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The Elgin award is given annually to speculative poetry chapbooks and books. Right now, SFPA members are nominating publications for this award. This is the only book award in the speculative poetry field that I know of. So far, five books have been nominated, but I know that many more eligible books have been written in the past two years (the eligible time period). One of the great things about this award is that most of the nominees are made freely available in digital form to all members of the organization. Not only do you get to make an informed choice about which books and chapbooks are the best, but you get to read all the others. What's not to like, eh?


https://sfpoetry.com/elgin.html

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The Trajectory of Culture 

Before they encountered us
the Fomalhauts
possessed no concept of self-indulgence
worker bees, folk called them
the proverbial dull boy
never mind the head appendages
or the scales
or how they reproduce through the mail
(they had no spam).
 
Before we met them
they had no vigilante justice
they found our pornography
appealing, and soon invented
their own, which usually arrived postage due.
 
We introduced credit cards,
bank loans, compound interest;
they found these novel concepts.
 
We took them on tours
of our marketplaces
where every price, it appeared,
had been reduced.
Amazing the debt these aliens accrued.
 
It was direct-mail advertising
that really did them in--
at frst the spots were, well, naïve
but as the ads race intensifed
the Fomarketers learned that sex sells

Fomals sporting overlarge
sense-enhancing gear in black plastic
tore open packages claiming to contain
freeze-dried mail-order brides
(really just powdered food products).
 
Winsome young Fomies were
tearing open their mail too
receiving proposals of marriage
from princes
     wrongfully deposed
     handsome
     generous.
 
A few months later – captivated
by artifcial insemination
and our hi-tech DNA manipulation,
Fomies were popping larvae all over:
     Twins!
          Triplets!
               By the broodsac!
                    The boatload!
while the non-brooding fomals
postal donors of GM gametes
(not one of them a prince
or even a duke)
took no responsibility at all.
 
Most of these unnatural offspring
were grievously flawed--
injured by experimental methods
that would never have been allowed on humans--
although they were available in a variety of colors
and with naturally perfumed excreta
 
We converted them to our religions
(no matter which, so long
as they selected one or another).
We gave them nihilism, narcissism,
solipsism, existentialism
(not to mention pessimism).
We sold them anti-depressants,
antioxidants, anti-coagulants,
then we upped the anti.
 
The Fomalhauts have recently been
reclassifed as a vanished species,
unfortunately extinct. Their culture
and civilization, so many millennia old,
suddenly defunct. A sad coincidence,
so soon after encountering us.
They will be missed
 

--David C. Kopaska-Merkel & Kendall Evans

from our new Elgin-nominated collection, Entanglement 
Print copies $8 postpaid from me (more if sent outside the US) 

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This week: 2 sales to Scifaikuest, wrote a few poems, Metastable Systems nominated for the Elgin, sales of that book picking up, new library floor at home. Now I get to put everything back!

Lifetime Dreams & Nightmares subscriptions ($39 pdf; $99 print) include all available back issues, and all proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders.  Paypal to jopnquog at gmail dot com.

Looking ahead, SFPA members can get pdfs of Dreams & Nightmares 105-107 and a file of my own eligible poems, free, for Rhysling-nomination purposes. And, cancer treatment starts Monday.

The Book of Answers (Herb Kauderer): Reprinted review--this book is up for the Elgin this year

Review

Kauderer, Herb, 2014, The Book of Answers: a book of answer poems, written image, Lancaster, New York, wrttnimage@aol.com, ISBN 0-9715712-4-4; ISBN 978-0-9715712-4-2. Limited edition of 100 copies, saddle stitched with a card stock cover, 44 p. Author email: hkauderer@yahoo.com. $8.

Herb Kauderer started submitting short poems to my magazine, Dreams and Nightmares a long time ago, I think back in the mid-1980s. Most of the poems I regarded as mainstream, not speculative, but I published some over the years. Then we lost track of each other and quite recently he sent me a copy of his new book, The Book of Answers. Answer poems are responses to other poems or bodies of poetic work and it is a well-established kind of poem. Many of these poems are responses to mainstream poems, but Herb is the kind of guy who can stitch back and forth across that seam between speculative poetry and the more widely respected kind with an easy grace. So, in between responses to poems by William Shakespeare, Robert Frost, and Edna St. Vincent Millet, are responses to John Grey, David Livingstone Clink, Carolyn Clink, Mary Turzillo, Geoff Landis, me, and more.

As I understand them, answer poems are supposed to use tools employed by other poets to respond to the content of one or more of their poems. Or some approximation thereof.

"persistence" (haiku for John Grey)

thirsty bones bleached pale

protrude from the desert floor

still seeking water

This poem does not actually bring to mind the style of the kind of poems by John Grey with which I am most familiar. On the other hand, the content does seem to echo John Grey's proclivities rather strongly. And I do like the poem.

After "Signs You're in Trouble" (for Mary Turzillo) is a list poem and includes these lines:

6) The DVR has somehow become filled with home movies of your childhood.

7) You do not appear in any of the home movies.

8) Your child plays on an imaginary computer & prefers it to you.

