SF Poetry
This page was last updated
02 February 2007
FOREWORD
By Malcolm E. Wright
This is a very specialised area, but one I am very interested in. Witness my publication of Steve Sneyd's anthology of SF poetry Dreamers on the Sea of Fate last year and my own poems in Maelstrom. This page is in its early stages and still under construction, but I didn't want to hold it off-line any longer. Keep looking, you are sure to see some new items here in the near future. I don't see enough magazines in this field, so if you publish one, do please send me copies! News items are also welcome. Read what's here and then follow the links for more!
INTRODUCTION TO SF POETRY
By Steve Sneyd
That giant of science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke, once said "verse is probably a better medium than prose for expressing the ideas of Fantasy and Science Fiction." Much earlier, Shelley, in his In Defence of Poetry, remarked that "poets...are the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present."
We live in a time of remorseless and extraordinary change, our lives altering at what seems ever-accelerating speed, and in ways that are making fact of much which was pure science fiction imagination in the lifetimes of many. Poets cannot shut out change. In fact, as Shelley’s words suggest, it is a key part of poetry-making to be constantly alert to change, to confront it, explore it, examine its implications and impact upon us as humans, to shape its tidal waves into patterns and metaphors that help to grasp and understand and endure. Poetry, above all, has the power to focus seeing, to bring under the spotlight of compressed, heightened, crystallised words the essences of change which can so easily be blurred and blotted out of notice in the everyday pressures of existence, or buried amid the clutter of the ever-increasing information overload of our times.
The science fiction poet, by looking over the shoulder of the present moment into what has not yet happened, but struggles to be born like Yeats’ slouching beast, can, paradoxically, also help us see our present, our past, more clearly. "Give me a place to stand and I will move the world," said Archimedes. The science fiction poet, whether exploring Outer Space, the inner space of changing minds and bodies, or the social spaces between that we may well soon be sharing with new forms of intelligence, machine or genetic creations, even aliens, is reflecting the future - and the ever-moving present, our Present of the Changefields, no sooner sensed than gone past, but viewable in hindsight - that borrowed hindsight available to the science fiction poet taking a viewpoint, a persona, from a time when our Present is a dark, far forgotten Past.
In science fiction poetry you will find both a Sense of Wonder - an optimism that, even in the most dystopian scenarios, some life essence will persist, somewhere, somehow, be it only the Universe’s own - and a continuity from the true mainstream of past poetries, with their constant concern over centuries, even millennia, to explore, depict, shape visions of the Not-Yet-Known, and the human determination to encounter and explore it.
Science fiction poetry has as many faces as there are poets writing it - or possible futures that could be awaiting us. This website provides and introduction to discovering all this - it’s the start of a journey that could take you anywhere in Space and Time - enjoy!
Neolithon
by Steve Sneyd and John Light
Poems and drawings born of ancient stones.
Both Steve Sneyd and John Light write about the future. They gave a joint poetry reading at the Newham Science Fiction Festival and more recently read at the Newcastle book launch of Iron Press's anthology Star Trek - The Poems. This is their first published collaboration and grew out of the interest they also share in those cultures of the past that have left only stone remains and myths.
60 pages ISBN 0 907759 71 8
£4.95; £5.50 by post (£8 overseas)
Published by K.T.Publications, 16 Fane Close Stamford, Lincolnshire, PE9 1HG
Magazines
ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION, edited by Gardner Dozois, is published monthly by Dell Magazines. Price: $3.50 US/$4.95 Canada. Digest size. 144pp. July 2002: Poems by Marrio Milosevic, Laurel Winter, Rebecca Lu Kiernan & Bruce Boston. August 2002: Poems by Bruce Boston & Geoffrey A. Landis. October/November 2002: Poems by Laurel Winter & Mario Milosevic. December 2002: Poems by Steven Utley, Bruce Boston & Ruth Berman. January 2003: Poems by Tim Pratt, Steven Utley, Ruth Berman, Tom Disch & Bruce Boston. February 2004: Poems by Ruth Berman & Mario Milosevic.
DATA DUMP No.51, February 2001, edited by Steve Sneyd. No actual poetry, but lots of news and info on the subject. Price 70p incl. p&p (cheques payable to S. Sneyd) or $2.00 (cash or stamps). Published by Hilltop Press, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, HD5 8PB, England, UK. A5. 4pp.
DREAMS & NIGHTMARES No.55. Publishes science fiction, fantasy and fantastic horror poetry. Established 1986. 24pp.
