Amazing Stories: Speculative Poetry Round-up 2/2014: (Mostly) British

My latest blog post on Amazing Stories came out today. Since the reviews I'm working on, especially of the anthology of British Science Fiction Poetry Where Rockets Burn Through, are taking me longer than expected, I decided to do another round-up. This has become my emergency back-up plan, but it seems that they are also quite popular, so I don't feel too badly about doing it a week earlier than planned. I've had British SF Poetry on the brain lately, and I seem to have found a lot of historical stuff, so I hope you enjoy.

Now, however, I'll have to make sure I have poetry recorded for the review planned February 26 before we leave on vacation. My son has the last 2 weeks of February off of school and we are going to Italy to visit his Nonna and Nonno. Needless to say, I'd rather not miss a scheduled post and miraculously I'm pretty well-prepared.

Anyway, here's a little snippet of today's post:

First, we have a very small ‘Zine, a Newsletter really (only one sheet of paper printed on both sides!). It’s called Handshake and it’s produced sporadically by John Francis Haines,. I found a little introduction written by Haines which states:
HANDSHAKE started in 1992 after discussions between myself and Steve Sneyd, as we felt there was a need of some kind of “British” equivalent of the USA based Science Fiction Poetry Association.

I found this intro to the pamphlet on a webpage no longer maintained by John Howard in which he collected the poetry printed on Handshake into the Handshake Anthology. There’s lots of great poetry to be read there by Steve Snyde, Giovanni Malito (and Italo-Canadian active in Ireland at the time), Douglas Forward, Andrew Darlington and others as well as the well-known US poet Bruce Boston:

Handshake Anthology

John Howard produced a short-lived WebZine called House of Moonlight, which also has some nice poetry by British poets you can still read online:

House of Moonlight

These poets seem impossible to find and further digging has uncovered...

...uncovered what, exactly? Well you'll just have to go to Amazing Stories to read the full post:

Speculative Poetry Round-up 2/2014: (Mostly) British

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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! 

Amazing Stories: Poetry Review - Offspring of the Moon by John W. Sexton

Hello! And happy holidays to you all! We're heading to Montana to spend the Christmas and New Year's holidays with my brother and his family and my mom, who moved out there this summer (from Wisconsin). There'll be much fun to be had: Tree decorating, Santa Claus visit, Owling (a special request from Dante because of a book "Owl Moon" by Jane Yolen, which we read recently), sledding, quaffing and gorging and much faullenzing (lazy making). I'm looking forward to it.

I have a new blog post (after a brief hiatus due to illness - bad head cold and couldn't record anything!) up tomorrow on my new day in the schedule. You can read my posts every other Wednesday from now on (unless, of course, I get sick or am traveling/performing too much, etc.).

This time I had the great pleasure of reviewing Irish poet, John W. Sexton's most recent collection Offspring of the Moon for Amazing Stories Mag. Here's a snippit:

I’ve read Irish poet John Sexton’s work often online and in Star*Line, so when I read that he had published a (new) collection I asked if I could het one for review purposes. His Publisher very graciously sent me a copy from Ireland (remember that I’m in France, so it’s not such a stretch). I’m so glad I got to read this collection in the dead-tree edition. It’s a beautiful little volume of 57 mostly short length poems. The cover art by Ludmila Korol, called “Moon Wind” is stunningly perfect and beautiful on the paperback cover. The original is oil on canvas and is certainly even more vibrant in that medium. The volume is a perfect bound paperback printed on smooth cream-colored paper which is very easy on the eyes and a pleasure to hold in your hand. However, if you are in a part of the world that make procuring a hard copy of this collection difficult it is available on Amazon. Sexton has published widely online and in print and I’ve always enjoyed his work. He has written many Haiku sequences and hybrid forms, which are wonderfully evocative. Offspring of the Moon contains many poems which were originally published in print journals and anthologies and they defy categorization.

To read the rest, and listen to my readings of 6 of the poems found within, please go here.

If you have missed any of my previous posts at Amazing Stories you can find a list of them on my author page.

Enjoy!

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Amazing Stories: Poetry Review - Transmissions to the Mystic Nebula

You can now read my latest speculative poetry review on Amazing Stories. It's a review of Christopher Vera's self-published collection "Transmissions to the Mystic Nebula". You may remember Chris was the mentor on my one and only poetic creation and it was published on his website Mystic Nebula. But this time it's about him and his wonderful, moving, intense collection of poetry. Here's a snippet:
 

Transmissions to the Mystic Nebula is a collection of intensely intimate poetry which map a life, somewhat (auto)biographical. Whether it’s the life of the poet himself or a fictional poet doesn’t makes no difference – you are pulled into an examination of events in a person’s life that are momentous and significant.

The collection is organized in a framework of communications with the “Mystic Nebula” by the/a (fictional) poet. This Science Fictional “story” is laid out at the beginning in a “Researchers Note” and the poems are punctuated by beautiful art depicting a Nebula and other space images with status reports regarding the “transmission”. The effect is...

Ah yes, well, you'll have to go to the post to read the rest! 

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