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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Poetry Review - A Woman of Mars, by Helen Patrice

I was encouraged yesterday (by Shira Lipkin - this year's Rhysling Award Winner in the Short Form) to review more about the poetry I read. I don't consider myself much of an expert on poetry or even particularly knowledgeable. That might change as I find myself spending more time with it and trying to learn.

I recently finished the collection of related poetry, "A Woman of Mars", by Helen Patrice and this one is easy to review, so here goes. Most of this I also posted on my GoodReads collection.

I won this slim volume in a little contest the author held on her Author Page at FaceBook - so I feel a certain duty to review it properly.

It's a gorgeous, slim hard cover. Brick red, fitting to the setting with wonderful artwork (pencil drawings) by Bob Eggleston. It's a limited, signed (by both author and artist) edition - mine is number 225/300, so there aren't many left!

It's highly readable. Non of the poems are epic in length and so it's possible to read them several times in one sitting, without getting overwhelmed. The poems tell a story and the over-arching narrative is quite compelling. In the space of just a few poems you come to care about this woman and really want to know what happens to her.  That said, despite the woman's love for Mars, there is an underlying sadness or melancholy, perhaps stemming from the hardship of leaving home and the hardship of being the first colonists on Mars, which permeates the volume. Not uplifting, but moving. 

You can find the collection at PSPublishing.

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