Sunday recs: sf/f poetry and discussion

Published on by Sara Norja Category: discussion, linkage, poetry

I was down with the flu most of last week, so I’ve been too tired and braindead to work on any of my writing projects. Sad. Hopefully the coming week will be better in that respect!

I should post here more than just for Sunday recs. But on weekdays, after work + writing/socialising/dance class/insert other activity here, I’m rarely coherent enough to make sensible posts. Perhaps one day!

Anyway, now for some links.

Goblin Fruit’s winter issue is out! I haven’t had time to read any of the poems yet, but Goblin Fruit is a lovely publication and pretty much all their issues have fantastic stuff. So go there for your fairytale-flavoured poem fix!

Speaking of speculative poetry: Paul Cook writes about why sf poetry is “embarrassingly bad”. Dear readers, I’ll admit I huffed and rolled my eyes while reading this piece. Needless to say, I disagree intensely with Cook. The sample of science fiction poetry that he uses in his piece is hardly representative of the sf poetry genre as a whole! To me it feels like Cook’s just saying “I found a couple of science fiction poems that are bad; hence all sf poetry is bad.” Not very sound reasoning. I’ve read quite a bit of speculative poetry, and while some of it is bad – obviously! Sturgeon’s Law and all that – there are also absolute gems to be found. There are writers who pay attention to the sounds and words and hidden meanings, just like in any other genre of poetry!

F. J. Bergmann has written a response to Cook’s disparaging piece; Bergmann manages to articulate a lot of the things that occurred to me when reading Cook’s piece, so I recommend checking her response out.

And now for some more poetry links. Here are a couple of poems from Goblin Fruit’s archives:
– Huldre by Joshua Gage (a lush, Norse-inspired image)
– All the Mari’s Parties by Mat Joiner (about one of the creepiest creatures in Welsh folklore, the Mari Lwyd)
– Kingdom by Rachel Dacus (a shout of joy).

And finally, in defence of sf poetry: here are some examples of science fiction poems that I think are utterly wonderful. I’ll let them speak for themselves.
– Postcards from Mars by C. S. E. Cooney
– The Curator Speaks in the Department of Dead Languages by Megan Arkenberg
– Asteres Planetai by Amal El-Mohtar.

Happy reading! Speaking of which, I just started reading The Lord of the Rings again. For the I’ve-no-idea-how-manyeth time (I used to reread it at least once a year from around age 11 to 17), but this time it’s been almost a decade since I last read it, so it’s a bit of a different experience. And yet not. I absorbed that book so deeply when I was a teenager that each sentence is like coming back home.

Sunday recs: Sf with a dash of fairytale

Published on by Sara Norja Category: linkage, novelette, personal babble, revision, submission

Happy Sunday, everyone. It’s a grey, mushy one over here, with something unpleasant falling from the sky (ugh, sleet, whyyyy) and the lovely snow turning to slush. I have to go out in a moment, into that mess, but before that – here are some recs again.

First, the fairytale: Houdini’s Sister by Christine Hamm. A lovely prose poem, a praise of fairytale heroines.

Now for the science fiction.

Dysphonia in D Minor by Damien Walters Grintalis. A bittersweet love story about people who sing bridges and buildings into being. I really enjoyed this, especially the structure.

And then, oh, then. Gravity by Erzebet Yellowboy. Earth is covered in ice; a group of people set off towards the sun. This story made me ache so much by the end. Gorgeous, devastating. And such language! Of Mercury: “A dead god has scrawled its name there in a language we have forgotten.” And: “We become Ouroboros in twenty-five days, when the head of our orbit eats its tail.” Brilliant stuff.

*

I edited 10 pages of an old novelette yesterday and did sundry other useful things. Today’s mostly for social activities. Which is lovely, but oh, I just wish I had more time! I have so many things I want to write – stories, poems, an academic article – but time slips through my grasping fingers and February rushes onwards.

I really need to finish one poem project soon, though, because submissions to Interfictions end on the 28th. Will have to set aside time for that.

Sunday recs: anagrams etc.

