SF Poetry

I am sad to hear that the outstanding British df/h ezine and important showcase for poetry MURKY DEPTHS. To me its amazing as to how quickly a new ezine like MURKY DEPTHS Many of the poems it publishes are nominated for RHYSLINGS and other awards. can quickly become an important showcase for poetry. Its an interesting contrast to long established magazine like ASIMOV'S publish a vast number of poems and it cant get a single Rhysling nomination. There is a moral out there but I am damned if I can see it. I would love to see comments on the topic.

By now if you are reading this section you probably know that Bruce Boston is the leading poet in the sf/f/h genres and one of the most prolific. This new collection from him is devoted to surreal poems he has published in the past s well as original ones written for the collection. Surreal is a form that is well suited to the sf/f/h genres and Boston is adept at writing them but I have yet to see a form that Boston did not do well. My only caveat is that I think surreal poems that work best are those of teN lines or less and most of the poems in this collection are over ten lines. Read more »

Helen Marshall's SKETON LEAVES (Kelp Queen Press ) is a poetry collection that retells the story of Peter Pan, something that you would think be a lot more common. Anyway the folowing link takes to ome of the poems and artwork used in the collection and its well worth the visit. http://skelton-key.net.

This is a mainstream literary poetry collection. I bring it to your attention because it is not intended to be a speculative/sf/f/h poetry collection. Yet it has one clearly speculative poem, 'Space Walking' by R. S. Thomas plus many of the poems have specific speculative/sf/f/h allusions in them including one poem that refers to Amazing Stories. The point is that speculative themes and imagery is part of mainstream literary poetry in English language markets. It is not largely confined to genre and children/YA markets

The haiku below shows how well the haiku form lends itself both to humor and hard science fiction.

Earth Day
the invasion saucers
got recycled

Niteblade has rapidly become one of the leading showcases for sf/f/h prose and especially poetry among the e-zine community. Below is the url for the current issue so you can see for yourself the high quality of the poetry it publishes.

www.niteblade.com/march2011.

The poem below won the annual Balticon Award in 2006. It was first published in 2006 in the BALTICON 40 PROGRAM BOOK (Baltimore, 2006 )

Ultima Thule weeks behind us
we bear onto nor'weat unmindful of wind shifts,
the swells that opposed us now swirling, churning,
our sails taut as steel.
Our captain, an old man, hand clenched to that tiller,
says nothing as we climb the masts to trimcanvas --
he stares only forward.
To where the skys darkens,
We cling to the ratlines, reefing points salt-stiffened
fighting our grasp and we pull sailing, Read more »

The poem below is a look at two major icons in hard science fiction; AI and space exploration. This combination often gets a negative image in sf cinema. The poet, Anthony Bernstein shows us a more positive view of this matter. Bernstein has been active as a sf poet and prose writer for 15 years.

The caress of ages
upon mechanized mind
renders our calendar moot.
These travelers marks a new brand of time.
Our fears are not theirs to fathom.
Their futurity not ours to master,
only to map by star and sail.

Skyward they leapt in mass,
packing vessels that dwarfed Read more »

The poem is about an important setting in hard sf films and print but yet gets ignored by poets until now. BTW if you are interested in having one of your speculative poems posted, get in touch with me at sgreengrolen [dot] com .

time surely stands still
as it moves between
the syncopated flash
of red and yellow lights
the interstitial pulse

beyond the airlock door
where empathy tethers spiral
toward luminescene
while aerial landscapes
rearrange themselves
into kaleidoscopic smears of color

just beyond the airlock door
incandescence waits like
a symphonic pause Read more »