Alice In Wonderland Poems

A Chat Full of Nerdy Delights With Tennessee Poet Elizabeth McClellan

A couple of weeks ago, I learned that Elizabeth McClellan, a poet from Middle Tennessee who's over in Memphis going to law school, has been nominated for the Science Fiction Poetry Association's Rhysling Award for her poem, “ Anything So Utterly Destroyed ."

I was delighted to learn that there was such a thing as science fiction poetry, and even more delighted to learn that there's a poet in Tennessee who's good enough at it that she is up for an award. So I emailed her some questions I was dying to have answered, and she graciously emailed me back.

Join us after the jump for a long, entertaining, free-ranging discussion of everything from Walt Whitman to Adrienne Rich, from whether Hart Crane could be a science fiction poet to whether Dr. Frankenstein is a bit of a sexist pig.

And if you are a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association (or are thinking of becoming one), vote for the local gal!

You're up for a 2011 Rhysling Award for your poem, “Anything So Utterly Destroyed." The Rhysling Awards are handed out to the best in science fiction poetry. I think I speak for most Pith readers when I ask, "What, exactly, is science fiction poetry?" and "How does one go about discovering that she is a science fiction poet?"

Heh. Two years ago I didn’t even know SF poetry was a “thing,” really, so Pith readers, take heart! There are other worlds than these, as someone said once.

To define science fiction poetry you have to define science fiction. Rather than rehash the (endless and tedious) arguments about what is and is not science fiction, I’ll say this instead. A genre that is broad enough to encompass Octavia Butler’s painfully realistic dystopias, Nnedi Okorafor’s careful blend of nature, magic and technology, Ursula K. Le Guin’s meditations on gender by way of alien species, along with Books About Robots and Spaceships and Aliens and Time Travel, and so on and so forth into the light of unseen suns, is broad enough to encompass all these things in poetry, too. Science fiction tries to tell us where we might go in the future, and what it might mean, and how we might be different (or the same!) when we get there ... and sometimes it goes into the past, puts a different read on how we got here, or how we might have gone. Science fiction poetry, a lot of the time, does the same thing.

Some of the 2011 Rhysling nominees I’ve read that I’d classify as science fiction poetry, just to give you an idea: C.S.E. Cooney’s "Dogstar Men," a lovelorn lament beginning “All the men I might have loved/have gone to Sirius.”; Greg Beatty’s "On Keeping Pluto a Planet," advancing a curious and reasonable argument for not stripping the outermost planet of its title; Geoffrey Landis’ "Rondel for Apollo 11," which is what it sounds like; W.S. Merwin’s "The Chain On Her Leg," about Topsy the elephant, who Edison electrocuted on film back in the early 20th century; Ann K. Schwader’s "Scrapyard Outpost," from the point of view of an inhabitant of a defunct space outpost years after those who built it have gone; Tara Barnett’s "Star Reservation," a story poem that begins with a grandfather giving his grandchild one of those certificates purporting to be title to a distant star. That’s just a few from the first 50 pages of the proofs of this year’s anthology, surrounded by fantasy poems and horror poems and the like.

Welcome To Our Wonderland: Poetry speaks to children (the New York ...

Parents, educators, librarians, and poetry enthusiasts have wondered for years how to get children really interested in poetry. Until now, there hasn't been a collection of poems and poets that spoke directly to that elusive audience. Poetry Speaks to Children cracks through that barrier by packaging the best poems by the best authors along with a CD-making the engrossing and often mischievous verses come alive in the voices of many of the creators. More than 90 poems, for children ages six and up, celebrate the written word and feature a star-studded lineup of beloved poets, including: Roald Dahl; J. R. R. Tolkien; Robert Frost; Gwendolyn Brooks; Ogden Nash; John Ciardi; Langston Hughes; Sonia Sanchez; Seamus Heaney; Canada's best-loved children's poet, Dennis Lee; Rita Dove; Billy Collins; Nikki Giovanni and X. J. Kennedy. Sprite got this delightful book from her Gammo Cheryl a few years ago, and it sits out on our bookcase on display 24/7. We read it often and listen to the CD lots. The CD is neat because selected poems are read by the poet's themselves! I love that the poems are geared for kids and while we get lots of poetry books from the library those are usually geared towards 1 theme. Where this book is like a huge poetry buffet!