Published on by Sara Norja Category: linkage, poetry, short stories

Here’s a sundry bevy of recs:

If Poets Wrote Poems Whose Titles Were Anagrams of Their Names. Some more here and here. I especially enjoyed Eliot, Dickinson, and William Carlos Williams. The WCW parody made me giggle out loud. 😀

Here are a couple of my favourite poems from February’s Snakeskin. Fat by Beccy Pert: such luscious language. And House without Windows by Grace Andreacchi is absolutely gorgeous!

A story: Hwang’s Billion Brilliant Daughters by Alice Sola Kim. A different kind of time travel.

ETA: And some nonfiction too: Eleanor Arnason writes about authenticity, cultural appropriation, and writing outside your own experiences in sf/f.

* * *

Also, today I sat down to write an all-new short story and actually finished the first draft in one go! First prose piece of the year, incidentally. And wonder of wonders, it’s actually short, too. My stories have the tendency to expand, but this one stayed at around 2000 words. Huzzah! It’s about an alchemist bartender, and I rather like it. Perhaps at some point it will be time to submit stories too, not just poems. 🙂

First publication of the year!

Published on by Sara Norja Category: personal babble, poetry, publication

I woke up with aches and pains: it seems my neck and back did not appreciate yesterday’s shenanigans. But checking my email brought some lovely news:

My poem Kinds of Truth is now online in the February issue (#193) of Snakeskin.

It’s quite a recent poem, written in mid-December in the wee hours of the night.

Plans for this weekend:
– I should clean, get through the Mount Doom of dishes, and other housework… (sigh)
– Even though the weather isn’t that great, I want to go for a walk or few, for the sake of my jammed neck as well as for inspiration.
– I’m working on a long-ish poem (mentioned in my previous post); I need to continue with that.
– I want to get some prose written.
– I will also knuckle down to some academic writing. *happyface*
– I think a few episodes of Farscape might make their way into my plans, too.

Have a great weekend, dear readers!

Sunday recs

Published on by Sara Norja Category: linkage, novelette, personal babble, poetry, short stories

Here are three stories I’ve read and enjoyed recently:

Selkie Stories Are for Losers, by Sofia Samatar: a gorgeous contemporary take on selkies.

The Flying Woman, by Meghan McCarron: a delightful atmosphere, an aching and haunting story.

And Their Lips Rang with the Sun, by Amal El-Mohtar: a lovely, poetic piece, strange in a good way and with a great narrative voice.

All three of these happen to be from Strange Horizons. What can I say? – they publish brilliant stories there.

* * *

And what of my own writing? Well, I just realised that I haven’t written any prose at all yet in 2013 (although I’ve written more than 15 poem drafts), so I should work on that soonish. There is that one novelette that needs to be finished and then edited; and I should edit the snail story. Also, there’s one burgeoning short story idea that I should get out at some point.

As for what’s left of today: I should clean my flat, do the dishes and various other useful household tasks. But earlier today I started a long poem – fragmentary, linguistic and deeply personal – and to be honest, I want to work on that more than I care about my home being spotless. I always care about writing more than cleaning.

But we’ll see. I’m tired enough now that it may be that my brain’s not in the mood for poetry any more. In which case, dishes and hoovering, perhaps some fiddle practice too. But first of all: tea.

Linkses

Published on by Sara Norja Category: linkage, personal babble

Some links for this cold Sunday!

Story rec:

* Go and read Carmen Maria Machado’s amazing story Inventory at Strange Horizons. Note: it’s somewhat sexually explicit, just in case you want to read it at work or something. 😀 But a wonderful, gripping story.

Stuff I’ve been meaning to link for the past age:

* A great post by Kate Elliott about the male gaze in sf&f. (Incidentally, I recommend reading Kate Elliot’s Spiritwalker series – wonderful worldbuilding and great characters. I’m eagerly awaiting the next instalment.)

