Check out my latest experiment in language, a poem called “Chaos Theory: The Butterfly Wing Set” recently published in the online poetry/art journal Abridged, out of Northern Ireland.
You can find the poem here: https://www.abridged.zone/echoes-3-chaos-theory-the-butterfly-wings-set/
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, of which I am a member, has just announced the winners of the 42nd annual Rhysling Awards for best speculative poems of the year.
The winners were selected in two categories, Long Form and Short
Form Poems, which were nominated by the members of the organization. From 67 publications. 77 poems in the Short Form category and 49 poems in the Long Form category were reviewed for almost 16 weeks by the membership, which includes award-winning educators, scholars, and poets from a diverse range of literary traditions and specializations. This year, the membership selected the following winners (links to the poems included where possible):
SHORT
First Place
“Taking, Keeping” • Jessica J. Horowitz • Apparition Lit 5
Second Place
“when my father reprograms my mother {” • Caroline Mao • Strange Horizons, Fund Drive
Third Place (tie)
“Creation: Dark Matter Dating App” • , Sandra J. Lindow • Asimov’s SF, July/August, and
“The Day the Animals Turned to Sand” • Tyler Hagemann • Amazing Stories, Spring 2019
LONG
First Place
“Heliobacterium daphnephilum” • Rebecca Buchanan • Star*Line 42.3
Second Place
“The Cinder Girl Burns Brightly” • Theodora Goss • Uncanny 28
Third Place
“Ode to the Artistic Temperament” • Michael H. Payne • Silver Blade 42
and
“The Macabre Modern” • Kyla Lee Ward • The Macabre Modern and Other Morbidities (P’rea Press)
Check it out: I’m one of fifteen people who recently took part in the New York State Writers Institute Community Writers Workshop and will complete the poetry course with a public reading at 7 p.m. on Monday, July 8, at Troy Kitchen, 77 Congress St.
The event is free and open to the public, and marks the first time that NYS Writers Institute workshop participants will give a public reading.
Read the story in the Troy Record …
We rescued Vesta when she was 7 years old in 2009. She never liked having her photograph taken (she often ducked her head or walked away when a camera came out), so this is a rare portrait of her sitting calmly. We named her Vesta, the Roman goddess of hearth, home and family, for she was the warm center of our home life. Though we most often called her “Vesta,” and we didn’t correct people when they called her “Vespa,” we also called her “Vester,” “Vestela,” “Vesta-girl,” “Wag-a-muffin,” “Good girl,” “Little One,” “Wagster,” and many more. And though these words can’t say enough, she was a good dog, a close companion, and loving friend.
My poem “Instructions for Astronauts” has been nominated for a Rhysling Award by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA)!
The poem was originally published in the Mithila Review along with a video produced by Salik Shah that includes my voice reading the poem. The Rhysling nomination means the poem will be published again, this time in The 2018 Rhysling Anthology of all nominated poems.
I guess it could seem silly, how fascism works—from the micro to the macro—that seven reasonable terms would become forbidden for the CDC to use. That’s the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The Atlanta-based federal agency that the U.S. turns to when during vulnerable times, when there’s a need for evidence-based and science-based research so that the diversity of the whole population can stay safe from things like Zika virus or an Ebola outbreak or zombies (see also: Season 1 of The Walking Dead; and Max Brooks’ World War Z).
These are the seven words, as reported by The Washington Post, that the Trump Administration is forbidding policy analysts at the CDC from using:
2006: The first tweet: just setting up my twttr
2007: Twitter finds users: Everyone at SXSW is doing it, and now #hashtags
2008: Barack Obama blows up Twitter: #YesWeCan
2009: Finding followers becomes a thing followuback #ff fun
2010: One of the most popular accounts becomes @shitmydadsays (it later becomes a short-live sitcom starring William Shatner)
2011: Political activism found a voice in #ArabSpring
2012: Clickbait tweets arrive and you won’t believe what happens next (remember seeing tweets like this? They’ve all but disappeared)
2013: Twitter adds photos, and the #Oreo Cookie Superbowl power outage may have been the greatest of the year
2014: Then came Ellen Degeneres and the famous #OscarSelfie
2015: #LoveWins
2016: Remember when people thought 2016 was the worst year EVAH!
2017: We don’t need 280 characters to say “WE’RE ALL DOOMED!!!”
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