New issues of Illumen and Star*Line

The Winter 2019 issues of Illumen and Star*Line have hit the presses. (Illumen should be available for purchase soon.) Each include some stellar poems. Pick up a copy of either to support the small presses and consume good poetry at the same time.

Illumen's large type and generous use of white space make it an easy magazine to read. Standouts from this issue include Marge Simon's dark and rhythmic "A Sky of Blackbirds" and David C. Kopaska-Merkel's paradoxical "Do-Overs." There's also an interview with speculative poetry's dark princess Christina Sng and a scifaiku page.

Star*Line #42.1 is packed with poems of varying lengths, forms and subjects. Speculative haiku are scattered throughout like sprinkles on a cupcake. This issue includes noteworthy poems by Ayaz Daryl Nielson, Noel Sloboda, Carolyn M. Hinderliter, and more. If you've always wondered whether a sonnet about a human-eating troll could work, P M F Johnson proves that it can.

Grievous Angel - scifaiku

Grievous Angel just posted some scifaiku for November, and threw one of mine in there for some reason.  Some good poems here (and a great title for the page):

https://www.urbanfantasist.com/grievous-angel/remember-remember-the-scifaiku-of-november

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.)

AnthologyBuilder, some haiku

I'm pleased to announce my short horror story, "Hayride," is now available on the AnthologyBuilder.com website. For those who haven't heard of AnthologyBuilder, it's an online archive of stories (mostly speculative), and for a set price readers can build their own anthology. It includes stories by current writers as well as some classic stories by Poe and other authors.

If you're interested in building your own anthology, consider including a story or two from Dreams & Nightmares editor David C. Kopaska-Merkel. He is one of the site's featured authors for this month, and any anthology purchased by October 31st that contains one of his stories gets a $1 discount.

You can read a teaser of "Hayride" here, as well as browse around the site. (Click on the eye icon next to my name to read the beginning of the story.)

And for your more immediate reading pleasure, here is a group of fantasy haiku by Aurelio Rico Lopez III, and a scifaiku by Raven Electrick editor Karen A. Romanko.

Another contest and two ku

The Union County Writers' Club Annual Adult Literary Contest (try saying that five times fast) is taking entries until Halloween in four different categories: Short Story, Children's Story, Fantasy Story, and Poetry. Prizes for Short Story and Children's Story are $30/$25/$10, and for Fantasy/Poetry they are $25/$15/$10. Not a huge prize by any stretch, but entry fees are only $3/poem (two for $5) or $5 per story. And as far as sending reprints, the guidelines state you can not enter anything that has been previously published in a PAID publication. So that poem you had in Blue Collar Review or that story that appeared in Black Petals is fair game to re-use.

Speaking of non-paying publications, here's one to check out. Macabre Cadaver is an online speculative magazine that just put out its third issue. They're looking for unpublished short stories (500 to 8000 words), poetry, nonfiction, and artwork that relates to the speculative genres. No payment, but the magazine is free to read, and there is talk of a print edition in the future which contributors would be paid for.

Let's close with two speculative haiku. The first is a fantasy poem, titled "Lonely Fairy Rath," by R.H. Fay. The other is a scifaiku by the scifaiku master, Deborah P. Kolodji.

Happy writing.

Spec House Distro shut down

Yep, it's true... the online genre store Spec House Distro was raided by federal agents last week and shut down. Well, I'm actually not sure about the raided part, but I know it was definitely shut down. Just for now, hopefully. But you can still buy all the Spec House products here, on the blog page.

Also on the same page, check out the call for submissions on the right hand side. Spec House editor J. Bruce Fuller is looking for some special poems, and yours could be one of them.

In more Spec House of Poetry news, the deluxe edition of Kendall Evans' chapbook, "Poetry Red-Shifted in the Eyes of a Dragon," is SOLD OUT. It's a great collection of some of Evans' best poems, and if you haven't gotten a copy yet, you can still buy the "regular" chapbook (until that one sells out, too).

Here's a haiku contest you may or may not have heard of... the Haiku Calendar ompetition put on by Snapshot Press. Entries are $5 per haiku, or 3 for $10, and they're due in by April 30th.

Just found out Twisted Tongue Magazine is gonna publish a collection of four of my scifaiku in the upcoming issue, which is pretty cool. It's a great magazine if you've never read it, and it's a great magazine if you have read it, too.

Scifaiku

For a quick break in the day, check out Patricia Kelly's speculative haiku in today's Tinywords:

http://tinywords.com/haiku/2008/02/29

Scifaikuest and Black Petals

As those of you who are subscribers already know, the new issue of Scifaikuest is out, and it's a keeper. They've moved to a classy perfect-bound format that fits the magazine well, even though we all know it's what's inside that counts. And inside is pretty much what Scifaikuest readers have come to expect: great scifaiku and horrorku, as well as related forms such as haibun and tanka. There's an article by Joshua Gage on the joining of haiku and horror, and there's a linked scifaiku by the issue's featured poet, J. Bruce Fuller, which is worth the price of the magazine alone.

There's also a companion online version of the magazine, with poems not available in the print issue. Check it out.

And in other news, Black Petals has officially gone online-only. They are still taking submissions and still committed to putting out a quality mag; the only difference is that now you can't take it in the bathroom with you (unless you have a laptop, which I guess a lot of people do, so nevermind). Read their updated submission guidelines here.

Bits and Pieces Review in Star*Line

The new issue of Star*Line is out, and as usual it's a good one. Packed with some great speculative poetry, as well as small press book reviews and a well-written article by Marcie Lynn Tentchoff, poetry editor at Aberrant Dreams, about subtlety in horror poetry. She makes some good points, and the article includes a few of her reprinted poems, including "Water Sprite's Lament," which first appeared in Ideomancer and can be read here.

There's a review of my chapbook, Bits and Pieces -- very favorable, I'm happy to say. Copies are still available at Spec House of Poetry and The Genre Mall.

All of the poems are good, but my favorites were the scifaiku by Karen L. Newman and Kurt MacPhearson. If you've never read Star*Line before, this is as good an issue as any to start with.

Haiku, anyone?

I've been reading Jack Kerouac, Book of Haikus, and it's gotten me interested in haiku again. I've been writing a lot of scifaiku/horrorku (which are fun too) but lately not so much your flower/sun/dog smiling ku. It's a great little form, and very relaxing to write (as long as you're not worried about whether or not they're actually good).

Anyway, for anyone who likes haiku and likes technology, there's a neat contest over at ThinkGeek.com: write a "techie" haiku, and you could win a $50 gift certificate.

And for those interested in "regular" haiku, here are some haiku magazines to either check out or submit to:

- Frogpond
- bottle rockets
- Acorn Haiku Magazine