Long time no Sunday recs. In my defence, the past month or so was intensively filled by doing PhD applications. Last weekend was my first in ages when I was free to do non-academia stuff, so I shamefully neglected my blog. But now! Rec time!<\/p>\n
First let’s have an invocation to The God of Lost Things<\/a> by Neile Graham (in Strange Horizons<\/em>). The wordcraft here is wonderful, and I can picture the little god so vividly. This poem reminds me of intricate Anglo-Saxon and Celtic miniatures. <\/p>\n Then Hair<\/a> by Hel Gurney (in Stone Telling<\/em>). I have long hair – have had, for most of my life – and this poem really resonates with me. Hair holds so much cultural meaning; long hair, in particular, is a marker that no doubt usually gets me read as straight; and yet in the end, I wear my hair long for me<\/em>. Gurney’s poem manages to catch some of my feelings about my hair (sans the implications of gender dysphoria) – amazing when poetry does that, shows your own self reflected in someone else’s words! <\/p>\n Now for the stories. <\/p>\n As you may know if you’ve read such poems by me as The Understanding<\/a>, I have a major thing for fiction\/poetry that uses the conventions of historical manuscripts and their editing as a literary device. Well, to my delight I discovered that the wonderful Amal El-Mohtar has written a story employing such conceits: The Green Book<\/a> (in Apex Magazine<\/em>). There’s a lot of subtle worldbuilding in this story that left me wondering and wanting more set in the story-world. I love how the story unfolds solely as a fragmented document – so well done. Also, I love the marginal notes. Manuscript-studies fiction \u2665 <\/p>\n