* A Magical Words post by David B. Coe about the impostor syndrome in writing. Magical Words is a great specfic writing blog that I regularly follow – lots of great posts about the craft and life as a writer. In this post, David B. Coe deals with something that’s all too familiar to perfectionist me: the “impostor syndrome”:

Impostor Syndrome is the belief among people who have accomplished something — anything — that their accomplishment is in some way a fluke, a mistake, or the result of a random act of charity from someone in a position to advance their career. It is the belief that, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, they do not belong, they have not truly earned their success. They are, this syndrome leads them to believe, impostors who are merely pretending to be skilled or talented. Any moment now, others will see through their deception, and they will be subjected to abject humiliation before being thrust back into the dim obscurity that they so obviously deserve.

I’m trying to get over the Impostor Syndrome. Most of the time, I can see myself as a “real writer” (and did even before I got published). After all, I write. But insecurity combined with perfectionism too often leads to the sort of questioning that David writes about in his post.

* Theodora Goss writes about writers and families: how the people closest to a writer relate to their writing. I’m going to take this moment to say: Dear family and other close ones, in case you happen to read this: even when I draw inspiration from a real person or event, it’s usually always fictionalised. Sometimes something that seems to be inspired by my real life is actually just my imagination. Sometimes something that seems imagined is actually real. Eh. This is all disjointed; I blame the weird allergic sniffles and sneezes I’ve been suffering from all day. Perhaps this: writing is writing; and I am me. Sara the writer is partly the same as Sara the person you have dinner with. We overlap, we’re the same person, but what the writer writes is certainly not always what the person thinks.

Was that confusing enough? 😀

edit: Just found this amazing story in the form of footnotes: Footnotes, by C. C. Finlay. I love using non-narrative genres to convey a story. Also, ♥academia♥.

Dreamscapes

Published on by Sara Norja Category: personal babble, poetry, submission

Lately I’ve been remembering my dreams quite vividly. They’ve been strange and powerful dreams, too, some of them. Those often tend to turn into poetry or inspire stories, if they’re adventure dreams. My latest dreams have been poetry inspiration. I’ll have to see if I can get the very latest (today’s) into a good enough shape to be able to read it at Friday’s writers’ group meeting. Vast landscapes, black sand, robots striding across the remote planet’s surface with giant’s legs… Powerful visual impressions and a feeling of desolation. How to convey these things in a poem?

One day I’ll get round to posting a couple of posts that I got the idea for many moons ago – posts that properly deal with writing, instead of random babble – but it is not this day. This day… is approaching tomorrow too fast. I should start preparing for bed, since tomorrow is really not a good day for feeling zombietastic at work. Tomorrow evening, though, I plan to make time for writing. More poetry submissions, perhaps (did some yesterday), or then continuing work on an old story that itches to be finished.

Poetry experiment

Published on by Sara Norja Category: novelette, personal babble, poems on the blog, poetry, short stories

Am on sick leave today because the wretched remnants of illness still lingered this morning. My New Year’s Eve was spent with a fever; I was so out of it that I was extremely content to be alone, and toasted the new year with a cup of peppermint tea. I’ve been under the weather ever since. But since I feel okay right now (finally, an appetite and less nausea!) I’m hoping that I’ll be fully well again tomorrow.

Anyway. Due to being alone on NYE, I was able to start off the year with a poem. Nice. Wasn’t a good one, but it was good to write.

Today I’ve been trying to get back into a specfic-ish story (well, novelette, really) that I started back in December 2010. It’s got potential, I think. I need to finish the actual plot and then get to editing.

But so far I’ve been too tired and headachy to get into the novelette. Bleh. Instead I decided to do a poem challenge from Joseph Harker’s delightful blog (I’ve been reading through the archives. Damn, that man is a talented poet!).

The basic premise of this particular prompt is to create a little series of “poemlets”, like charms on a bracelet. See the original post for the full instructions. I chose seven of Joseph’s themes (childhood memory/linguistic beauty/keeping a secret/romantic encounter/discovering laughter/life goal/telling the future) and started playing. Here are the extra elements (quoted from his blog post):

first poemlet: mention your birthstone
second poemlet: use a word with three or more syllables
third poemlet: mention your zodiac sign
fourth poemlet: use at least three capital letters (“I” on its own, and the beginnings of lines, do not count)
fifth poemlet: pick a color and use at least two synonyms/varieties/shades of it
sixth poemlet: use as many different kinds of punctuation mark as you can
seventh poemlet: surprise us with something fancy!

