(no subject)
Yes, I know, I am a ghost on LJ these days. Law school eats lives. It's like Cthulhu in that way.
Voting for the 2011 Rhysling Awards is still ongoing through this Friday, July 15 to current members of the Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA). My Frankenstein-inspired poem, Anything So Utterly Destroyed, is nominated in the long-form category. ASUD was published in the October 2010 issue of Apex Magazine, edited by the excellent yuki_onna. If you care to learn more about that poem and my Thoughts On Many Subjects, the superb Betsy Phillips interviewed me in the Nashville Scene's blog about it. I love that poem a lot and I hope you loved it too, whether or not you're a voting member of SFPA.
thegreenyear and I had Many Fantastic Plans to throw poetry parties and provide in-depth commentary on the entire 2011 Rhysling Anthology and all the nominees. As it does, Life Intervened. There will be future poetry parties. Suffice it to say, we had a hell of a lot of fun reading this year's nominated works. Good luck to csecooney, rose_lemberg, tithenai, yuki_onna, shweta_narayan, and the many other excellent poets nominated this year. (If I forgot anyone on my flist, sweetnesses, I'm sorry. It has been a long week. Hit me in comments and I'll correct it.)
While many of you are at Readercon awaiting the Rhysling announcements, I will be at the closing show of the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society convention, watching some bad-ass fingerpicking guitar. So one of y'all Readerconners best Tweet or text me, no matter who wins, so I don't die of suspense while I'm hanging with my excellent uncle and cousins and a large concentration of talented musicians doing an art form I cannot even begin to master but never get tired of listening to.
Some of y'all are real irritated with SFPA. I don't blame you; I'm not happy with what I've seen recently. I agree with tithenai's critical reading of the poem The Green Reich (ew, that title). TGR has been the catalyst for a lot of SFPA-related critique as well as critique of the poem itself and the SFPA journal that published it, Star*Line. (I don't know what possessed anyone to give that poem house room. It's a *bad poem,* y'all, even without the hateful ideas in it, or the poet's apparent habit of bad-mouthing women and POC who get nominated for awards when he doesn't.)
I don't know what my future relationship with SFPA will be like after this latest round of fail. I have seen much in this latest flap over "does a bad poem become good because someone uses hateful words in it" that has made me make various Kermit-faces of disapproval, as well as be disappointed (again) that so many writers, of all people, don't understand the difference between censorship by the government, editorial discretion, and critique. It's disheartening. Throwing hateful words at the wall with some line breaks does not a poem make, and the presence of slurs in a work does not make it a work of Great Art worth Defending to the Death Against the Terrible Censorship of Editing and Post-Publication Critique.
That said, SFPA member or not, I hope you enjoyed my poem. It's the eleventh hour, but feel free to boost signal if you want; I got nominated at the eleventh hour too. If you want some more poems, there are now links in my profile to my published stuff that's available electronically, as well as my paper on legal personhood and artificial intelligence. Good luck to the nominees. As usual, talk to me in comments about what's up with you; I miss you all.
Voting for the 2011 Rhysling Awards is still ongoing through this Friday, July 15 to current members of the Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA). My Frankenstein-inspired poem, Anything So Utterly Destroyed, is nominated in the long-form category. ASUD was published in the October 2010 issue of Apex Magazine, edited by the excellent yuki_onna. If you care to learn more about that poem and my Thoughts On Many Subjects, the superb Betsy Phillips interviewed me in the Nashville Scene's blog about it. I love that poem a lot and I hope you loved it too, whether or not you're a voting member of SFPA.
thegreenyear and I had Many Fantastic Plans to throw poetry parties and provide in-depth commentary on the entire 2011 Rhysling Anthology and all the nominees. As it does, Life Intervened. There will be future poetry parties. Suffice it to say, we had a hell of a lot of fun reading this year's nominated works. Good luck to csecooney, rose_lemberg, tithenai, yuki_onna, shweta_narayan, and the many other excellent poets nominated this year. (If I forgot anyone on my flist, sweetnesses, I'm sorry. It has been a long week. Hit me in comments and I'll correct it.)
While many of you are at Readercon awaiting the Rhysling announcements, I will be at the closing show of the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society convention, watching some bad-ass fingerpicking guitar. So one of y'all Readerconners best Tweet or text me, no matter who wins, so I don't die of suspense while I'm hanging with my excellent uncle and cousins and a large concentration of talented musicians doing an art form I cannot even begin to master but never get tired of listening to.
Some of y'all are real irritated with SFPA. I don't blame you; I'm not happy with what I've seen recently. I agree with tithenai's critical reading of the poem The Green Reich (ew, that title). TGR has been the catalyst for a lot of SFPA-related critique as well as critique of the poem itself and the SFPA journal that published it, Star*Line. (I don't know what possessed anyone to give that poem house room. It's a *bad poem,* y'all, even without the hateful ideas in it, or the poet's apparent habit of bad-mouthing women and POC who get nominated for awards when he doesn't.)
I don't know what my future relationship with SFPA will be like after this latest round of fail. I have seen much in this latest flap over "does a bad poem become good because someone uses hateful words in it" that has made me make various Kermit-faces of disapproval, as well as be disappointed (again) that so many writers, of all people, don't understand the difference between censorship by the government, editorial discretion, and critique. It's disheartening. Throwing hateful words at the wall with some line breaks does not a poem make, and the presence of slurs in a work does not make it a work of Great Art worth Defending to the Death Against the Terrible Censorship of Editing and Post-Publication Critique.
That said, SFPA member or not, I hope you enjoyed my poem. It's the eleventh hour, but feel free to boost signal if you want; I got nominated at the eleventh hour too. If you want some more poems, there are now links in my profile to my published stuff that's available electronically, as well as my paper on legal personhood and artificial intelligence. Good luck to the nominees. As usual, talk to me in comments about what's up with you; I miss you all.