Tag: my poems

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Million-Year Elegies: Oviraptor (and a convention update)

I continue to be completely swamped, mostly by good things!

Can*Con. Um. Can*Con. I somehow went to an entire convention in Ottawa last weekend and forgot to post anything about it. Spoons were in short supply, but it was a lovely convention as always and I enjoyed seeing both familiar and new faces (and a few people I knew, but only from online). I did panels on Mental Health and Character Arc and Bodies of Difference: Disability in Science Fiction, and read “The Mother of All Squid Builds a Library” aloud.

(Side note: This is still my greatest story title ever.)

The Bodies of Difference panel was especially good, with all of us agreeing that we could easily have talked about the topic for another hour. Shout-out to Derek Newman-Stille, who was, as always, an excellent and clueful moderator.

Also, school. Omg school is starting and I completely forget how everything just flies out the window at the beginning of every new semester. I’m taking a class, as well, for the first time in several years, so that’s new.

And!

While I was mostly off the Internet for a few days due to technical issues, my poem “Million-Year Elegies: Oviraptor” went up as part of the Strange Horizons fund drive bonus issue!

The poem is, as @goblinpaladin put it on Twitter, “a great poem about a sad dinosaur fossil”.

Strange Horizons is an amazing magazine. They were my first full-length professional fiction sale, and one of my first poetry sales. They consistently publish interesting work by diverse authors and employ diverse editors also. If you like my poem or anything else they have published, and you can afford to do so and haven’t already, then I would strongly recommend their fund drive as a worthy target for your donations.

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Million-Year Elegies: Tyrannosaurus

Hot on the heels of my last poetry publication, Uncanny Magazine issue #12 is out, featuring my poem “Million-Year Elegies: Tyrannosaurus.”

This (in late 2014) was the first “Million-Year Elegies” poem I wrote. I already knew it would be part of a series, even though I had no idea yet what the rest of the series would look like. So far, that instinct has proven correct.

It’s available now if you want to buy the whole issue; otherwise, it will be free to read online starting on October 4th.

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New Poem: Roar

August. August. Where did August go?

It went to some pretty good places. Including Finland for a while, and some big steps careerwise, and a new relationship. I kind of disappeared off the writerly Internet, though, and all sorts of small tasks I’ve been neglecting because of the awesome have piled up. I suppose this is just one of those things that happens at times.

Anyway, here I am, with a new publication in inkscrawl. “Roar”, a tiny poem about a magical rock concert, is here.

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Million-Year Elegies: Edmontonia

Mythic Delirium 3.1 is out today, and my poem, “Million-Year Elegies: Edmontonia” is in it, along with work by Jane Yolen, Lynette Mejía, Yukimi Ogawa, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, and others. You can purchase the issue and read it immediately, or you can wait until August, when “Edmontonia” and some poem notes will be free to read online.

“Edmontonia” is a companion piece to last month’s “Hallucigenia” – hopefully, there will be quite a few others forthcoming in this series.

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Million-Year Elegies: Hallucigenia

My poem, “Million-Year-Elegies: Hallucigenia“, is up in Liminality, Issue #8.

This poem is about a creature from the Cambrian explosion. It is also about perception and belief, and being the object of flawed perception. It’s the first in a series/project of many different poems that I have been writing about ancient creatures.

Although my poem has nothing to do with it, Issue #8 of Liminality is dedicated to the victims of the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando.

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New poem: The Raising of Lazarus

In the Spring 2016 issue of “Breath & Shadow”:

http://www.abilitymaine.org/breath/spr16h.html

This is a poem I came up with in the summer of 2014, when recovering from a bad mental health breakdown.

It’s also the most overtly religious poem I’ve ever written, though I hesitate to call it a Christian poem; it is not particularly concerned with any specific articles of Christian doctrine. Then again, poems get associated with other religions without being dogmatic at all. So. Whatever. Enjoy.

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Kraken Quatrain

After a long wait, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #62 is out, and with it, my poem, “Kraken Quatrain”. Which is what it says on the can. In iambic tetrameter and everything.

I seriously doubt that someone is going to buy a whole issue of a magazine just because of a 4-line poem, but if you were considering buying an issue of ASIM anyway, perhaps this will sweeten the deal.

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Imaginarium 4

I’m late announcing this – I’ve been at a conference – but the Imaginarium: the Best Canadian Speculative Writing series is one I always watch with great interest every year. Once, in 2012, I got in with my story “Centipede Girl”. Since then I’ve had honourable mentions – two or three a year – but no bites.

Except now I am pleased to announce that Imaginarium 4 will feature not one, not two, but THREE of my poems from 2014. (“Self-Portrait as Bilbo Baggins“, “The Parable of the Supervillain”, and “The Mermaid at Sea World”.)

About that conference. I’m still at it. I presented an academic paper this morning – the second this year to have my real name attached as first author – and my supervisors say that once I remembered to slow down my speech to the rate of a normal Earthling, it went perfectly. I am now on a break between the parts of the conference that interest me, sitting at a small green desk in a high, garrety hotel room, typing on my computer, watching the rain and lightning outside and playing opera. It’s this odd mix of cosiness and spookiness which feels peculiarly writerly to me.

Getting my writing life back together, after the awful summer last year, is still a work in progress, which is why I’ve been quiet; but it’s coming along. On a day like today, I can’t help but feel encouraged.