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 No. 3 "Rhysling Award Showcase"

I've done it. I've finally managed to finish another Poetry Planet! I pre-empted the planned theme for this edition because I lost the complete recording and didn't want too much time to pass before I podcast the Rhysling Award winning (and placing) poems.

Poetry you'll hear:

CSE Cooney, Dogstar Men (3rd place, short form)
Robert Frazier, Wreck-diving the Starship (3rd place, long form)

Karen A. Romanko, Binary Creation Myth (2nd place, short form)
Bruce Boston, Dark Rains Here and There (2nd place, long form)

Amal El-Mohtar, Peach-Creamed Honey (winner, short form)
CSE Cooney, The Sea King's Second Bride (winner, long form)

They are all wonderful poems - wonderous, whimsical, erotic, funny, wry, sentimental. Those are some of the words I'd use to describe these poems. Go listen to them. You can find them at StarShipSofa Show No. 202.

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Pending Poetry Planet Projects

I suppose, being on vacation would mean I'd have gotten around to posting about this sooner, but sand is no place for an iPhone. And I still have a 2 year old to look after once in a while!

ANYWAY, PP No 3 "coming home" has been significantly delayed. Had a snafu with Audacity while editing and had to revert to a back-up version which was unedited. That happened 10 days before going on vacation and I spent 5 of those singing in Poland. Nevertheless, it will go live as soon as I can finish editing it and submit it to Tony.

In other news, I had the brilliant idea to podcast the top 3 poems in each category of the 2011 Rhysling Awards. I went about gathering permissions, bios and back-stories and am eased to say it's all set! I had huge problems getting in touch with Robert Frazier because my ISP apparently sets off some spam filter function and rejects my email. Just like that. Luckily, Bruce Boston came to the rescue and acted as middle man. I'm hoping to get that show done before the end of August.

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