books nominated, if I was able to read them. And yes, I read all but one, somewhat perfunctorily but I read enough to get a good impression and to give me something to write about. My goal was to give readers and idea of what each book was "about", if indeed there was a theme, and clue them in to what type of poetry they could find there. Science Fiction, Horror, Fantasy, Fairy Tales, Humorous, formal, long and short, retrospective or narrative. It was all there. Go have a look - maybe there's a collection that intrigues you? You'll find links to all the books and where you can purchase them in the post.

Poetry - Elgin Award Nominee Showcase

Next: WorldCon / LonCon3 in London, England! My first convention ever...

Poetry Planet No. 10 - Elgin and Dwarf Stars Awards Showcase

Poetry Planet is back!

After 8 months, it's embarrassing to say, I've finally produced another Poetry Planet. This is the 10th one. You may (or may not) be wondering what happened to No. 9. Well, way back with the Time Travel episodes, I did something ridiculous and numbered that split episode Nos. 5a and 5b. And then went on with No. 6 etc. However, there have, in fact, been 10 episodes, so I'm going to remedy that now!

This 10th edition of Poetry Planet is dedicated to the recently announced winners and placers of both the new Elgin Award and the Dwarf Stars Award in Science Fiction Poetry awarded by the Science Fiction Poetry Association.

You'll find it on StarShipSofa.com in episode No. 303 at about the 01:17.0 marker. As usual, you can listen to it on the site itself, or download it on iTunes or your usual podcatcher.

Linkety linkage:

You'll hear a poem from each of the best chapbook length collections (Elgin Award):

• 3. Come Late to the Love of Birds, Sandra Kasturi, 
• 2. The House of Forever, Samantha Henderson and 
• 1. (Winner) Out of the Black Forest, F. J. Bergmann 

And a poem from each of the full-length collections (Elgin Award)

• 3. The Edible Zoo, David C. Kopaska-Merkel, 
• 2. Notes from the Shadow City, Bruce Boston and Gary William Crawford and 
• 1. (Winner) Lovers & Killers, Mary Turzillo 

The top 3 Dwarf Stars Award poems

3. "Sarcophagus", (inkscrawl 3) N.E. Taylor,
2. "The Hidden", from Lovers & Killers, Mary Turzillo and
1. (Winner) "Basho after Cinderella (iii)", (Rattle 38), Deborah P. Kolodji

Please follow the links to their websites and/or books and check them out!

I had the pleasure of reviewing each of the collections, which placed in the Elgin Award on Amazing Stories. If you would like to check out those reviews please go to my author page.

Enjoy!!

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Amazing Stories - Awards! Science Fiction Poetry Awards!

It's been a very long time since I blogged here. Well, it's been a very long time since I did much of anything such as blogging or podcasting. I've been away on an extended vacation. We spent the summer in my home town, living with Mom in the house I grew up in, which I probably won't ever see the inside of again. :-(

But I don't mean to be maudlin. I have great news for you! It's award season for the Science Fiction community. This weekend (Aug. 29 - Sept. 1) is WorldCon, or LoneStarCon 3, which is the world Science Fiction convention occurring this year in San Antonio, Texas. The Hugo Awards are the main thing at this convention, but I'm not going to go into that. Mostly because they don't give an award in SF Poetry. The Science Fiction Poetry Association has established their own set of awards due to that lack and the lack of a Nebula Award in poetry. So, as a matter of fact, the SFPA is announcing the winners of the Rhysling Award and presenting the awards to the winners of the Dwarf Stars Award and the first annual Elgin Award. I've blogged about the latter two awards over on Amazing Stories. Please go here to read all about it. I warn you though, you'll be led down a rabbit hole...

Here's a snippet:

After an extended summer break I’ve returned with lots of exciting news and a whole bunch of wonderful books, which I’ll be reviewing for you in the coming months. It’s award season!!! With WorldCon this weekend, that may seem obvious, but the Hugo Award is for everything but poetry. So, the Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA) has created a few awards to fill the gap.

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Amazing Stories: Review - Come Late to the Love of Birds

My most recent review of SF poetry is up on Amazing Stories! You can find it here. This time I take an in depth look at a beautiful collection of poetry by Sandra Kasturi - "Come Late to the Love of Birds".

Here's a preview:

I first became aware of Kasturi when I joined the SFPA and began receiving her posts via the groups Yahoo email list. I have seen several of the poems contained in the collection up for review today in various places on the web. Recently, they hosted a Shitty Poetry column as part of April’s National Poetry Month.

Come Late to the Love of Birds is a sizable collection – 41 poems gathered into 4 sections (well, one is an additional sort of prologue and another an epilogue): “Hieroglyphs of Wind”, “Cannibals of Love”, “False Fossils” and “The Sorcerer at the Door”. Most of these poems can’t be considered SF Poetry, but most of them do have a sort of fantastical element, so that one could safely say it has a speculative nature. And in fact, it had been nominated for the first annual Elgin Award, which is a new award to be bestowed upon the best poetry collection (in chapbook and full-length categories) published in a given year (in this case 2012). It will be awarded at the same time as the Rhysling Award and the Dwarf Stars Award – at WorldCon in Texas this fall. But I digress – Kasturi dedicates the book to 3 people, Ray Bradbury, Neil Armstrong and Erik Stewart (who I’m assuming is a person close to the author) who all flew in their own fashion, and several of the poems are dedicated to various influential SF writers, which, at the very least, demonstrates Kasturi’s pedigree.

Keep reading!


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