Books
The Best Speculative Poetry of the Year is Epic
Reading from the 2022 SFPA Elgin Award Nominees
This is my fourth year reviewing selections from the SFPA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association) Elgin Award for best speculative poetry book. A full list of nominated books is available on the SFPA website. This year’s award chair is Jordan Hirsch, who I would like to thank for diligently tracking nominations. Here are my previous reviews:
About the Awards: The Elgin Awards, named for SFPA founder Suzette Haden Elgin, are presented annually by SFPA for books published in the preceding two years in two categories, Chapbook and Book. Chapbooks must contain 10–39 pages of poetry and books must contain 40 or more pages of poetry. E-books are eligible, as well as print. Books that won first–third place in the previous year’s Elgin Awards are ineligible. Single-author and collaborative books are eligible; anthologies are not. Books containing fiction as well as poetry are not eligible. Books must be in English, but translations are eligible. In the case of translations that also contain the poems in the original language, those pages will not count toward the total page count. Nominated books must be made available to the Chair upon request to remain eligible.
Thoughts on This Year’s Books
The theme I chose for this year is the Epic. Epic poetry traditionally is book-length poetry that draws on the Greek and Latin classics of yore. But I also use the word “epic” here to mean wide, encompassing, fantastic, and extremely great in the sense of size and magnitude. These are some truly epic examples of the genre of speculative poetry. Each book on this list redefines the genre in some way or serves as an epic example of its style and mode of poetry.
From epic retellings to audio poetry, the contemporary speculative poetry scene has something for every reader to enjoy. It is an honor to highlight my favorite books on the list.
How I Create This List
Briefly, I want to touch on how I pick books for this list. This is merely a recommended reading list, not a “best of” because the list I am pulling from is the nominated works from the SFPA membership. My primary concern is highlighting works I feel deserve more reads. I tend to skew heavily feminist with a focus on writers of color, LGBTQIA+ voices, and disabled poets. The list is subjective to my tastes. I spend less time on men (cisgendered, heterosexual) because I feel like those voices have enough support. I always make a Goodreads list of the total nominated works, which you can access here.
Lastly, in the past, there has been some (IMHO short-sighted) discussion at SFPA as to whether such lists are “bad” because they skew members’ voting towards one work or the other. I find this difficult to believe because of how I review some 21 books selected. I also believe the SFPA membership has enough independent thought to be able to do their own voting. The list is not to highlight those works I think you should vote for, but instead to highlight the amazing works that are nominated each year and lift up the endeavor as a whole. Vote as you see fit.
One more note: I am writing from my own perspective. If I make an error for any reason, please comment or message me. I never want to misrepresent a work simply because I misread it. Also, this list contains works I wrote or edited. I feel poets should be vocal about promoting their work, but if this bothers you, you can scroll on past.
Chapbooks
Enkidu Is Dead and Not Dead / Enkidu está muerto y no lo está: An Origin Myth of Grief (Black Lawrence Press)
by Tucker Lieberman
There is no poetry.
There is no time.
There is no distress.
There is no death
Lieberman’s retelling of The Epic of Gilgamesh explores the male-male pairing of the King of Uruk and his friend Enkidu. The poems are given in the form of “Tablets” that might appear on a wall at an archeological site — but in this book, the tablets are letters between Uruk and Enkidu. Each poem is presented in both English and Spanish, which adds a layer of exploration to this small book of poems that is rarely seen. The cross-lingual textual difference between say, “Vanishing of Enkidu” and “Desaparición de Enkidu” provides a fascinating read.
Enkidu has reverberations that will fascinate lovers of mythology and poetry alike — but also provides a weaving love story that engages with the queer-coded male-male friendship mythos throughout history. Lieberman negotiates longing and grief while interweaving speculative tropes and metaphors for both, “I bend time so that you and I can lie down together” or “This ghost hand, a friend — where have I seen him before?”
A beautiful epic presented in two languages. I reached out to Lieberman to ask him to share how he came to write the book, and here’s what he had to say:
“My version of Enkidu features what psychologists call an ambiguous loss. Enkidu has disappeared. Perhaps he is not dead. Gilgamesh holds out hope of seeing Enkidu again even while he navigates toward an acceptance of the loss. This is about a friendship between men, although there are many kinds of friendships, and the nature of the original connection between Gilgamesh and Enkidu is open-ended, too. I worked on these poems for three years, writing mostly in English and then translating to Spanish, although a few lines came to me in Spanish first.”
