2012 Dwarf Stars winners

Congratulations to Marge Simon, Greer Woodward, and G.O. Clark, the three winners (first place to third place, respectively) of the 2012 Dwarf Stars Awards!  All three of the winning poems are included in the 2012 Dwarf Stars Anthology, along with the other nominated poems.

Trick or Treat: Haiku and Its Place in Dark Poetry

Marge Simon, who edits and writes the "Blood & Spades" column for the HWA newsletter, was kind enough to ask me to write a guest column a while back. The column appeared in the October issue of the newsletter, and thanks to a suggestion by Josh Gage, here it is. Any comments (agreeing or disagreeing) are always welcome.

Blood & Spades: Poets of the Dark Side

Marge Simon

My guest for this month, Greg Schwartz, is a copier technician and bartender. Of course, that's not all he does! His clever poems are popping up everywhere I look. Some of his poems have been published in Anomalous Appetites, Talebones, Horror Carousel, Modern Haiku, Scifaikuest, and Aberrant Dreams. Two poems have been nominated for Rhysling Awards, and one was nominated for a Dwarf Star Award. His chapbook of horror poems, Bits & Pieces, was published by Spec House of Poetry in 2007. I asked him for a column about haiku, and he has delivered it in fine style. Read on!

Trick or Treat: Haiku and Its Place in Dark Poetry

Greg Schwartz

When people think of haiku, they tend to think of ancient Japanese poets, cherry blossoms, and old ponds. When people think about dark poetry, they tend to think about zombies, werewolves, and killer dolls. Yet the two concepts fit together snugly, and haiku has managed to carve out a small corner of dark poetry and claim it for its own.

Dark haiku (which can be science fiction, horror, or fantasy) has been around for years, and it doesn't appear to be leaving any time soon. There is a popular magazine (Scifaikuest) devoted solely to speculative haiku and its related forms (with a section for just horrorku), and Sam's Dot Publishing and Spec House of Poetry both continue to support the publication of books of dark haiku. Magazines like Star*Line and The Shantytown Anomaly consistently publish both dark and speculative haiku.

morning shave--
trapped eyes watch with envy
from the mirror

There are many fine horror poets writing haiku--Josh Gage, Aurelio Rico Lopez III, Deborah Kolodji, and R.H. Fay, to name just a few. These names are probably familiar to most fans of speculative poetry.

It's interesting to contrast this level of popularity with the mainstream poetry community. Most poetry readers (and probably many editors) wouldn't recognize the names of some of haiku's elite: John Stevenson, Jim Kacian, Cor van den Heuvel, or Lee Gurga.

toys put away
she goes to bed
toybox lid creaks

Mainstream poetry journals are also a lot less receptive to haiku than speculative journals are. Very few speculative poetry magazines won't accept haiku, yet you'd be hard-pressed to find a mainstream poetry journal with even one haiku between its covers. I've submitted a lot of haiku to poetry journals over the years, and almost all have been rejected. (This might say something about my writing ability, but we'll pretend to ignore that possibility.) Only a few magazines that I've seen have gone against the grain (notably, Cold Mountain Review and New York Quarterly) and published haiku. One prominent poetry magazine's editor told me she won't even consider haiku, and the editor of another journal said I should check my syllable count because it wasn't 5-7-5.

The 5-7-5 syllable count is no longer followed by the majority of haiku poets. Some (such as R.H. Fay) can mold their poems into it and make the syllable count work for them, but most have shed it like an old skin. Haiku today generally fall into the 10-14 syllable range, but even this is not a rule. It was depressing to learn that the editor of a popular poetry journal is so far behind the times, and thus missing out on a lot of good poetry.

In contrast to these biases held by mainstream poetry editors, I've seen scifaiku or horrorku published in almost every speculative magazine I've read. It makes me wonder why haiku is so much more accepted by the speculative community.

midnight tea party
saucers clinking--
haunted dollhouse

One answer is that as speculative poets (and editors), we're more open to new ideas and new forms of poetry, and less constrained by tradition. We are more at ease using our imaginations and creating not only poems or stories, but whole new worlds. When we're used to thinking up fantastic new monsters or imagining the thought processes of a killer, a new poetry form or an experimental style is no big deal.
Another explanation is that mainstream editors receive a lot more drivel, and they're simply tired of wading through it. Or, maybe speculative poets are simply better at haiku.

Whatever the reason, the speculative community has been very accepting of haiku. Haiku poets are submitting high-quality work, and editors are accepting and publishing it. And that's good, because haiku is a form that works very well for dark poetry.

