Colleen Anderson's Blog, page 4
February 14, 2020
Women in Horror: Jacqueline West
[image error]When did you discover poetry and who/what influenced you?
I discovered poetry as a kid, when I spent many hours browsing the narrow aisles of our little public library. Shakespeare and Poe and other classics came first, and then I moved on to T.S. Eliot and e. e. cummings, and around age thirteen I found Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton and fell madly in love. Because I couldn’t afford all of those books myself (and because the internet wasn’t really a thing yet), I would copy all of my favorite poems down by hand in a blank book, so I could keep them and reread them again and again and again.
Why do you write poetry?
Because I can’t help it, I suppose. These days, I spend far more time writing fiction, but I began with poetry, and I think I’ll always return to it. A novel is a giant, sprawling construction, and I love wandering around in the worlds that I get to create that way, but I’m not sure there’s anything more satisfying than a finished poem. The rhythm and color and magic of words is put on such perfect display in poetry. Everything else is pared away.
Seven Whistlers
The Whistlers are six spectral birds who circle the world in search of a seventh. When all seven fly together, the world will end.
Close as papers in a book
they nest, now and then,
though they do not sleep.
Their open eyes glister
like slag in the dark.
Four, five, six keep watch
restlessly, settling wings
that send a dry wind
knocking cornstalks,
distant shutters.
They are family;
they are one body.
They love one another like bones.
Listen—
in the darkening sky
the whistle of breeze
through hollow things.
They are passing over.
The moan of breath
in an empty bottle;
a storm, miles off,
cut on the crest of a hill.
The chill of rain
without water.
They pass on.
They are searching still.
They have no call.
They only stare.
The pitch of air
through skeletons
and featherless wings as broad as sails
carries over miles, over mountains
and seas. Seven seeds,
holding secrets
that will split and swell,
while somewhere
the lost one waits.
Someday the pieces
will fall into place.
## from Candle and Pins: Poems on Superstitions
In my most recent novel, I got to write both prose and poetry. The book is my modern-[image error]day, Minnesotan, metal re-imagining of the musician who may have sold his soul to the devil, so I got to write lyrics for my protagonist’s songs—which was incredibly fun.
What do you think is the most difficult aspect in writing poetry?
The line between ambiguity and too-obviousness can be pretty fine. Often what seems perfectly clear in your head doesn’t actually make it onto the paper—so then you revise until you’re afraid that all the mystery and richness is gone, and then you have to go back and start all over again.
Do you explore particular themes? What are they and why?
A lot of my work is inspired by folklore, myth, and fairy tales. My collection Candles and Pins: Poems on Superstitions, is obviously rooted in superstitious beliefs and lore. Each poem explores a different superstition; some are whimsical, and some are very dark. I’m [image error]also often inspired by history and location. My chapbook, Cherma, is not speculative, but it was inspired by rambles around a historic cemetery…
What is it about dark (speculative) poetry that you think attracts people to read it?
Like many people have said, dark literature gives us a safe way to confront our fears as well as our other deep, dark emotions—to examine them, make sense of them, play with them. And a lot of us just find the dark and strange to be beautiful.
A Few Rules
Young people who fall in love while dressed in mourning clothes are doomed never to marry.
No flirting at the funeral.
No caressing near the casket.
No hand-holding behind the hearse,
no giggling at the grave.
Don’t parade your liveliness, your loveliness,
your youth, your certainty that you
will never be the ones shut up
out here, beneath the neat green hills
where every party peters out.
Don’t be too smug.
Don’t snuggle down among the tombs.
Don’t wink behind the preacher’s back,
steal a bloom from the bouquets.
You’ll be tempted. You’ll be sorry.
Don’t think that just because
the dead are dead they can’t be petty.
That just because they’re underground
they don’t begrudge you that quick kiss,
don’t hear and covet your fluttering heart
## from Candle and Pins: Poems on Superstitions
What projects (publications) are you working on or have coming up?
I’ve got a short story coming out in the anthology Nox Pareidolia: Volume II later this year, and I’m at work on my next fantasy/horror middle grade novel, which should be released by Greenwillow/HarperCollins in 2021.
