Fantastic Poetry

November 11, 2012 at 11:00 am , by Alyce Wilson

I’m scheduled to speak on the Philcon “Fantastic Poetry” panel. Here are some of the poets and resources I hope to mention.

A friend of mine recommended “If I Should Have a Daughter” by spoken word poet Sarah Kay. In that YouTube video, she first recites the roughly 4-minute poem, which draws on images such as Superman and science, and then talks about her career in poetry and her work with young people. Strictly speaking, her work is not firmly in the realm of fantasy, but I recommend going to Sarah Kay’s site and reading “Peacocks,” a short short that has mythic overtones.

I found a wonderful resource in the site Poems of the Fantastic and the Macabre, which traces the history of the fantastic poems from Medieval times to the Modern era.

If you’d like to hear work performed by one of the best-known fantastic poets, Edgar Allan Poe, consider going to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire’s “Poe Evermore” performances, held annually in November.

The site Fantastic Poems not only includes some entertaining poetry by Adam Rulli-Gibbs but also provides his definiton of fantastic poetry: “Science fiction or fantasy poetry, as each of the above, should, whatever appears within it, be about people and their perceptions. So you will find poems about love, goals, good vs evil, wonder, Christmas, frustration, exploitation, preconceptions and the rest.”

If you’d like a list of poets to check out, Wikipedia’s Speculative Poetry article has a substantial list of speculative poets.

The Poetry Foundation site is a great resource. If you go to the Mythology and Folklore category, there is a sampling of fantastic poems. Some even are accompanied by audio recordings.

The Science Fiction Poetry Association provides both a guide to speculative poetry (with examples from back issues) as well as benefits for speculative poets.

If you want to either read or submit fantastic poetry, you can search the guide to magazines offered by the Speculative Literature Foundation.

My fellow panelist, Catherynne M. Valente, who is herself a respected speculative poet, suggested seeking out the following.

No Comments

Category Networking, Poetry / Tags: /

Social Networks : Technorati, Stumble it!, Digg, delicious, Google, Twitter, Yahoo, reddit, Blogmarks, Ma.gnolia.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

No Responses to “ Fantastic Poetry ”

By submitting a comment here you grant Alyce Wilson a perpetual license to reproduce your words and name/web site in attribution. Inappropriate comments will be removed at admin's discretion.