Anyway, this is an experiment that I’m unlikely to end up submitting to be published, so I thought I’d share it with my readers. 🙂

[I would’ve wanted the roman numerals to be on the same level as the first line of each charmlet, with the rest of the stanza indented, but apparently that’s beyond my html skills and I’m too tired to figure it out now. So have this version, with the numerals above. /end perfectionism]

* * *

Charmlets

i.
sticky summer, eating watermelon
by the bucketful, the richness
of it, like gobbling down
soft tourmalines

ii.
peeling back the centuries
to Caedmon’s hymn
I shiver
at the reconstructed sounds,
the stark vowels
humming down in my throat

iii.
Scorpios keep secrets well, they say.
Perhaps I do, although I toss
horoscopes down the drain.
After all, some secrets I kept
for years.

iv.
when I first met you,
and You, and YOu, and YOU,
my heart didn’t know
what wonders were ahead
on this winding road
leading downriver

v.
That summer I learnt to laugh again.
The grass seemed greener
than heaven, as I sank down
onto the malachite bed
prepared for me
by nature –
that moss-fingered mother.

vi.
Oh – to struggle for it
and grasp it too! No fear
(no fear); just the blossoming woods
of my work: beauty written
down onto each petal…
dare I? dare I?

vii.
If
I could
reach down into my soul,
grasp a surety beyond the shoal
of slippery wishes, and see
my future before me –
if I could,
would
I?

* * *

New things at the year’s end

Published on by Sara Norja Category: competition, DV, finnish, personal babble, submission

I hope everyone has had a lovely relaxing holiday! I had a nice time: plenty of alone time combined with family. Alone time was spent eating leisurely breakfasts and writing my Finnish short story.

…My short story which I’ve now sent off to the competition! I’m so pleased that I managed to get a story written in Finnish, and that I submitted it to the competition. Never done such a thing in Finnish before! I suspect it won’t be a winning story, but finishing it was a personal win, so I’m happy even now. Perhaps I’ll be less scared of embracing Finnish as an additional fictional language in the future. 🙂

I’m going to take this opportunity to wish all my readers a very happy New Year! Going to be interesting to see what 2013 brings with it. 2012 has been a full year, what with writing and finishing my MA thesis; graduating; being unemployed; finishing a proper novel draft; Nanowrimo; getting a job; and most pleasingly, getting some of my poetry published.

Here’s to a new year of writing!

Poetry in Chantarelle’s Notebook

Published on by Sara Norja Category: finnish, nanowrimo, personal babble, poetry, publication, short stories

My poem ‘October’s End’ is now online in issue 29 of Chantarelle’s Notebook: you can read it here.

On the topic of poems online, a note on my poems in Snakeskin: the website went down for a while, and they’re still updating the archives. Hence the old links to my poems there don’t work. I’ll add the new links when they’re available!

I notice I haven’t posted at all so far in December. Life has been keeping me busy. I haven’t been writing as intensely after the end of Nanowrimo, but I have been writing. Not every day, but still: writing. I’ve started editing the snail story. I’ve written a couple of poems. And I’ve been working on a short story in Finnish for a competition (deadline 31st Dec).

The Finnish short story is a new and exciting thing. Despite having done Nanowrimo in Finnish once, I’m much more unsure of any writing skills I may have when writing in Finnish. I wrote in Finnish as well as English when I was younger, but after my teenage years, I let my creative-writing Finnish get rusty. But I’m trying to relearn writing in my other native language too. There are some things that I think I could write better about in Finnish, if only I could be comfortable in the words, if only I could sink into the flow of it again. Like the story I’m trying to write now: oh, it’d be a very different story if I wrote it in English. It wouldn’t carry with it any of the personal meaning I attach to the setting and certain words.

It’s like relearning to play an instrument you haven’t touched for years. Which reminds me, I should do some fiddle practise. It’s a matter of months, not years, with my fiddle; but still, I need to find the old ways again, so that I can learn new tunes.