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Tag: Poetry

2024 Feb Monthly Meeting

This meeting will be entirely on Zoom! No in-person meeting!
Saturday Feb 17, 2024
Zoom meeting will open at 12:30 for social time. Meeting starts at 1:00pm (ET)

Our guest this month is SFF Poet Herb Kauderer!

Herb is an associate professor of English at Hilbert College near Buffalo, NY. He holds a PhD in Popular Literature from the University at Buffalo (2018), an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College (2007), and five other college degrees. He is the author of four books and fifteen chapbooks of poetry.

Herb will introduce us to his writing, his involvement with the Society for Creative Anachronism, and share some of his genre poetry with us. (Following Herb’s presentation and Q&A, we will set aside time for members who have brought their own poems to share them with us. Parsec’s own resident poet Mary Soon Lee has also been invited to read one or two of her works.)

As the featured poet in SCIFAIKUEST #55 for February 2017 Herb had 28 poems and an interview in the issue. That is longer than many chapbooks. He was featured again in SCIFAIKUEST #87 for February 2021 and contributed 29 poems, an interview, and an essay. Herb’s book THE SNOWSTORM OF ’14: POEMS FROM THE FRONT LINES (2016) recounts the experience of living at the epicenter of two of the worst snowstorms in the lower 48 states.

Following Herb’s presentation, we will have time for attendees to share some of their own poetry with the group.

Register for Zoom meeting

Watch for a post coming soon about the March meeting! We have Confluence Guest of Honor, Richard Kadrey attending in-person for the Confluence Panel Topics, Monthly Meeting at the Mt. Lebanon Library. The library is located at 16 Castle Shannon Blvd, Pittsburgh, PA 15228.
Come meet Richard in-person. Put your thinking caps on and help plan the panel topics for Confluence 2024!

Feb 2023 Parsec meeting

February is poetry month at Parsec!

Love is in the air so show your love for SF/F/H by bringing your original poem to the Feb Parsec meeting. Attendees are encouraged to bring short and effective pieces to read.

Bruce Boston will be our our guest!
Bruce is an accomplished SF Poet and the author of sixty books and chapbooks, including the dystopian novel The Guardener’s Tale and the psychedelic coming-of-age novel Stained Glass Rain.

Bruce will read for us “Interstellar Tract,” and some other poems from his latest collection, Spacers Snarled in the Hair of Comets, which is entirely SF poetry.

His fiction and poetry have appeared in hundreds of publications, especially Asimov’s SF Magazine, Amazing Stories, Analog, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Nebula Awards Showcase, and DreamForge Magazine. Boston has received the Bram Stoker Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Asimov’s Readers Award, the Gothic Readers Choice Award, and the Rhysling and Grand Master Awards of the Science Fiction Poetry Association.

Meeting Information:

Date: Saturday, February 18, 2023

Program begins: 1:00 pm (ET)

Register for Zoom: https://bit.ly/Parsec-Meeting
The Squirrel Hill Library will not be available to us in the First Quarter of 2023.

Did you miss the January Parsec meeting?

You can now catch a recap of Crystal Crawford talking about her Kindle Vella experience on our YouTube channel!

News from Mary Soon Lee

Mary Soon LeeWed, Jul 22, 12:05 PM

Hello,

The last few months have been hard on almost everyone, and I find myself more grateful than ever for pieces of good news. So it makes me very happy to report that “Elemental Haiku,” my book of haiku for the elements of the periodic table, has been nominated for the Elgin Award, and that I also have two poems in this year’s Dwarf Stars anthology.

In a similar vein, it was lovely to read Ann K. Schwader’s review of “The Sign of the Dragon.” Ann is a SFPA Grand Master for her contributions to speculative poetry, so it meant a great deal to me that she described the book as “… an utterly beautiful, impressive, & occasionally heartbreaking reading experience!” Her full review can be read at Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3312504890

N.B. The ebook of “The Sign of the Dragon” is available from Apple Books, Google Play, Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and I’m donating any money I get from 2020 sales to Doctors Without Borders, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, and the Trevor Project.

Since last month’s update, I’ve had poems in F&SF, Star*Line (three poems), and Eye to the Telescope. One of the poems in Star*Line is an Editor’s Choice selection and so may be read online: http://sfpoetry.com/sl/edchoice/43.3-5.html. And the whole issue of Eye to the Telescope, my poem included, is online at http://www.eyetothetelescope.com/.

Unusually for me, I also had two short stories published. “Redemption” is in the Summer 2020 issue of Fireside, and my short-short story “Catastrophe” is in Frozen Wavelets: https://frozenwavelets.com/issue-2-2/catastrophe-by-mary-soon-lee/.

I’ve been reading compulsively and have several recommendations. On the non-fiction front, I found Adam Becker’s “What Is Real?” to be excellent (it’s about quantum physics and the controversy over its interpretation). On the poetry front, I loved one new book, “The Alpaca Cantos” by Jenny Blackford, and two older ones, “The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou” and Alice Walker’s “Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful.” On the fiction front, I loved Martha Well’s latest Murderbot book, “Network Effect.”

But the book that I liked best is “Mindtouch” by M. C. A. Hogarth, the first in her Dreamhealers series. It’s a science fiction novel devoid of space battles, malevolent AIs, and visions of apocalypse. Instead cookies are baked, friendships formed. I feel oddly defensive toward it, as I imagine other people scorning it as pedestrian or slow-paced, but it captivated and delighted me. I can’t remember the last time I’ve found a book so softly moving. My reviews of this and many other books may be unearthed at Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/6731291.

Sending good thoughts: may you be safe and well,

Mary