April Poetry

A lot of catching up to do! And since so much of it is poetry related, I better get all of it in order while there's still some April left (I love Eliot btw).

Okay, so way back when the folks over at Strange Horizons had their readers poll, it turns out "If Alice..." made second place, something I was totally delighted by! Even better, Rose Lemberg's wonderful "In the Third Cycle" won, which just shows what excellent taste people reading Strange Horizons have (well, the editors are also gifted with some good sense for lyrical awesomeness if you ask me).

(Not that it really matters, but I am writing this post by following my facebook timeline. I don't know about you, but on my scale for disturbing, this rates a comfortable seven. The end is nigh!)

The Spring equinox saw two of my poems go live over at Eternal Haunted Summer, "The Desert in His Soul" and "Isis Conquers All." Yes, I do know gods outside of the Greek pantheon.

Now, sea poems! "Becoming the Sea," which resides at NewMyths.com, and "Binnorie," harping away over at inkscrawl. The second of these two is the one I'm really excited about, not just because of the poem itself though. Inkscrawl, a beautiful zine of spec poetry of ten lines or fewer was about to fold after just two issues, but along came Rose Lemberg (aka The Amazing Rose). She bought inkscrawl, founded a press along the way, and well, she just spreads Amazingness with everything she does. She even got Sam Henderson to take over editorship of inkscrawl. Very nice.

I mentioned earlier the excellent taste of the poetry editors of Strange Horizons. This poet was then of course immensely honored that these same editors saw fit to choose another of her pieces for publication. "Cerberus, Seeking Lethe" is another one of my Night Cycle poems (they are like dreams, little critters, just keep happening).

Stone Telling published Bridging: The Queer Issue. The poetry selected is wonderful, and I am hereby doffing my hat to Rose and Shweta. One piece stands out though. Lisa M. Bradley's "we come together we fall apart" is epic, and it tells a story that cuts deep. I was lucky enough to be allowed to read the part of Marguerite for the audio version, a production of the ST cast well worth listening to.

April also saw the release of Bull Spec #7 (I do love rude acronyms!) In the poetry section, readers will find "The Fall Queen" by yours truly. Very much looking forward to future issues of BS.

April being what it is, the Rhysling Award nominations were released. I am ecstatic about being on the list and about being in such good company! *silly grin*

And because Good Things just did not stop happening, I woke up one morning to find my copy of Mythic Delirium in the mail. It does not just look pretty, it's also pretty awesome from the inside. I have two works in it, "A Different Scheherazade" and "The Forest King" which was inspired by art created by Anita Allen only then to inspire art in turn. I am particularly proud of the inspiration part. The whole issue also got a very nice review at Tor.com. Made me wish that there'd be more general awareness of spec poetry. This genre just has to offer so much stunning work from talented and dedicated people.

Appearing hand in hand with Mythic Delirium (also, note the coordinated covers) was Goblin Fruit's Spring 2012 Issue. I have my first evah poem accepted by the editorial team in there, so wow. Hopefully, readers will enjoy "The Golem on My Tongue."

I'm going back to celebrating the rest of April now, if you don't mind :)  If you want to celebrate along, hop over to Fantastique Unfettered (ah, these acronyms!) and check out the daily prompts. Perhaps you'll just get a poem out of it.



Images taken from oldbookart.com and commons.wikimedia.org.