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 Planet: 2013 Rhysling Award Showcase (Part 1)

My newest edition of Poetry Planet will has come out on StarShipSofa No. 309 today! This is another contest winner's showcase and the third year running for the Rhysling Award Showcase. You'll hear 6 of the 7 poems that placed in the top three (You'll hear the 7th next week). They are:

1st place:

Short: “The Cat Star” by Terry Garey, Lady Poetesses from Hell, ed. Bag Person Press Collective (Bag Person Press)

Long: “Into Flight” by Andrew Robert Sutton from the online magazine Silver Blade 14

Terry A.Garey's poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies, including Dodeca, Uranus, Star*Line, Asimov's, Weird Tales, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Raw Sacks, Paper Bag Writer, Dreams and Nightmares, Women en Large, and Burning With A Vision. She has edited poetry for Janus, Tales of the Unanticipated, and is the editor (with Eleanor Arnason) of Time Gum, and also Time Frames: an anthology of speculative poetry. She lives in Minneapolis, MN with a librarian, two cats, and more books than she can count. She is a founding member of Lady Poetesses From Hell.

Andrew Robert Sutton was born and raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He attended Michigan State University where he studied both telecommunications and the written word. His heart has been torn between his love of cutting-edge technologies and traditional art forms ever since. His articles on the history of technology and its impact on business have appeared in over forty publications, including newspapers, magazines, and numerous blogs. "Into Flight" is his first foray into poetry.

2nd Place:

Short: “Futurity’s Shoelaces” by Marge Simon found in the Balticon 2012 Program Book. 

Long: “String Theory” by John Philip Johnson in James Gunn’s  (online journal) Ad Astra 1.

MargeSimon's works appear in publications such as Bête Noire, Niteblade, Daily SF Magazine, Silver Blade, and Dreams & Nightmares. She edits a column for the HWA Newsletter and serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees. She has won the Strange Horizons Readers Choice Award, twice the Bram Stoker Award™, the Rhysling Award and the Dwarf Stars Award. She has published several collections including Like Birds in the Rain, Unearthly Delights, The Mad Hattery, Vampires, Zombies & Wanton Souls, and Dangerous Dreams. Her poem, "The Gods, Fallen" is up at Liquid Imagination.

John Philip Johnson has had work in, or forthcoming in, Dreams & Nightmares, Mythic Delirium, Strange Horizons, Rattle, Southern Poetry Review, and Daily Science Fiction, among other places, besides James Gunn's Ad Astra where this poem first appeared. He reviews for Star*Line and elsewhere, and just recently earned a master's degree in English, with a thesis of science fictional poetry, from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. His astro-engineering work at Raytheon is still classified, but let's just say...His poem "Stairs Appear In a Hole Outside of Town" can be read (and eventually listened to - narration by yours truly - Diane) at Rattle.

3rd Place:

Short: “Sister Philomela Heard the Voices of Angels”, by Megan Arkenberg, Strange Horizons- 8/7/12 

Long (tie):  “The Time Traveler’s Weekend” by Adele Gardner  - Liquid Imagination

Long (tie): "The Necromantic Wine” by Wade German Avatars of Wizardry, edited by Charles Lovecraft (P'rea Press)

Megan Arkenberg lives and writes in California. Her work has recently appeared in Asimov's, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, and The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 5, and has tried for best short story of 2012 in the Asimov's Readers' Award. Her poem "The Curator Speaks in the Department of Dead Languages" won the Rhysling Award for best long poem of 2012. Megan procrastinates by editing the fantasy e-zine Mirror Dance. She also has recent poetry publications in the September issue of Asimov's and the Fall issue of Star*Line.

Adele Gardner's poetry collection, Dreaming of Days in Astophel, is available from Sam's Dot Publishing. Her stories and poems have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Legends of the Pendragon, The Doom of Camelot, Penumbra, Scheherazade's Façade, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium, Goblin Fruit, and New Myths, among others. In 2012, she chaired the Rhysling Awards for the Science Fiction Poetry Association. Currently cataloging librarian for a public library, she's also literary executor for her father, Delbert R. Gardner. 

I will provide biographical and link information for Wade German and her poem next week. Her fantastic poem "The Necromantic Wine" is epic in length and would have burst the seams of this week's StarShipSofa. And I'd like you all to be fresh when you hear it!



Appearing on StarShipSofa No. 310:

Wade German's poems have appeared internationally in numerous journals and anthologies, including Dark Horizons, Dreams and Nightmares, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Midnight Echo, Mythic Delirium, Nameless, Phantom Drift, Space and Time, Star*Line, Strange Sorcery and Weird Fiction Review. Barbarian is a recent poem appearing on Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.

"The Necromantic Wine" was inspired by George Sterling's "A Wine of Wizardry" and Clark Ashton Smith's "The Hashish-Eater," two poems which I have read again and again with a never ending fascination. Both are replete with bizarre, hallucinatory imagery and ideas sprung from the dark fantastic imagination. But for the most part, they are very different poems, with perhaps the exception that both convey a sense of voyaging into the unfamiliar, of questing for the unknown. It was that sense of voyage and quest that I was after when I wrote "The Necromantic Wine."

