Comments on: Science Fiction Poetry

By: Harry Gilonis

Harry Gilonis — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:08:54 +0000

You won’t find it online, and it may well prove hard to find at all, but section 4 of the Irish poet Brian Coffey’s long poem “Advent” deals with aliens arriving on earth in a “space ark” – and intriguingly investigates the theological implications of such an eventuality. Not an easy read; but he’s a major (and largely-forgotten) modernist poet, also a trained scientist and professional philosopher, who had an obsessive interest in science-fiction. (See also his poem ‘The Monument”, which covers some of the same concerns from a different perspective.)
Harry
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By: scott

scott — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:56:39 +0000

A memorable sci-fi poetry book by a non-English writer is Harry Martinson’s “Aniara.” Sadly out of print, but should be easily found through a decent library or if all else fails through interlibrary loan. Well worth it, shades of Huxley in it.
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By: Michael Gushue

Michael Gushue — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 01:06:10 +0000

There was a science fiction poetry anthology in the 70′s edited by Edward Lucie-Smith called Holding Your Eight Hands. Tom Disch was in it, along with some writers known for their poetry, and some known for writing science fiction. It’s probably hopelessly dated by now, but it was fun back then.
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:53:38 +0000

Forest Ackerman, who founded Famous Monsters of Filmland, discovered Ray Bradbury, and invented the term “sci-fi,” has just passed away. Amusingly, he said that the label “sci-fi” came to him in 1954 when he was listening to a car radio and heard an announcer mention “hi-fi;” his wife said, “Forget it, Forry, it will never catch on.”
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By: Cathy

Cathy — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:58:15 +0000

Thanks for the recommendations! I’ll look into all these links and books.
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By: Mike Allen

Mike Allen — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 02:11:00 +0000

Alas, the links that I posted earlier don’t seem to work.
The symposium is here:
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2005/20050502/poetry-symposium1-a.shtml
The article is here:
http://www.starshineandshadows.com/essays/2004-03-29.html
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By: Aaron Fagan

Aaron Fagan — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 23:34:25 +0000

Aniara: An Epic Science Fiction Poem by 1974 Nobel Prize–winning Swedish poet Harry Martinson.
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By: Thom Martin

Thom Martin — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 21:33:00 +0000

The Shippy book rocks the po-fi-sci–el camion de bomberos rojo va muy rapido. His press, Rust Metal, publishes lots of impressive hybrid stuff. Also, let’s not forget NBA finalistista Matthea Harvey & her MODERN LIFE (from the estimable Gray Wolf Press) with it’s terror futures & future terrors & robot prose poems.
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By: Deborah P Kolodji

Deborah P Kolodji — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 18:41:43 +0000

If you’d like to learn more about science fiction poetry, one place to start is the Science Fiction Poetry Association, which was founded in 1978 by Suzette Haden Elgin. We currently have about 250 members, world wide.
Each year, the SFPA bestows the Rhysling Award for the best sf poem (in two categories, long & short). Andrew Joron won in the short form category, in a three-way tie with Duane Ackerson and Sonya Dorman, for his poem, “Asleep in the Arms of Mother Night.”
Deborah P Kolodji
President, Science Fiction Poetry Association
http://www.sfpoetry.com
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By: Mike Allen

Mike Allen — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 17:48:01 +0000

There’s actually a whole community of us “science fiction poetry” folks, and some of us, myself included, have read Ms. Hong’s Dance Dance Revolution. It’s a small group, but a lively one.
Since 1978, there’s even been an award for achievement in speculative poetry, called the Rhysling Award, given out every year by the Science Fiction Poetry Association or SFPA (sfpoetry.com); Andrew Joron has won it three times.
I had a hand in publishing the handbook linked to here, by Suzette Haden Elgin, who founded the SFPA. Not everyone agrees with her definition of what “sci-fi poetry” is; the late Tom Disch, who was also a Rhysling Award winner, thought the very idea poetry could be divided by genre to be ridiculous.
I can understand why doing “serious research” into the subject might seem a little daunting; there isn’t much out there to be found in the way of scholarship on this topic. As starting points — well, I have my biases, but I would recommend this symposium that I participated in at the website Strange Horizons, and also this article by Michael Collings.
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By: Emily Warn

Emily Warn — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 15:43:08 +0000

To read more on Andrew Joron’s ideas on the emergent qualities of poetry, read this article in which he thinks about the similarities between water and language:
“Once poetic language was released from the constraint of having to tell the stories of gods and kings and later, of having to express individual and social identity, it began to discover—or rediscover—its sources in the mysterious movement of language itself, in the manifestation of a meaning in words that goes somehow beyond words. In the modernist and the postmodernist poem, language is finally manifested as a self-exceeding system, and to explain what I mean by this, I’m going to resort, very much in the spirit of Leonardo, to the properties of water.”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/feature.html?id=182365
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By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 22:46:06 +0000

I second the recommendation on Jasper Bernes. For additional poetry that incorporates sf techniques– poetry that I like- read Cathy Park Hong’s own latest volume, Dance Dance Revolution, and then perhaps Les Murray’s much longer Fredy Neptune– though Fredy is technically “fantasy set on our Earth,” rather than sf (the nonrealist parts use “magic,” or Christian miracles), while Cathy Park Hong’s book is certainly an sf narrative poem. Bernes has gone as far as anyone in using sf techniques for lyric, or at least for nonnarrative, poems. How to go farther?
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By: Samm.

Samm. — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:17:54 +0000

Peter Shippy has a cool verse novel from Rose Metal Press, that has sci-fi elements–robots, talking gorillas, Sophocles and roof cows that live on your… roof.
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By: Doodle

Doodle — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 20:24:49 +0000

I never thought about it till now, but it’s like Juliana Spahr is Scully and Joshua Clover is Mulder!
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By: John Sakkis

John Sakkis — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:42:40 +0000

i read Juliana Spahr’s Response as an early X-Files episode…
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