The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association has shared the current candidates so far for the 2024 Rhysling Awards for short and full-length speculative poems of the year. Nominations close on February 15th.
This year’s Rhysling Chairs are David C. Kopaska-Merkel and Brian U. Garrison.
David C. Kopaska-Merkel won the 2006 Rhysling award (long poem, written with Kendall Evans), and edits Dreams & Nightmares magazine (since 1986). His poems have been published in Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, and more than 200 other venues. Some Disassembly Required, a collection of dark poetry, was published in 2022.
Brian U. Garrison co-edited the 2022 Rhysling Anthology and currently serves as Managing Editor for Eye to the Telescope. His poetry has waited at a bus stop in Montpelier, Vermont, popped out of a vending machine in Boston, Massachusetts, traveled to Tuscaloosa, Alabama (among other cities) aboard Asimov’s Science Fiction, and orbited Mars aboard NASA’s MAVEN mission. You may need a microscope, telescope, and/or crystal ball to read his second chapbook Micropoetry for Microplanets (forthcoming from Space Cowboy Books). Look for him in Portland, Oregon—particularly around book stores and thrift stores.
In January 1978, Suzette Haden Elgin founded the Science Fiction Poetry Association, along with two of its visible cornerposts: the association’s newsletter, Star*Line, and the Rhysling Awards. The Rhysling Awards are named for the blind poet Rhysling in Robert A. Heinlein’s short story “The Green Hills of Earth.” Rhysling’s skills were said to rival Rudyard Kipling’s. In real life, Apollo 15 astronauts named a crater near their landing site “Rhysling,” which has since become its official name.
Nominees for each year’s Rhysling Awards are selected by the membership of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. Each member is allowed to nominate one work in each of two categories: “Best Long Poem” (50–299 lines; for prose poems, 500–1,999 words) and “Best Short Poem” (11–49 lines; for prose poems, 101–499 words). All nominated works must have been first published during the preceding calendar year of the awards year. The Rhysling Awards are put to a final vote by the membership of the SFPA selection from all nominated works, presented in the Rhysling Anthology. The anthology allows the membership to easily review and consider all nominated works without the necessity of obtaining the diverse number of publications in which the nominated works first appeared. The Rhysling Anthology is available to anyone with an interest in this unique compilation of verse from some of the finest poets working in the field of SF/F/Horror poetry.
The ongoing mission of SFPA is to promote the writing, enjoyment, and publishing of poetry and related arts in the science fiction genre. Per the SFPA Constitution, this includes, but is not limited to, “the genres of science fiction, science, fantasy, horror, speculative, and all other areas of poetry and related thematic interest which current practitioners and readers commonly accept as inclusive within the broadest reasonable limits of the term.” The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association was established in 1978 by Suzette Haden-Elgin and has an international membership representing over 19 nations and cultures including United States, Italy, Canada, Brazil, United Kingdom, Ireland, Romania, Poland, Denmark, Germany, France, Spain, Israel, South Africa, Singapore, Thailand, Laos, the Hmong, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association publishes two journals: Star*Line and Eye to the Telescope. It oversees three major literary awards for poetry: The Rhyslings, the Dwarf Stars, and the Elgin Awards. They also conduct an annual science fiction poetry contest and other special events and gatherings.
