Poetry Note

The Rhysling Awards have been announced by the Science Fiction Poetry Association. The winners were "Just Distance" by Roger Dutcher from Tales of the Unanticipated (short poem category) and "Octavia is Lost in the Hall of Masks" by Theodora Goss from Mythic Delirium (long poem).

You can still get copies of The 2004 Rhysling Anthology, which was sent to all SFPA members, through the website for $9.45, and it's worth the money, because some of the nominated poems are also excellent. I was particularly impressed with the work of Sonya Taaffe, a poet I hadn't paid enough attention to, but who has a deft sense of line and diction, as well as an imagination that offers continual surprises in her poems. There's a density to the poems that you don't often find in pieces labeled as "speculative poetry", which so often is the realm where jokey short-short stories go to die. (I believe that the next issue of Flytrap (#3) will feature a few poems by Taaffe -- somebody please correct me if that's a delusion.)

There isn't much work by Sonya Taaffe available online, but there are a few things:

A list of recommended science fiction novels and stories

"A Maid on the Shore" (short story)

"Over the River" (short-short story/ prose poem)

"Theagenes Remembers" (short-short story/ prose poem)

"Moving Nameless" (short story, added to list 8/15/04)