Capture by Klaus Stiefel on Flickr The first three months of the year had the usual crop of surreal micropoetry and a few print and online publications of speculative poetry. I also participated in an in-person event for a book launch for the Delaware Bards Anthology of 2023 where I read the mainstream poem included in the volume. January “your planet’s not gone -”, The Creature of the Black Lagoon Is a FB Friend, and Thanks to dark energy - Star*Line 47.
Capture by Jonathan Cutrer on Flickr I finished off the year with a whole bunch of poems online and in print. Here are the ones which were published over the last three months of the year. October I didn’t know the lights’d be so hot, Ode to aerogel, and Carcinisation – Star*Line 46.4 Ode to form rejection notes – Up Your Arse Poetica, ebook and print adapted neuroclaws, I think she likes me, and sea bottom: – Five Fleas From the tongue of a witness – Penumbric vol vii, issue 3 Chasing encaustics in the shallows – Dreams and Nightmares 125 Our teeming sea – Phantom Kangaroo Issue No.
Capture by terren in Virginia on Flickr July It’s only vacuum out there, Bouquets for post-humanity ,Open House, and Spar - Star*Line 46.3 Incoming message - Songs of Eretz Zoom reading, Arctic summer and Field of mustard, Sein und Werden, 1 July 2023 Live reading, Like the one - Baycon 2023, Birds of a Feather: genre poetry session, 3 July 2023 Tumbling from gravity - Five Fleas Message from your hive queen, - dadakuku August *Get used to it" – Mobius: the Journal of Social Change Volume 34, Number 3 Zoom reading of poems reprinted in the 2023 Dwarf Stars Anthology, August 4 and 5: “long story short, Most highly honored, and “sawdust protected our torsos”.
Capture by oatsy40 on Flickr April when the gotchaberries bloom again, - dadakuku True vacuum, Flying the Carboniferous, and Countup - Star*Line 46.2 “Century 31”,“triangles for lunch”,“curtsies to Dalmatia”, and *“egoless at last],” Five Fleas Sarafina’s Sparklicious Adventure, - Bewildering Stories 993 Finger guns salute, On your equipment, and Your color palette, 2011, Chrome Baby, Bairn 121 “true true true,” and “stacks of stolen kisses,” Five Fleas Rations rejected by angels, The sport of technocrats, London forgives the flaws in the telling, The mirror-backed cabinet in oak, A visit to Wernicke’s ineffable land, Location, location, location, and Cendrillon la belle, - otoliths
Capture by ken_mayer on Flickr I’m starting the new year off at a modest, steady rate but I know of a bunch more pieces which are due to come out in the next few months as well, so I’ll be announcing those soon. January "[she rises from the sea]," - Heliosparrow “by foxfire splints”, - dadakuku, 5 January 2023 “Project Primate Uplift” and Those before times, - Star*Line 46.1 *“offworlders” and “A Thing We Tell at Bedtime,” - Dreams and Nightmares “spattered with crankcase oil,” - Five Fleas February Oath - Uppagus, Issue 53 Howls thrown at a moon fifty years gone - Rat’s Ass Review, Spring - Summer 2023 *“Dry lab,” "[the crust bends]," and "[when these shackles]" - Five Fleas “Somebody blew up Mars” - Five Fleas Basho’s Pet Radish, - dadakuku “scorecard:,” Failed Haiku, Issue 87-1 March "[the crust bends]," “[when these shackles],” “Dry lab,” - - Five Fleas “The 8192 names of Fatima, - Contemporary Haibun Online, April 2023
Capture by Dietmar Down Under on Flickr I've been doing my best to close out the calendar year strong with this set of poems in print, some of which I had been awaiting for over twelve months. October Vacation postcards, The Mechanics of Silica Under Tension, Is Not-Is, Cataphract, and The doornail - Danse Macabre, 145 The Mothersong of Dame Polonia - Bewildering Stories, Issue 968 Cortege - Liquid Imagination, Issue 52
Publishing was a little slower during the rest of the summer into the beginning of Fall, though I am optimistic about a bunch of new pieces which will come out in the next few months. July Meanwhile, in this created corner - Star*Line 45.3 Winning Chess Brilliancies 2022 - Star*Line 45.3 When the Capital Fell - Abyss and Apex August God’s hooks - otoliths, Southern Winter 2022 and in print as Issue 66, part one Like the One - Bewildering Stories, Issue 962 “each bone” ubu, Issue 4 “her milk chocolate passport” - Five Fleas “that bone is no bone” - Five Fleas September brain goes gherkin (with John W Sexton) - Uppagus, Issue 53 “children duck their heads” and “transcendent skies the” - Five Fleas “helping Bob” - - Five Fleas “long story short” - - Five Fleas “sawdust protected our torsos” - Five Fleas “ink-splattered roughnecks” - Five Fleas “Edwina” - - Five Fleas “they are special guests” - Five Fleas
Here is the next group of my published work this year, another thirty titles online, in print, and even streaming audio. As in the last set, for the ones which appear between covers along with other items of fantastic poetry and prose, I’ve put up some images of how those volumes look. In among the fantasy and science fiction and surrealism there are a few mainstream pieces there, maybe on the edge of speculation.
