As Editor of “Eye To The Telescope 46”, Wendy Van Camp is proud to highlight three Rhysling Award Nominees for best speculative poem of 2022. It has been her pleasure to serve as a guest editor for the SFPA’s online literary journal.
SHORT POEMS:
After The Quest Is Over by Lisa Timpf
Aswang Shaman Communing with Diwata for the First Time by Vince Gotera
LONG POEMS:
The Frosty Voyage by Adele Gardner
“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”
— From: “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” (1949), Joseph Campbell
The hero’s journey has always fascinated me. The call to adventure. The wise mentor. The return with new knowledge or insight that changes the ordinary world. In the past, these stories have featured men in battle, using their cunning and strength to find their way in the world.
Today, we acknowledge these protagonists can come in many non-traditional forms. In this issue of “Eye To The Telescope”, I hope as editor to capture the idea that being a hero is not all about swords and dragons, although certainly these have their place, but can also form from different viewpoints and experiences of cultures all over the world. Welcome to the Quest!
Eye To The Telescope launches on October 15th and will be free to read online on its website: http://eyetothetelescope.com
I am honored to have been chosen to guest edit issue #46 of this quarterly online speculative poetry journal.
I’m pleased to announce that one of my scifaiku poems from 2021 has been nominated for a Dwarf Star Award and accepted into the upcoming Dwarf Star anthology. This is the first time I’ve been nominated for this award and I’m honored to make the cut this year.
What is a Dwarf Star? It is the Rhysling equivalent for micro poetry via the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. Poems that are 10 lines and under are eligible. Since I specialize in Scifaiku and haiku astropoetry, this is the category that I usually fall under come award time. The nominated poems are published in an anthology once a year and from these poems, the ultimate winner of the Dwarf Star Awards are selected.
My nominated scifaiku is from the poem sequence “The Last Journey” which appeared in “Eccentric Orbits: An Anthology of Science Fiction Poetry, Vol. 2” during April of 2021. The poem is about the study of the death of the universe using AI to simulate our universe and the effects of dark matter. (Something that is still waiting to be proven to be real and hence, what makes the sequence of poems science fiction.)
Eccentric Orbits is an anthology of speculative poetry by an international cast of poets. It was my pleasure to be the editor of this volume of poetry in 2021 and I hope to return in 2022 to edit another volume of this series. I will be posting calls for poets here on No Wasted Ink, at the SFPA, and via other general anthology submission groups on Facebook. If you write speculative poetry, I hope you will consider submitting your work.
Dimentionfold Publishing is a small press devoted to the support of speculative poetry. You can find a list of the speculative poets who are represented by Dimentionfold at https://dimensionold.com
It is with great pleasure that I announce that my first poetry collection has been nominated for an Elgin Award! This is an award given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association for the best poetry book of the previous two years. It is an honor to be nominated this year.
Winning an Elgin has been a dream of mine for as long as I’ve been a poet. If you are a member of SFPA, there is a PDF of my book available to you to view on site. I hope you’ll consider “The Planets” as you make your determination of which books to vote for in 2020.
The book is available at all major online book retailers including AMAZON
No Wasted Ink 