Much thanks and kudos to fellow SFPA’er Diane Severson Mori over at Amazing Stories Magazine for her review of UNDOING WINTER! In addition to maintaining a regular column at Amazing Stories to highlight speculative poets and poetry, Diane also manages the not-insignificant task of rounding up the spec-poetry related publications and activities for Science Fiction Poetry Association members.
If you haven’t already, please do check out Diane’s thoughts on UNDOING WINTER, complete with recordings of three poems from the chapbook!
I’m busy getting ready for the DDOA Poet and Prose Writer’s Retreat this weekend (leaving my babies for four days! EEP!) but Diane’s post provides some food for thought that I’d like to revisit later [Watch this Space!!] To wit: while it’s true that none of the poetry in UNDOING WINTER is SciFi – indeed, i think I have all of one poem in my entire portfolio that I’d call straightup Science Fiction – I draw much of my inspiration from myth, folklore, and dreamscapes – all of which are snugly at home under the “Fantasy” category, which also counts as “Speculative Poetry”.
I think Speculative Poetry can be read in layers. The poems are metaphors, yes, but they also speak of their own realities. In my opinion, poems of ghosts, pagan gods, and slipstream are no more or less metaphorical than of any other genre – for what is SciFi, really, but the same, age old questions of the human condition, wrapped up in futuristic tropes?