This poem works for me as an answer to Mary Turzillo's poetry. I have a weakness for lists poems, and I think this is a very entertaining one. I especially like the imaginary computer. I made quite a few of those when I was young, using paper and pencil. This poem fulfills all the requirements of answer poetry, probably the most important of which is that the poem stand on its own.

In the opposite of entropy (for Carolyn Clink), Kauderer again brings it all together:

perception

& the persistence of vision

impose patterns

on chaos

This looks like a Clink poem, at least to me. But it highlights the main point of answer poems: they have a lot more impact if the reader is familiar with the source. In general, I am not. So the secondary goal of anyone writing an answer poem is that it be a good poem on its own. You should be able to enjoy it even if you don't know anything about the writing of the person whose work is being answered. Being unfamiliar with many of the source poems, I am well-suited to evaluate that aspect of this chapbook. For me, most of these poems work well as poems, and not just as answers. The answers to speculative poems are themselves speculative, so this collection also works as a speculative poetry collection. Roughly half of the poems are speculative.

Elgin Award Eligibility

My book of dark poetry, Luminous Worlds (Dark Regions Press, 2013) is in its final year of eligibility. Free pdfs from me to SFPA members.

Elgin & Dwarf Stars winners

Dwarf Stars - very short poems - congratulations!

http://sfpoetry.com/ds/14dwarfstars.html



Elgin - poetry books & chapbooks - Congratulations!

(And The Edible Zoo won 2nd!!)

http://sfpoetry.com/el/14elgin.html

Today is the deadline

SFPA members: Vote for Elgin, vote for Dwarf Stars. Your opinion counts & will influence which poetic works take home the honors.

sfpoetry.com

Two books nominated for the Elgin

LUMINOUS WORLDS has been nominated in the full length book category.

THE EDIBLE ZOO has been nominated in the chapbook category.

Two of my books eligible for Elgin nominations

Chapbook:

The Edible Zoo, Sam's Dot, children's poetry, 2012



Book:

Luminous Worlds, Dark Regions Press, 2013


Free pdfs to SFPA members.

Elgin award for best spec poetry collection

Collections published in 2012 & 2013 are eligible.

To make a nomination you need to be an SFPA member (sfpoetry.com for info & to join).

Nominate as many books as you like. We'll sort them out when we vote, but no one can vote for books that don't get nominated.

Luminous Worlds reviewed

5-star review of Luminous Worlds https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/832166638

Eligible for Elgin nomination; on the Stoker prelim ballot

Awards

If you are an SFPA member (or want to be), remember it's time to nominate poems first published in 2013 for the Rhysling award. Also, poetry collections first published in 2012 or 2013 for the Elgin Award. You can nominate as many of the latter as you like.

Elgin-eligible books by me

The Edible Zoo, Sam's Dot, children's poetry, 2012

Luminous Worlds, Dark Regions Press, 2013

Poetry Planet: Elgin & Dwarf Stars edition

From Diane Severson Mori: a new edition of Poetry planet showcasing the Elgin and Dwarf Stars Awards has gone live with StarShipSofa this morning: Poetry Planet No. 10 / StarShipSofa No. 303: http://www.starshipsofa.com/2013/09/04/starshipsofa-no-303-ian-sales-part-2/

You'll find Poetry Planet at the end at about the 1 hour 17 mark.

poetry awards

Diane Severson Mori on Elgin & Dwarf Stars http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2013/08/awards-awards-science-fiction-poetry-awards/

Elgin winners

PRESS RELEASE

SFPA CREATES NEW “ELGIN” AWARD; ANNOUNCES WINNERS

The Science Fiction Poetry Association has created a new annual award for poetry books, the Elgin Award. The award is divided into two categories, best chapbook and best full-length book in the speculative (SF, fantasy, or horror) genre.

In the past, the SFPA honored individual poems with the Rhysling and also the Dwarf Star Awards; however, no award existed for book length works of SF poetry.

The Elgin Award is named for Suzette Haden Elgin, who founded the SFPA in 1978. Suzette is an American science fiction writer, artist, linguist and poet. Her works include the Coyote Jones novels and the Native Tongue series. She is also the author of numerous non-fiction linguistics books.

The winners of the 2013 Elgin Award are as follows:

Best Chapbook
1st Place: Out of the Black Forest by F. J. Bergmann (Centennial Press)
2nd Place: The House of Forever by Samantha Henderson (Raven Electrick Ink)
3rd Place: The Edible Zoo by David Kopaska-Merkel (Sam’s Dot Publishing)

Best Full-Length Book 1st Place: Lovers & Killers by Mary Turzillo (Dark Regions Press)
2nd Place: Notes From the Shadow City by Gary W. Crawford & Bruce Boston (Dark Regions Press)
3rd Place: Come Late to the Love of Birds by Sandra Kasturi (Tightrope Books)

--Kendall Evans & Marge Simon, SFPA Elgin Co-chairs
Co-Chair contact information: sfastronaut@hotmail.com
Visit SFPA's official website at http://www.sfpoetry.com/

Elgin award

New award for genre poetry book published in 2012 http://www.sfpoetry.com/elgin.html

My children's fantasy poetry book "The Edible Zoo" is eligible.