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by Michael Janairo

Line of Advance Announces Winners of 2020 Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Awards

Some great news today: Line of Advance, a nonprofit literary journal founded by three veterans of the war in Afghanistan, wrote me this morning to say I poem I wrote inspired by stories of my Lolo during World War II is a winner in the 2020 Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Awards. The poem will be published online in September and in print in October in an anthology called Our Best War Stories.

I have always been proud of my family members’ military service, my uncle Raymond, killed in action in World War II, and my Lolo, father, and Uncle Tony — all three of them West Point grads. You can read a little bit more about my Lolo in a previous post.

Now I am also proud to be among the first group of civilians to be honored with this award, for both poetry and prose. This year was the first year military family members were invited to submit to the annual contest. I’m glad they expanded who is eligible. When you are part of a military family, a lot of your daily life is defined by the military experience—everyday things like where you live, where you shop, changes in schools and places of worship.

Thank you to Line of Advance, editor Christopher Lyke, and guest judge Katey Schultz, and congratulations to all the winners!

Among the winners, here are all the prize-winners in my category: poetry by a military family member:

  • First-prize: “Pursuit” by Lisa Stice
  • Second-prize: “Dancing with my Father” by Ellyana Gomez
  • Third-prize: “An Offering” by Michael Janairo

You can read the award announcement here.

by Michael Janairo

New poem just published in Abridged

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/

by Michael Janairo

2020 Rhysling Award Winners

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)

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by Michael Janairo

Poetry reading at Troy Kitchen, 9/8/19

The Spring 2019 Community Writers Workshop participants. Back row from left, Eliana Rowe, Jeffrey Aaron Stubits, Melissa Hurt, instructor and UAlbany alum D. Colin, Amy Nedeau, Stephanie Nolan, Karin Lin-Greenberg and Phyllis Hillinger. Front row, Linda Berkery, Michael Janairo, Patti Croop and Lynn Trudeau. Missing from the photo are Matresa Flowers, Daniel Gorman, Kendall Hoeft and Annika Nerf.

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 …

by Michael Janairo

Vesta, 2002-2019

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.

by Michael Janairo

Thank you, SFPA, for the Rhysling nomination!

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.

by Michael Janairo

About those seven words (not George Carlin’s seven)

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:

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by Michael Janairo

A short history of Twitter

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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!!!”