Poetry Planet: 2012 Rhysling Award Showcase

After much delay, the next installment of Poetry Planet has hit the ether (now on StarShipSofa 256)! The annual Rhysling Award Showcase features the poetry of the award winners in both the Long and the short categories plus the 2nd and 3rd placing poems as well. I must apologize profusely at this stage because the 2nd place long poem failed to make it into the final audio file and by the time I noticed it was too late to fix it. Sorry! But as a bonus, you get it here (see below)

You'll hear:

• 3rd Place Long: Mary A. Turzillo, "The Legend of the Emperor's new Spacesuit (a Tale of Concensus Reality)" 

Mary A. Turzillo's novel An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl and Nebula Award- winning novelette "Mars Is no Place for Children" are recommended reading on the International Space Station. She has been nominated for the Rhysling, the British Science Fiction Association Award ("Eat or Be Eaten, a Love Story"), and the Pushcart (Your Cat & Other Space Aliens, vanZeno). Her latest book is Lovers & Killers, Dark Regions 2012.

• 3rd Place Short: Lyn C. A. Gardener, “In Translation”

Lyn C. A. Gardner grew up beside Keuka Lake in upstate New York, but her family has since gathered in coastal Virginia. With master's degrees in English literature and library science, she’s been the editor for a private maritime museum and currently serves as catalog librarian for a public library. She also loved her work as projectionist for AMC Theatres. In addition to writing, art, and photography, She enjoys fencing, swimming in lakes, biking around the neighborhood, skating (ice & sidewalk skates). She loves owls, cats, trees, snow, the stars, the color blue, and playing folk guitar and harpsichord. Most of all, She loves spending time with her family. Her first book, a poetry collection called Dreaming of Days in Astophel, is available from Sam's Dot Publishing.

• 2nd Place Long: G. O. Clark and Kendall Evans, “The 25-Cent Rocket: One-Quarter of the Way to the Stars” This poem failed to make it onto the final audio file. My apologies to Gary and Kendall! I've posted it to my MySpace space for now, until the next Poetry Planet runs. To listen go here.

Kendall Evans is the author of more than 250 poems and about 50 short stories published in various sf, fantasy and horror publications. He recently completed a book length sf dramatic poem, a ring cycle in four parts, The Rings of Ganymede.
G.O Clark’s poetry has appeared on Poetry Planet previously. G. O. Clark's writing has been published in Asimov's Science Fiction, StrangeHorizons, A Sea Of Alone: Poems For Alfred Hitchcock, Tales Of The Talisman, among others. He's the author of nine poetry collections, most recent, "White Shift" in 2012, and a fiction collection, "The Saucer Under My Bed and Other Stories", 2011. He’s retired and lives in Davis, CA.

• 2nd Place Short: Erik Amundsen, "The Lend"

Erik Amundsen was removed from display, as he was considered zoologically improbable and/or terrifying to small children. He has been sighted in Weird Tales, Fantasy Magazine, Not One of Us and Jabberwocky but his natural habitat is central Connecticut. Taken broadly, Erik Amundsen has had an interesting life; he's been a baker, an itinerant schoolteacher, worked for two governments and gotten in bar fights overseas. He now lives at the foot of a cemetery in central Connecticut where he writes nasty little stories and poems that shuffle around in the night when he's not looking. Or at least he hopes it's them; something's got to be making those noises and it's not the furnace. He maintains a blog on LiveJournal under the code-name cucumberseed.

• 1st Place Long: Megan Arkenberg, "The Curator Speaks in the Department of Dead Languages" 

Megan Arkenberg is a student in Wisconsin. This was her first Rhysling nomination and her first award for speculative poetry. In addition to poetry, she writes short fiction; her work has recently appeared in Asimov’s, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Lightspeed. She procrastinates by editing the online magazines Mirror Dance, which focuses on the fantasy genre and Lacuna, for historical fiction.

• 1st Place Short: Shira Lipkin, "The Library, After"

Shira Lipkin is a writer, activist, mother, and nexus. She has managed to convince Interfictions 2, Stone Telling, ChiZine, Apex Magazine, Steam-Powered, Mythic Delirium, and other otherwise-sensible magazines and anthologies to publish her short fiction and poetry, and she has just won the 2012 Rhysling Award for short poem. She lives in Boston with her family and the requisite cats, fights crime with the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, does six impossible things before breakfast, and would like a nap now. You can track her movements at shiralipkin.com and shadesong.livejournal.com. Please do. She likes the company.

Please click on the links to the poets' websites, blogs and the like. They appreciate the support. 

Update - after the 2011 Rhysling Award Showcase got a rerun on StarShipSofa No. 255, the 2012 version is now live on the website and iTunes - StarShipSofa No. 256
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