*Winner: Field Guide to Invasive Species of Minnesota (Interstellar Flight Press)
by Amelia Gorman
below the yellow air and lead
we filter yesterday’s filth,
squeezing out our statues
and bringing them to life
Gorman’s lyrical journey explores the real invasive species of our world (specifically Minnesota, USA), but the poems within build a speculative-dystopian story of a world gone awry. Reviewed in-depth by Tor.com, Anne M. Pillsworth says, “I’m gratified but not surprised by how she compresses another apocalypse — and a real ongoing one — into a slim poem cycle.” Gorman’s short but stunning poems are accompanied by field-guide illustrations that add a layer of visual enjoyment to this short book. A must-read for fans of botany, plants, and nature poetry.
(Note: I edited this book with Interstellar Flight Press.) Read Julie Reeser’s interview with Amelia Gorman here.
Good Boi (Neon Hemlock)
by Jason B. Crawford
no one was in here,
no one would find us,
no one would even care
Neon Hemlock is one of my favorite speculative poetry publishers of the moment, and Jason B. Crawford’s Good Boi is a perfect example of why. Winner of the 2021 Outwrite Chapbook Competition, this beautifully formatted little book of poems is a celebration of black trans queer youthdom. Crawford’s skillful handling of contemporary poetic structures is a delight to read, as particular attention is paid to prose blocks that express the compression and violence of the poems’ contents.
The speculative elements are metaphors for black existence but also hold up in the light of reimagining tropes, from zombies to mutants: “Why all this reimagined past carved from / zombie rot–flesh?” or “–boys are so wrong so often, especially about / lust; especially when there is another boi / involved learning their own mutant flesh.”
For more from Crawford, check out Year of the Unicorn Kidz, out this year from Sundress Publications.
Lexicon of Future Selves (Vegetarian Alcoholic Poetry)
by Gretchen Rockwell
Rockwell is a queer poet whose work often engages with themes of disease, the body, gender, sexuality, and reimagining speculative tropes (see xer previous chapbook, love songs for godzilla). Rockwell’s experimental poems examine pop culture iconography in SFF from Aliens to Jurassic Park. Fans will enjoy finding their favorite science fiction leading ladies in this delightfully accessible-yet-boundary-breaking collection.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if —
% Jedi vanished % they knew % peace % they
knew how % to walk a neutral path % Leia
learns too % there is no lie % or diversion % or
misdirection % that can prevent the loss% of home %
nothing to do % but watch it burn % before you %
Shadow Box
by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett
I reviewed Flynn-Goodlett’s The Undead in last year’s Elgin roundup, and found it delightfully enigmatic and creepy. Shadow Box was the winner of the 2019 Madhouse Press Editor’s Prize, and it is a follow-up on Flynn-Goodlett’s love of horror genre tropes from true crime to ghost stories to the Final Girl. While the poems don’t necessarily cover new ground, they pinpoint why horror remains fascinating and do so from a feminist slant. Flynn-Goodlett dives into the psychology of horror — but from the viewpoint of the villain and the victim.
The only one who does. Left
for dead, hair stiff with blood,
she hears something she takesfor a heartbeat. It is her heart.
Utopian Problems (Space Cowboy Books)
by Jean-Paul L. Garnier (Music by RedBlueBlackSilver)
Garnier’s poetry album deserves a mention on this list for its unique combination of poetry and space music. If you love retro ambient space jams, Garnier’s work is worth a read (or a listen). The poems approach the idea of Utopia from the rose-colored lens that favors community and kindness, insisting that we can indeed imagine a new world as replacement for our flawed one. While this may (for some) disregard the truth of today’s present (for those who are living under oppressive regimes), the poems hold up to such scrutiny and allow for the critique of ideological thought experiments. Heady, hopeful, and heartfelt, these poems are best listened to in the quiet of contemplation. I want to believe in this Utopia.