Jacqueline West is the author of the New York Times-bestselling middle grade series The Books of Elsewhere, the Schneider Family Honor Book The Collectors, and several other [image error]middle grade and young adult novels. Her most recent novel, the YA horror/fantasy Last Things, is a finalist for the Minnesota Book Awards and has been selected for the Bram Stoker Awards preliminary ballot. Her poetry has appeared in journals including Mythic Delirium, Strange Horizons, Goblin Fruit, Liminality, and Star*Line, and she has been nominated for a Rhysling Award and two Pushcart Prizes, and received a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize. Her first full-length poetry collection, Candle and Pins: Poems on Superstitions was published by Alban Lake in 2018 and was selected for the preliminary ballot of the Bram Stoker Awards. Jacqueline lives with her family in Red Wing, Minnesota.
Escaping the Dawn
On Halloween, all souls in hell are released for twenty-four hours.
Their hunger builds in the last hours.
Streetlamps flicker, the small storms
of moths and mayflies long departed.
Gradual as a freeze, the liquid dark
turns white, ice trapping the moment
in anesthesia. Stars dull their corners.
The moon dissolves, a brittle skull
swirled to the edge of a seashell.
This is their warning. Dragged back
into closets, to the dust under beds,
to dark corners, to graffiti-spattered
holes, they mutter, unsatisfied, licking
their fingers. Day takes its first breath
on the horizon as they stagger slowly
back toward the darkness, always just
out of reach of those long, bright hands.
## from Candle and Pins: Poems on Superstitions
The Collectors #2: A Storm of Wishes (Greenwillow/HarperCollins, 2019)
Last Things (Greenwillow/HarperCollins, 2019)
Digging Up Danger (Rodale Kids/Penguin Random House, 2019)
The Collectors (Greenwillow/HarperCollins, 2018)
Candle and Pins: Poems on Superstitions (Alban Lake, 2018)
The Books of Elsewhere (Dial/Penguin, 2010 – 2014)
February 13, 2020
Women in Horror: Michelle Scalise
[image error]My guest today is Michelle Scalise. Her poetry punches hard and all the more wrenching for its reality.
When did you discover poetry and who/what influenced you?
I was taught dull, unrelatable poems in grade school but when I started high school I discovered Edgar Allan Poe on my own. “Annabel Lee,” in particular, made me obsessed with the art form. My work now is influenced by everyone from Charles Baudelaire to Sylvia Plath to Anne Sexton.
Why do you write poetry?
Besides poetry, I also write short stories but I can express myself and my life through poetry in unique ways. I love the way poetry lets a writer play with the sounds of words and the rhythm they make to create an image and feeling.
What do you think is the most difficult aspect in writing poetry?
The most difficult part of writing is getting the feeling across to the reader but leaving enough room for them to relate to a poem in their own way.
MISTY WAS AN UGLY DOLL
When she grew weary
stubbing out cigarettes
on the old lady,
who paid dearly for
adopting a sewer rat,
Mama would come for me.
She’d lift me onto the stepping stool.
It didn’t help to beg and weep,
humiliation was a sound for the weak.
With giant antique sheers,
She’d chop off my hair muttering,
“Pretty girls are blonde like me.”
Upstairs in the shadows,
a box with my favorite doll
“Beautiful Misty” it read in bold print.
But they were wrong,
her hair was red
and grew long with the turn of knob.
Misty cried when I cut her locks.
I had no mercy for a toy that lied.
Sometimes Mama slapped too hard
but I couldn’t make Misty bleed.
So I colored bruises on her cheeks.
Now she’s dead inside like me.
## from Dragonfly and Other Songs of Mourning
Do you explore particular themes? What are they and why?
[image error]My latest collection, DRAGONFLY AND SONGS OF MOURNING (LVP Publications 2019) is about the death of my husband, novelist Tom Piccirilli, of cancer. Most poets who write in the horror genre use death a lot but this is personal. It was also the only work I’ve ever done that was painful to write. My last collection THE MANUFACTURER OF SORROW (Eldritch Press) doesn’t have a theme. I am always writing about scarred childhoods and turning the image of mothers into monsters. That’s my way of fighting back at my past. Both of my short story collections also contain poems.
What is it about dark (speculative) poetry that you think attracts people to read it?
Life is dark and awful for everyone at times. There is something soothing about reading a poet one can relate to.
WORDS HE REMEMBERED
He couldn’t see her anymore
Morphine shuttered his eyes
And cobwebs hung from his lashes
But he heard her whispering
And her prayers became a chapter
On the white walls of his cell.
Words dripping from the ceiling
To languish on the cracked linoleum floor.
His writing was his hunger.