HANDSHAKE - The Newsletter of The Eight Hand Gang, an Association of British SF Poets, published irregularly by Dunnock Press. Available free from John F. Haines, 5 Cross Farm, Station Road, Padgate, Warrington WA2 0QG. Please send a stamped, addressed envelope. Publishes market news and SF poems. No.64 has poems by J. C. Hartley, Anthony Bernstein, Joanne Tolson, Steve Sneyd & Andrew Darlington.
THE MAGAZINE OF SPECULATIVE POETRY, edited by Roger Dutcher. Established 1984. Subscription four issues for $19. Single issue $5. Editorial address: PO Box 564, Beloit, WI 53512, USA.
SOL MAGAZINE No.32, Winter 2000/2001, edited by Malcolm E. Wright. Special Millennium Issue has a long article about SF poetry by Steve Sneyd. £2.40 post free from Sol Publications, PO Box 5828, Southend-on-Sea, SS1 9FA, England, UK. A5. 68pp.
STAR*LINE ~ The Newsletter of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. Editor: David C. Kopaska-Merkel. Editorial address: 1300 Kicker Road, Tuscaloosa, AL 35404, USA. Sample issues can be ordered from John Nichols, 6075 Bellevue Drive, North Olmsted, OR 44070, USA for $2.00.
Books Received
Books for review should be sent to Maelstrom SF Magazine, Sol Publications, PO Box 5828, Southend-on-Sea, SS1 9FA, England, UK.
THE STAR-SEER'S AERIAL VOYAGE by William Dearden (9pp), back-to-back with SPIN by R. I. Barycz (7pp). The Star-Seer is an extract from a book published 1837. Spin is a single poem reprinted from its magazine publication in 1970. Price £2.49 or $5.50. Published by Hilltop Press, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, HD5 8PB, England, UK. A5. ISBN 0 905262 29 8. Received 10/2/01.
EUROSHIMA MON AMOUR by Andrew Darlington. Poems from the Inner Mind to the Outer Limits. With a foreword by K. V. Bailey and an 'Interim Biography' by Steve Sneyd. Price £3.99 or $8.00. Published by Hilltop Press, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, HD5 8PB, England, UK. A5. 56pp. ISBN 0 905262 27 1. Received 13/10/00.
BLACK KNIGHTS AT THE END OF TIME by J. P. V. Stewart (15pp), back-to-back with HEY, HE'S A FISH, a long poem by Andrei Lubensky (5pp) in Ace Double flip-over format. Price £2.49 or $6.00. Published by Hilltop Press, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, HD5 8PB, England, UK. A5. ISBN 0 905262 26 3. Received 13/10/00.
GESTALTMACHER, GESTALTMACHER, MAKE ME A GESTALT by Steve Sneyd. Price £5.99 or $12.00. Published by The Four Quarters Press, 7 The Towers, Stevenage, Herts, SG1 1HE, England, UK. A5. Perfect bound. 88pp. ISBN 0-95351-13-2-4. Received 15/8/00.
IN SPACE'S BELLY ~ Poetry in UK SF Fanzines & Little Magazines ~ The 1970s by Steve Sneyd. Discover a decade of profusion - and controversy - for UK genre poetry. Here is work, often startlingly different from what went before in style and content, that strikingly reflects the changes wrought by psychedelia, the New Wave in SF, and the aftermath of the Moon landing, amid the continuing echoes of nuclear tests and brushfire wars. £2.50 / $6.00 from Hilltop Press, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, HD5 8PB, England, UK. A5. 24pp. ISBN 0 905262 22 0.
THE FANTASTIC MUSE by Arthur C. Clarke. The prophet of science and SF is shown to be prophetic also in his views on the need for a poetry of science fiction. To mark Clarke’s 75th birthday, this seminal article - the earliest know essay on SF poetry - is reprinted for the first time since its original publication in 1938, together with a haunting poem of his own from the following year, The Twilight of the Sun. Both items are of significant importance in the history of SF poetry and give an insight into the early thoughts of this major writer. A5. 12pp. Published by Hilltop Press, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, HD5 8PB, England, UK. Out of print.
FLIGHTS FROM THE IRON MOON ~ Genre Poetry in UK Fanzines & Little Magazines 1980 - 1989 ~ by Steve Sneyd. Published by Hilltop Press, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, HD5 8PB, England, UK. 128pp. ISBN 0 905262 12 3. Out of print.
Links
The Science Fiction Poetry Association
The Ultimate Science Fiction Poetry Guide
Peterborough SF Club's Poetry Page
The A/A Productions H/F/SF Poetry Anthology
Fables Folklore & Speculative Fiction
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