Full-Length Poetry Books
Blips on a Screen (Cuttlefish Books)
by Joshua Gage
Haiku is, by nature, an ephemeral art form. Gage’s space haiku (SciFaiku) touch on humor, longing, grief, and love in the context of a long-haul journey through the stars. Drawing on the rich tradition of poets writing science fiction poems in the haiku format, these haiku become analogs for human existence — As Gage says, “our lives / just blips on a screen”. Quickly read but deeply enjoyed, Gage’s haiku are worth reading. There is a softness to how Gage portrays life in space — not blazing guns but dying stars — and this is what I appreciate most about this book.
space burial
the engine cycles
through our silence
Bramah and the Beggar Boy (Nightwood Editions)
by Renée Sarojini Saklikar
Truly the longest contemporary speculative poetry book I think I’ve ever read, Bramah and the Beggar Boy is a dystopian poetic sequence in the vein of Ilya Kaminksy’s epic Deaf Republic — except it draws on Indian mythology and literary history. Not only is it the longest book on the Elgin ballot, but it also has a sequel in the works. My few criticisms of the book (it’s very contextually dense and thus not as accessible as some poets working in this genre, the illustrations feel unnecessary, and it’s billed as an epic long-form poem, when it’s really a series of connected poems) feel minor in the face of such a well-crafted narrative on the pressing topics facing the world today: climate change, intrusive technology, capitalism, radicalization. This is not a book for everyone, but it warrants further study.
To find hope in desolation is the speculative poet’s calling. In an interview with Below the Radar Podcast, Saklikar says, “So what can we do? I think we can connect through hope — to hope through action, and each of us has our own calling.”
mind those drones
they’ll break your bones
hide and sweep,
duck and swerve
watch us, learn
these raindrops burn.
*Winner: Can You Sign My Tentacle? (Interstellar Flight Press)
by Brandon O’Brien
O’Brien has been a beacon of light in the speculative poetry community for years, working as an activist to support writers of color and international voices. I was lucky enough to recently interview O’Brien as Guest of Honor for the World Fantasy Convention’s program appreciation. Here is my favorite quote from our discussion:
“…structures of power reframe our bodies as a tool. As a shackle, as a bludgeon, as a blade, but also as a key, as a shield, as a salve. That power wants to tell the story of marginalised bodies as a weapon, or as a resource, so that is how they keep power. But the story of how those marginalised people regain their own power isn’t merely by seeking to use that tool for oneself, but being the person who decides what that tool is. Do you want to be a blade? Or do you want to be something softer? And how we create the world that empowers us at all times to choose.”
Can You Sign My Tentacle? is hip-hop meets Lovecraft at its finest. We all know Lovecraft was a notorious racist. It may seem that this book is a takedown — but it engages with poetic history in a way that encourages the reader to poke fun at Lovecraft. O’Brien experiments with form, shaping words to fit the needs of the poem. The message is somehow empathetic while also cutting — but oh, how we need that sore cut away sometimes. I cannot say enough good things about this marvelous book.
(Note: This is a book I edited with Interstellar Flight Press.) Read Elyse Ribbon’s interview with Brandon O’Brien here.
Cleave (Hub City Press)
by Tiana Nobile
Cleave is an adoption narrative told in the metaphor of speculation. As a Korean American adoptee, Nobile’s poems tell the story of adoption and the loss of a mother. The beginning of the book references the famous studies of Harry Harlow on dependence. Monkeys were given a cloth doll as a mother-stand-in, and the study focused on whether they bonded with a wire or cloth mother under duress through fear tests. Nobile’s poems liken the mothers in the story to the cloth mother, a disturbing metaphor that permeates the poems.
Poems like “The Stolen Generation” examine the experiences of Korean American adoptees, which often focus on the complex mother-child relationship of this cultural context. (For more, read the essay “My Korean American Story” by Matthew Salesses.) In my opinion, these poems fit squarely in the horror genre by dint of the horrific experiences of Korean women and Korean American adoptees they explore. A difficult but necessary read.
Exposed Nerves (Raw Dog Screaming Press)
by Lucy A. Snyder
Lucy Snyder is a deft surgeon of words, carving out tiny stories about what we fear most as humans. From H1N1 to serpents, Snyder explores the common stepping stones of horror, but there’s also the keen edge of justice here. Perhaps my favorite poems were in the section titled “Final Frontiers,” where the poems turn romantic love into metaphors of astrophysics. This is the best use of metaphor in a speculative poem — to connect technology to emotion. The most horrific poems place the reader in the shoes of racists and sexists, and it’s unclear if this technique of point of view will shift minds or merely serve as satire, nevertheless, they are a fascinating mode of poetry. A must-read for the horror poetry fan.
I want you to write, my friend.
If you can’t write for pleasure,
I want you to write for spite.