Words black as the poison inside him
Spun into strings of sentences.
Both the horror and the beauty
He longed to type.
Ideas drowning in an IV bag.
Page after page
Streaming from his brain
Too quickly to catch.
He cried watching them fly away.
But he didn’t grieve his own loss,
She’d do that for him.
It was the stories
He’d forgotten to tell
That ran like deer in the mountains
Through the silence he’d leave behind.
## from Dragonfly and Other Songs of Mourning
What projects (publications) are you working on or have coming up?
I have started something new but it won’t have an actual theme, at least so far. When I go back I may discover something similar running through the poems.
Is there anything else you would like to say about horror or poetry?
My love for horror began when I was a little girl. I would watch old horror movies with my father. He died young but his memory is always in my work.
Since 1994, Michelle Scalise‘s work has appeared in such anthologies as Unspeakable [image error]Horror, Darker Side, Mortis Operendi I, Dark Arts, The Big Book of Erotic Ghost Stories, Best Women’s Erotica, and such magazines as Cemetery Dance, Crimewave, Space and Time, and Dark Discoveries. She was nominated for the 2010 Spectrum Award, which honors outstanding works of fantasy and horror that include positive gay characters. Her poetry has been nominated for the Elgin Award and the Rhysling Award. Her fiction has received honorable mention in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her fiction collection, Collective Suicide, was published by Crossroad Press in 2012. In 2014, Eldritch Press published a collection of her poetry, The Manufacturer of Sorrow in paperback and ebook. It became a bestseller in the women writers category on Amazon. In May of 2019, her latest collection of poetry, Dragonfly and Other Songs of Mourning, was published by Lycan Valley Press. It has made the preliminary ballet for the Bram Stoker Award. Michelle is an active member of the HWA and the SFPA.
February 12, 2020
Women in Horror: Kyla Ward
[image error]I was fortunate to see Kyla Ward perform her poem at Stokercon last year in a gothic frock coat. She has been shy to mention but her books have poetry have been nominated for Stoker Awards as well.
When did you discover poetry and who/what influenced you?
I remember my parents reading me poetry like T. S. Elliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and Sir Walter Scott when I was very young indeed. I assume it stuck—indeed, altered part of my brain.
Why do you write poetry?
I write poetry because I can’t help it. Sometimes I get an idea and that idea can only come out in rhyme or a very particular rhythm. I write a lot of formal poetry because that’s what the idea seems to require, the support of that particular structure. Is this strange? It sounds strange to me.
The Grove
No temple stands within the walls of Rome
to she who is Dis Pater’s palatine.
The cypress branch outside the shuttered home
denotes a grove beyond the Esquiline
where ash sequesters souvenirs of dread—
the greater bones may well resist the flame—
and all the earth is rancid with such dead
as left the future neither wealth nor name.
Her votaries both winged and fanged compete
with witches for the choicest scavenging.
The foulest odours mingle with the sweet
of spices flung in hasty offering.
No image of her overlooks this place,
yet all who die will recognise her face.
## Originally published in Mythic Delirium 4.4 and subsequently collected in The Macabre Modern and Other Morbidities. It is the first part of the triptych “Libitina’s Garden”
What do you think is the most difficult aspect in writing poetry?
[image error]To my mind, the challenge of poetry is marrying structure with language and meaning—meaning, in this context, can be a mood or impression, rather than an obvious message. All writing needs to do this, but poetry—formal or free—is especially prone to being warped by the pressure of structure. Inappropriate or awkward words slip in, that obey scansion but occlude meaning or sound ugly and jarring. To my mind, the best poetry sounds natural when spoken, only somehow better. It flows so well that the true ingenuity of it goes largely unnoticed: you simply know that it is beautiful.
For the author, this way lies madness.
Do you explore particular themes? What are they and why?
I wouldn’t have said I explored particular themes, except that when it came time to assemble each of my collections, there they were.
The Land of Bad Dreams (P’rea Press, 2011) is more or less two halves, one representing dreams and the other a reality that through the poetic medium comes to seem equally fantastic. The Macabre Modern and Other Morbidities (P’rea Press, 2019) on the other hand… well, I did consciously set out to write a contemporary danse macabre based on the medieval model. It was only when I came to assemble the other poems that I realised how much of everything I had published since the previous book concerned the mythology of death in one form or another.
In Greek mythology, Death (Thanatos) and Sleep (Hypnos) are brothers. So I suppose, thus far in my career I have treated them both and should now move on to something more lively.
