My copy of the 2008 Rhysling Anthology arrived a few days ago, with a terrific sense of timing, as I’d just decided to embark on a journey into speculative poetry.  The anthology is a publication of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, which also publishes Star*Line newsletter for us double-geeks who are into both poetry and spec fic.  It’s basically a cool way to run an award competition — all members of the association get to nominate one short and one long poem, and then they put all the nominees into an anthology that they pass around to members to vote on a winner.

I’m not a member of SFPA, but someone selected my poem “The Amateur Astronomer in Me” for the short poem category — so if you happen to be a member, vote for me!  The poem can still be read at Strange Horizons.  At the time, I thought it was my only poem that might be called speculative, but looking back at American Fractal, there are probably a dozen that fit the bill.

Anyway, if you get a chance, you should check out the anthology — it’s a wild ride, featuring poets like Albert Goldbarth, Margaret Atwood, and our friend Jeannine Hall Gailey, along with a handful of people who seem to appear over and over again that I’ve never heard of, so must be uber-marginalized genre-ists.  Fun stuff.