Monstrum Poetica (Raw Dog Screaming Press)
by Jezzy Wolfe
This bestiary of monsters, cryptids, and urban legends contains three poems on each subject — from Hellhounds to Jinns to Mermaids. Each entry is proceeded by prose that explains the history of the monsters. Wolfe shines in exploration of structure — including concrete poems that form shapes on the page. In an interview with Interstellar Flight Magazine, Jezzy Wolfe says, “What interests me most is how the human experience mirrors itself in every culture. We may think we have little in common with people so different from us, but at heart we are truly the same animal.” These poems explore the horrors of the world, but not from the lens of creating fear in the reader. No, they ask the darkness to cozy up to the reader, to befriend them. If you love horror, every release from Raw Dog Screaming Press is worth reading, and this book is no exception. This is a fantastic book for new readers of horror poetry as well — the context it provides is worthwhile.
Read Bri Downing’s interview with Jezzy Wolfe here.
A year was all it took
for the Reek to inherit the earth.
A landscape decomposing and
devouring everything with a pulse,
Rotting under the midday sun,
wiping our insult from her face –A year was all it took to take us out.
notsleepyyet (Weasel Press)
by Alexander Garza
I had the pleasure of hearing Garza read at a con recently, and his words are a delight. From body horror to homages to Stephen King, Garza blends speculative themes with a book of poems in Spanish and English, a feat rarely seen in speculative poetry (or rarely celebrated, perhaps). Garza weaves a story of a couple dealing with the birth of their child, exploring the trauma of birth intersecting with chronic illness, a person struggling with alcoholism, and the stories of those impacted by Hurricane Harvey. Not every poem is speculative, but ghosts haunt these pages.
My favorite poems are the love poems — which explore the hurt and joy of being connected to someone: “Not sure if it’s the solstice, the medicine, / or your eyes, / but I love you more than I’ve ever loved before. / Thank you for keeping me warm. / Thank you for lighting the ember night after night, / for stitching my soul when my brain unravels”. Love is a topic often explored in SFF literature, but I would love to see more poems like this, which weave the speculative with the romantic. Deeply emotional, vulnerable, and complex, Garza’s poems are a delight to read.
I took a scalpel to my face
and cut slices formed
in my likeness, compact metaphors of being.
My goal is to not be here in vain.
Oblivion in Flux (Crystal Lake Publishing)
by Maxwell I. Gold
Maxwell I. Gold is a maestro of the speculative prose poem format. Gold’s gothic narrative poetry is reminiscent of the vintage artists of pulp poetry like Clark Ashton Smith. This style is not easily pulled off, but Gold’s poetry is still accessible and enjoyable to readers unfamiliar with the reference points. Gold weaves vignettes of psychological horror, filled with neon dreams, cyber gods, and clay demons. Prose poetry is particularly difficult to write: You don’t want poems so dense they become unreadable, but you also don’t want the poems to be confused for flash fiction. Gold’s poetry has the perfect combination of the lyrical and the narrative while maintaining the integrity of the form. I recommend Gold’s work as a study for any poet interested in writing prose poetry.
To those that may be so fortunate to read this, tread softly, for your dreams have cracks and the starquakes will break and shatter them as the CyberGods blink. For God-sakes, do not blink.
Past the Glad and Sunlit Season & October Ghosts and Autumn Dreams (Jackanapes Press)
by K. A. Opperman
Opperman’s duology of Halloween-themed poems is proof that even those of us who aren’t into rhyming poetry can find an example of the craft to enjoy. Both volumes are a delight for readers longing for spooky season. These poems are cozy, soft, and soaked in the light of the harvest moon. Both volumes are a joy to read, with plenty of Halloween poems to enjoy on every topic. These poems would also make a great gift for the poem-loving teen or child, while not specifically children’s books, they are accessible for younger readers.
Sacred Summer (Aqueduct Press)
by Cassandra Rose Clarke
Since it didn’t win last year, I’m boosting this fantastic, feminist, metal-rock, haunted poetic sequence by Clarke in this year’s review. Clarke’s narrative sequence follows a depressed housewife/dancer who finds an old tape featuring the sounds of a local band’s final song before most of the members died a violent and mysterious death. Clarke’s poems build from a soft crescendo to a dark and savage ending that’s worth following through the woods.
This book merges Clarke’s signature themes of metal music, retro 90s vibes, lonesome women, flawed suburbia, and haunted nightmares. Read T.D. Walker’s interview with Cassandra Rose Clarke here.