THE CELEBRITY
DEATH
A willing partner here at last!
Whose hand is smooth, whose step is fast.
Such earthly angels, once deceased,
routinely find their fame increased!
As amber, each iconic scene
preserves your carapace pristine.
Eternal glory somewhat flat
but not a whit less real for that.
THE CELEBRITY
Your words should consolation bring
and yet they have a hollow ring,
for moulded by a thousand hands
my guise but answered the demands
of press and public: all they see
is all the use they made of me.
Their compliments like razors strewn
along the path I trod so soon.
## Originally published in The Macabre Modern and Other Morbidities. It is a single entry in The Macabre Modern
What is it about dark (speculative) poetry that you think attracts people to read it?
When I dip into the dark fantastic, when I read Ann K. Schwader or Bruce Boston, it’s to [image error]refresh my mind. Reading poetry is a brief yet absolute break from humdrum thoughts and everyday rhythms, and I’m not the kind of person who holidays on beaches. I’m more one for subterranean caverns, shadowed canals, the crumbling interior of castles and tombs, and echoing galleries of old world art. So too in my choice of Poe and Rosetti, Clark Ashton Smith and Leah Drake Bodine. Is this what other people derive from dark poetry, including, perchance, my own work? I couldn’t possibly say! What I do know is that, upon a time, ekphrasis—that is, describing a visual artwork in a poem—was considered a valid means of preserving the memory, the sensations experienced by the viewer during her contemplation (consider Shelley’s “On The Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery”). In this way, even people who had never seen the painting could appreciate something of its impact. Perhaps it is the same for these internal visions.
What projects (publications) are you working on or have coming up?
The release of a collection generally means poetry takes a back seat for a while. I have short stories and novellas to finish before returning to the current novel. The poetic part of my brain will resume ticking soon enough.
Is there anything else you would like to say about horror or poetry?
Some people may see a paradox in the idea that a poem should be beautiful even when the subject is the horrific conditions in an overfilled cemetery, or the suicide of an unhappy actor. It appears that I do not. As is the case in Shelley’s poem, mentioned above, I feel there is a beauty particular to horror and macabre subjects that deserves exploring. Sometimes, the contrast serves to accentuate the horror. But some things are that much more frightening when they are beautiful, they become alluring, and even comforting. For me, this is where the true horror lies.
[image error]Based in Sydney, Australia, Kyla has produced short fiction. articles and poetry, including Stoker, Ditmar, Australian Shadows and Rhysling nominees, and won one-third of an Aurealis Award for her co-written novel, Prismatic. Her poem, “Revenants of the Antipodes” in the HWA Poetry Showcase V, won the inaugural Australian Shadows award for horror poetry. Her most recent release is the dark poetry collection The Macabre Modern and Other Morbidities, in 2019 from P’rea Press. An actor (most recently in the immersive true crime experience Deadhouse – Tales of Sydney Morgue) and occasional playwright, she has travelled widely and rhymed adventurously. Her interests include history, occultism and scaring innocent bystanders, all of which come together in her current night job—a host with the world-famous Rocks Ghost Tours.
kylaward.com/
https://klward.dreamwidth.org/
Preapress.com/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5283016.Kyla_Lee_Ward
February 11, 2020
Women in Horror: Sara Tantlinger
[image error]Today’s guest in Sara Tantlinger, another pretty amazing poet.
When did you discover poetry and who/what influenced you?
Like many others, Edgar Allan Poe was one of the first writers to really lure me into the world of poetry. I remember reading “The Raven” in middle school and having the imagery stick with me for a long time. Additionally, Sylvia Plath, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman were my biggest classic inspirations that took me deeper into my love of poetry. My more contemporary inspirations are all the wonderful horror poets out there, along with Sierra DeMulder and Richard Siken.
Why do you write poetry?
I love that poetry forces you to create something sharp and poignant in a small space. You have a short amount of time to grab the reader’s attention, exploit the senses, create vivid imagery, and hopefully, have the reader go back to the beginning and discover new aspects of the poem on a second or third read. I love those types of poems that you can come back to multiple times and feel all over again. When I write poetry, I want to evoke all of that within a reader.