An iron arm, of Italian workmanship I decided to write about some numbers about receiving rejections after I saw this tweet: Writers don't share every rejection, only the acceptances, so I expect most of us probably have very skewed ideas about each other's levels of success. — Jonathan Louis Duckworth (@Joduckwo) April 6, 2022 I don’t have any problem showing how many rejections I get for the poems I’m submitting to journals, drawing on statistics I have available through Duotrope.
Last year was my most active year when it came to having poetry appear in print. I was not sure whether I was going to keep up the pace this year, given the many distractions the world has been throwing at me, but as I look back at January through March, I can see that the results are actually coming in even faster. I have 28 pieces either online or in print which is more than half of my total for last year (51).
Photo by Jason Dent on Unsplash I had a good year getting my poetry published both online and in print, and I wanted to have a full list up summarizing what is out there for anyone interested. For those interested, I will start out by sharing a little bit of my experience producing poetry and having people read it. I was going to say that I don’t have any training in this, but in fact I did take one course in college from a young instructor where we learned about English poetic forms and turned in assignments based on what we found out.
I thought I’d put out another collection of tidbits I ran across that give me ideas of things I might want to do or create. There are lots of other preoccupations in my mind besides these, but I prefer to collect the ones worth keeping around Every night we are witnesses to a bigger bunch of explosions than anything ever shot up into the sky, though we don’t get to hear the sounds of all that energy being released.
Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash Here is where you can find where I published my speculative poetry in 2020. Solo poems Star*Line 43.1: a sword I did Eye to the Telescope 36: New house Two poems in bones journal 20: [pupate] and [Krishna sheds] Two poems in Failed Haiku Volume 5 Issue 20: [reactor control] and [receding glow] Collaborative poems With John W Sexton Five poems in Live Encounters Poetry and Writing: eczema nations, orgasm software, nebular gates, pumice velocities, and pastel sabbath Four poems in otoliths: zohar punk, in lieu of flowers, whitepigs trot sky, and talibanshee wail, also available as print on demand Three poems in Danse Macabre: fat burns off, verdigris, and white matter chambers Three poems in bones journal 20: protean jihad, omelette padme hum, and saltpetre the cat Under the Basho 2020: yes no urge
© publicdomainstockphotos Free photo ID 84930337 | Dreamstime.com This is the third year I engaged in the discipline of writing and posting a poem on the Yahoo groups Scifaiku list I’ve been a member of for a dozen years or so. In past years I maintained a scifaiku writing timetable. One year, I wrote a new poem every single day for the entire year to see how much of a challenge that would be for me.
For a number of years Michael Dylan Welch has been organizing National Haiku Writing Month, more commonly known as NaHaiWriMo during the month of February where anyone can post their minimalistic poetic contributions every day. There would be a prompt for each day the participants could, if they wanted, use as a theme for that day’s installment. I had fun participating this year and would like to present a selection of what I came up with.
I think I should explain the title of this blog in case you’re wondering. I’ll do this beauty pageant style. Coming in third, purely in my subjective opinion, was the title Like Breadths of Topaz which comes from Emily Dickinson’s poem ‘304’. As you’ll begin to understand in a moment, I really like her work. I think this line would make a fantastic name for a blog, particularly one which talks about beautiful things.