Aqueduct Press continues to put out amazing examples of feminist poetry in their Conversation Pieces series. They are a series worth following.
The city is Saturn, a core of gas and heat
spinning inside rings of discarded matter,
each layer once the outermost until wealth
moved farther away, stripping out the shine.
Strange Nests (Apokrupha)
By Jessica McHugh
Jessica McHugh’s book of Frankenstein erasures was one of my favorites from the Elgin Award reading last year, and I’m delighted to see another on this year’s ballot. Growing up, The Secret Garden was one of my favorite books. Being one of those touchstones of a young girl’s childhood, the book is about the terrors of being a child in a time when children’s health was vastly misunderstood, but also the freedom of a childhood spent lost in contemplation. We all wanted to find our own secret garden, our own frail but beautiful boy to protect, our own gardener to love. McHugh captures this in erasure poems which are presented in both visual and textual versions. McHugh utilizes methods of erasure from visual (drawings superimposed on text) to geometric. This makes the book both a text and a piece of art. As a blackout/erasure poetry lover, this book is charming and accessible to those unfamiliar with the form.
To grow up is a sort of secret
You won’t make it out in time to untangle.
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (Simon & Schuster)
By John Koenig
Perhaps one of my favorite books on this year’s ballot, Koenig’s false Dictionary creates new words for emotions like Chrysalism — “the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm” or Slipfast — “to disappear completely; to melt into a crowd and become invisible.” These fake words are beautiful and induce a kind of heartsick melancholy in the reader that creates a pleasant experience. Readers will delight in these new words, many of which I believe should be real words added to the dictionary. What makes this book speculative is its grasp of imagination, its worldbuilding in creating new ways of describing familiar emotions, and how it embraces liminality. Much like the artist Xu Bing (Book of the Sky), who created a false dictionary of Japanese characters that formed words that have no meaning, Koenigs's book is far from meaningless.
“The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a compendium of new words for emotions. Its mission is to shine a light on the fundamental strangeness of being a human being — all the aches, demons, vibes, joys, and urges that are humming in the background of everyday life.”
The Odyssey of Star Wars: An Epic Poem (Abrams/Lucas Film)
by Jack Mitchell
I was stunned to find this epic poem on the ballot, not only because I’d never heard of it but also because it’s shocking to see the megacorporation that is Disney actually publish a poetry book. Mitchell’s epic poem is directly in conversation with the classics of the Odyssey and the Iliad, even down to meticulous formatting that indicates the speaker in the margins. The poem is written in the classical meter as well, but this should not stop you from picking up and reading this fantastic book. It begins with Vader’s story, echoing the invocation to the muse lovers of classical epics will recognize, but also echoing the iconic Star Wars opening crawl text: “More god than mortal, more machine than man — / Sign of it, Muse, who linger on the rim / Of one lost galaxy, far far away…”
For years, speculative poets have been told not to write fan fiction. Finally, we are vindicated :)
Dear Lucas Film, please do more of this. Imagine the possibilities: An anthology of Star Wars themed poems. Persona poems written in the voice of each iconic character. Erasure poems taken from classic Star Wars books. A girl can dream, right?
The Smallest of Bones (Clash Books)
by Holly Lyn Walrath
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that my own book of tiny poems is up for the Elgin this year. My book is about bones, sexuality, gender, and the body. Much of the book is about pushing back against biological determinism. You can read my interview about it with KC Mead-Brewer at Cotton Xenomorph. May it haunt your house pleasantly.
Honorable Mentions to Add to Your TBR:
As always, I can’t list ALL of the books that I loved in this short of space, so I like to include a list of books you should FOR SURE add to your reading list, but that I didn’t get time to review.
- Igor in Therapy by M. K. Garrison
- Kraken Fever by Kyra Starr & Angela Yuriko Smith
- Maps of a Hollowed World by T.D. Walker
- Million-Year Elegies • Ada Hoffman
- The Ghettobirds by Bryant O’Hara
- The Withering by Ashley Dioses
- *Second-place Winner: Tortured Willows: Bent, Bowed, Unbroken by Christina Sng, Angela Yuriko Smith, Lee Murray, and Geneve Flynn
- Victims by Marge Simon and Mary Turzillo
- who is owed springtime by Rasha Abdulhadi
Visit the SFPA website to view the full list of works nominated for the Elgin Awards.
Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” Visit our Patreon to join our fan community on Discord. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
