Akua lezli hope biography samples
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Welcome to re:Virals, The Haiku Foundation’s weekly commentary feature on some of the best contemporary haiku and senryu written in English. This week’s poem, proposed by Melanie Alberts, was:
thinning hurt
how else to procreate
branched children— Akua Lezli Hope
ubu. small absurdist poems, June 2022
Introducing this poem, Melanie writes:
I’m curious to see how others view this speculative verse. My first instinct was to see it through the lens of a horticulturist grafting trees, but likely there will be more creative interpretations. I imagine there’s a flash sci-fi story within these three lines!
Opening comment:
That this appears in journal of absurdist poems, and that by the poet’s biography she is an enthusiast of speculative poetry, sci-fi and fantasy, might lead some readers to think that this is a consciously surrealist verse (see footnote) that fits the paradigm of a haiku.
However, I don’t think we have a surrealist poem here, but a
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The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2022, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Eugen Bacon & Milton Davis, eds. (Caezik/OD Ekpeki Presents, 978-1-64710-077-3, $11.49, 450pp, eb) December 2023.
The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2022 opens with WC Dunlap’s “March Magic”, a brief story about a critical day in twentieth-century American history. It is 28 August 1963, the day of the March on Washington, and Mama Willow, a träsk witch – “Black, Native, woman… leading my children to safety” – fryst vatten calling a gathering. From the North comes the Salem Witch; from the East, the Root Woman; from the South, “my Mambo”; and from the West, the Preacher’s Daughter. They are joined bygd “five ung Black dock dressed in crisp dark suits,” sent to provide protection. They perform a blood magic and send a meddelande into Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ear: “Tell ’em about the dream!” He does.
The story is effective, both as a metaphorical affirmation of the role of Black women in US civ
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File 770
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) has announced the 2023 Rhysling Award Finalists.
There are two categories: Short poems of 11–49 lines (101–499 words for prose poems) and Long poems of 50–299 lines (500–1999 words for prose poems)
The selected poems appear in the 2023 Rhysling Anthology which can be purchasedhere.
SHORT POEMS
First Place
[Tie]
- “Harold and the Blood-Red Crayon” by Jennifer Crow, Star*Line 45.1
- “In Stock Images of the Future, Everything is White” by Terese Mason Pierre, Uncanny 46
Second Place
- “Bitch Moon” by Sarah Grey, Nightmare Magazine 118
Third Place
[Tie]
- “First Contact” by Lisa Timpf, Eye to the Telescope 44
- “The Gargoyle Watches the Rains End” by Amelia Gorman, The Gargoylicon: Imaginings and Images of the Gargoyle in Literature and Art, ed. Frank Coffman (Min