Blood Clot Passenger
1886, late summer, early morning
a man steps off a train
thirty-five years old, five foot eight
blue eyes
striking against
miasmic city filth
striking against
his well-dressed body
hearses roll by, iron-clad wheels rattling,
urging city rats to scamper
past bluebottle flies
hovering over animal corpses
littering over the city streets
like masses on an artery
a man walks through the city
as summer rots
locomotive steam pluming upward,
conjoining with polluted clouds,
soot and smoke
thickening a blockage from the sun
1886, late summer, early morning
a man steps off a train,
the clot breaks free, travels through
Chicago’s body,
this dark-mustached swindler,
this charmer who pied the snakes
swallowed them whole,
emits musical poison from his throat
walks past death without blinking
thirty-five years old, five foot eight
blue eyes
hungering over
the sight of maggots
wondering how squirming larvae
would look
inside the body of the pretty woman
he had sat next to on the train.
First published in The Devil’s Dreamland, Strangehouse Books, 2018
##
What do you think is the most difficult aspect in writing poetry?
It can be difficult not to rely on the same words or imagery, especially in horror. It is a fantastic challenge to study new words and think of innovative ways to describe something like blood or death or darkness, but I always have to watch and edit myself for how many times I might rely on a certain word or image. The last thing I want to do is check over a collection of my poems and realize I used the same word 70 times or something like that!
Do you explore particular themes? What are they and why?
I love themed poetry! Lately, historical horror has been the niche I’ve been drawing a lot from. I also really enjoy nature-themed poetry. Taking something beautiful or terrifying from nature and turning it into a horror poem is always a delight.
My first collection Love For Slaughter centers around obsessive, bloody love. It was inspired by the idea of “madness shared by two” and I’ve dubbed it a “horrormance” collection — a little romance and a lot of blood.
[image error]And then my collection The Devil’s Dreamland, which won the 2018 Bram Stoker Award, was inspired by the life and lies of serial killer H.H. Holmes. The poems dip into his point of view pretty heavily, but I also included poems from the perspective of his victims, the city, and his murder castle in 1800s Chicago.
What is it about dark (speculative) poetry that you think attracts people to read it?
Dark and speculative poetry is such a great rabbit hole to get lost in. I’ve heard from many readers before that they weren’t really into poetry until they discovered horror poetry. While I love an array of poetry, from classic sonnets to more contemporary free verse, I can understand why studying certain poems in school might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but dark poetry offers something a little different. The poems are like bite-sized bits of horror that readers can digest and then come back to for more.
What projects (publications) are you working on or have coming up?
I am currently working on my third poetry collection titled Cradleland of Parasites. It will be out this fall from Strangehouse Books, and it draws inspiration from the Black Death and other plagues! I love historical horror, so this project has been a fascinating one to work on so far. Coming up, I have a few poems in Burning Love and Bleeding Hearts, a charity anthology to raise funds for the Australian bushfire victims — all sale proceeds will be donated to the Australian Red Cross and matched dollar-for-dollar by Microsoft (up to $50k) as part of their Giving campaign.
Is there anything else that you would like to say about horror or poetry?
Though it isn’t poetry, my first edited anthology will also be out this fall from Strangehouse Books, Not All Monsters. The collection is made entirely of stories by women in horror, and it features some of the most stunning artwork from Don Noble. I am so proud to share the authors’ stories. Keep an eye to the horizon for pre-order info and other things soon!
Sara Tantlinger is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Devil’s Dreamland: [image error]Poetry Inspired by H.H. Holmes. She is a poetry editor for the Oddville Press, a graduate of Seton Hill’s MFA program, a member of the SFPA, and an active member of the HWA. Her other books include Love for Slaughter and To Be Devoured. Her poetry, flash fiction, and short stories can be found in several magazines and anthologies, including The Twisted Book of Shadows, Sunlight Press, Unnerving, and Abyss & Apex. She embraces all things strange and can be found lurking in graveyards or on Twitter @SaraJane524 and at saratantlinger.com
February 10, 2020
Women in Horror: Tiffany Morris
[image error]Today’s guest is Tiffany Morris
When did you discover poetry and who/what influenced you?
I’ve always loved and written poetry, but I feel like I didn’t truly find my poetic voice until I was introduced to Anne Carson’s translations of Sappho in If Not, Winter. This provided a new way for me to view how poetry is written, and how experimenting with form, language, and omission can make poems hit harder.
Why do you write poetry?
Poetry just makes sense to me in a way other writing doesn’t! I think it’s because writing an image is easier for me than writing a more prosaic sentence; poetry allows me to weave images into a web of connection with an immediacy that other writing forms don’t provide.