Christmas Eve--
the toy soldiers
check their weapons

Haiku and dark poetry have similar goals. Both strive to capture in words a moment that the reader will never forget. Of course, instead of birds or flowers, dark poetry tends to focus on dreadful or frightening moments, like the moment when you wake up in the middle of the night and swear you heard a noise coming from the closet.

Writing a horror poem can be hard--using just the right words to elicit fear or shock or wonder from the reader--but it gets even harder when you whittle that poem down to a mere three lines. With less room for error, you (the poet) have to be sure to pick exactly the right word, every time.

But when you do pick the right words, you've created something magical--a fierce little demon with sharp claws, ready to pounce on anyone who gets too close. Haiku is an apt form for horror poetry because you have enough room to create a sense of dread in the reader without having to stick around too long and watch it be dispelled.

Some longer poems read like roller coasters, with ups and downs and breathless moments followed by a flat straightaway, a chance to catch your breath. But a haiku is too short for all that. There is just enough time to lead the reader up that first hill, pause at the top, show them the hellishly steep drop that awaits them, and watch their eyes go wide.

bankrupt
the farmer feeds his nephew
to the pigs

Then it's over. That's all the time you have with the reader, so you have to make it count. You have to make their eyes go wide and their hearts rise in their throats with just a handful of words.

That's the challenge of dark haiku, and when it's done right, it can be powerful. Because of its brevity and its focus on one particular moment in time, haiku is suited to the horror genre like no other form of poetry. The good poets not only recognize that fact but take full advantage of it. (See some of Joshua Gage's horrorku in various online magazines or Charles Gramlich's chapbook, Wanting the Mouth of a Lover, for good examples.)

For those of you writing dark haiku, keep writing. For those horror poets who haven't tried their hand at it, give it a shot. It can be challenging, but it can also be very rewarding.

And you just might scare someone.

("morning shave" was first published in Anomalous Appetites, March 2009. "toys put away" first appeared in Dreams & Nightmares, July 2008. "midnight tea party" is from Twisted Tongue, June 2008. "Christmas Eve" is from Twisted Tongue, January 2009. "bankrupt" is unpublished.)

Sentry

Wizened little face perched atop his tiny doll-sized body in his garish yellow shirt and threadbare bright red trousers peering 'round the bedroom door down the hallway alert for any signs of life. His stomach rumbles and his back is to the action the giant creaking bed where the other gnomes are busy feasting on the human boy.

("Sentry," by Greg Schwartz, originally published in Niteblade, 2008. Artwork by Marge Simon.)

Black Ink Horror & some more stuff to read

I just got a copy of Black Ink Horror #5 in the mail from the awesome team of Tom and Billie Moran. I gotta say, it's an amazing issue. "Twas the Night" by MontiLee Stormer is a great story, a twisted take on Christmas way different than anything I've ever seen before. "A Hand-Made Christmas" is another good story, by David E. Greske. There are plenty more stories and poems, including two short poems, "Mimic" and "Reap," by Kristine Ong Muslim. It's 158 pages of horror, nicely bound and printed, for only $10.75 (in the U.S.). If you've never read Black Ink Horror, this is a great issue to start with.

The new issue of NewMyths.com is now online, featuring a poem each by Josh Gage and Marge Simon.

If you're more in the mood for senryu, check out these two poems about veterans by bear creek haiku editor Ayaz Daryl Nielson.

And if you've heard of the massive spec poetry anthology Anomalous Appetites but haven't bought your copy yet, here's a review from New Zealand that can hopefully change your mind. (I think the price has gone down recently, but I could be wrong.)

A couple of good poems

Here are two poems I've read recently that really stuck with me. Both of them are technically excellent and evoke strong images.

- "April Again" by Charles Gramlich

- "When Again I Feel My Hands" by Marge Simon (scroll down past Tony Bernstein's article and the other poets)

Also, the official list of 2008 Rhysling nominations is online, if anyone hasn't seen it yet. I'm honored to have my name on the list, among so many larger-than-life poets, including David C. Kopaska-Merkel, Kendall Evans, J. Bruce Fuller, Marcie Lynn Tentchoff, Mike Allen, and Marge Simon.

Lastly, if anyone is looking for gifts for a fellow writer (or maybe for yourself), feel free to take a look at my Out to Lunch Cartoons gift shop. I've just lowered the prices on all the products, so now's a great time to buy something. If you're looking for a specific cartoon on a specific item that you don't see, just ask.