What do you think is the most difficult aspect in writing poetry?
Formatting, but it’s also the most joyful, because where you can have fun and surprise yourself. I love to see, for example, how throwing an enjambment in an unexpected place can make the same words sing in a different voice.
the adversary
slow comes [the dawn]
buried and barely
survived:
light is a ragged breath
taunting veins [on]
closed eyelids.
sap coats the coarse
tongue of night, glues
entropy -> to bark.
battered [and] battered
and bruise-[knuckle]d
hope is a revenant
scraping wakefulness
from stormclouds.
thunder rolls
[sideways]
into nothing.
wake : pause : wake
continue if
[and only if]
you must
##
Do you explore particular themes? What are they and why?
I’m fixated on the apocalyptic, the spectral, and the liminal – my chapbook, Havoc In Silence, explores all of them – and how those themes create a stratum of calamity. Everyone encounters these ideas in some way, so I like to examine and dissect them into image systems and turn those into poems. I’ve also expanded into writing on demons and possession, linking these same ideas to the infernal, and looking at how leaning into calamity can simultaneously make us powerful and rob us of power.
What is it about dark (speculative) poetry that you think attracts people to read it?
A lot of poetry, I think, is a distillation of moments and ideas to barer essences. In dark or speculative poetry, we’re able to explore the terrain of anxiety, terror, and the macabre by using poetry’s tools of structure and form to reveal the mind to itself. Plus, y’know, it’s spooky and fun!
chaos is a ladder
black, the water. grey,
the skin. tearing and torn,
growling. climb despair
into tomorrow. open
the door, close the
window. burn the
dry grass, pray
in the embers. clutch
the rot to your chest.
spoil in black, the water.
grey, the skin. seeping
and crawling. climbing
despair like a staircase,
creaking and swaying
in nuclear wind.
##
What projects (publications) are you working on or have coming up?
I’m Mi’kmaq, but am not fluent in the Mi’kmaq language, so at the moment I am working on a collection of horror poetry that includes Mi’kmaq words and their translations in each poem as a way of learning the language. Mi’kmaq itself is verb-based, and horror is an action-based genre, so the two have a surprising amount of harmony and congruence. I also have poems coming out in Augur Magazine and Helios Quarterly this spring, and a full-length manuscript that is currently out for consideration (wish me luck)!
[image error]Tiffany Morris is a Mi’kmaw writer of speculative poetry and fiction. She is the author of the chapbooks Havoc in Silence (Molten Molecular Minutiae, 2019) and It Came From Seca Lake! Horror Poems from Sweet Valley High (Ghost City Press, 2019). Her work has been featured in Room Magazine, Prairie Fire, and Eye to the Telescope, among others. Find her on twitter @tiffmorris or at tiffmorris.com.
February 9, 2020
Women in Horror: Marge Simon
[image error]Really, no introduction is needed for Marge Simon, Anyone who reads or writes speculative poetry knows of her and she’s pretty much won every award you can get in the genre.
When did you discover poetry and who/what influenced you?
I grew up with poetry. My mother, an English teacher, also wrote poems and my father would read books of “grown up” poems with me. I loved the rhythms in such works as Sir Walter Scott’s “Hiawatha” and “Laska” by Frank Desprez, not to mention Poe. However, when I got to high school, it was the poetry of Steven Crane that hit me like a cyclone!This was long before I discovered genre/spec poetry. Flannery O’Conner and Angela Carter also were influences. Visions editor Bradley Strahan had a special sf issue of his magazine in the mid 80’s. I wrote my first speculative poem for him.
Why do you write poetry?
Why do I breathe?
A Hat of Crows
She’s posed, all feminine allure,
darkly unapproachable,
a murder of crows swirling
within, without that hat.
I fantasize touching her legs,
running the top of my hand backwards
over the soft brown skin,
stroking her torso upwards to her lips,
dreaming her into my power.
I beg her to remove her hat.
She only smiles that strange sweet smile,
as her crows circle slowly around her head,
beating their wings in terrible silence.
Space & Time Magazine 2019
##
What do you think is the most difficult aspect in writing poetry?
I’d that is a relevant question for individuals. For example, I don’t enjoy writing rhymed verse. I have high standards for rhymed forms of dark verse. I don’t care for forced rhyme, so I leave that to those like Frank Coffman, Ashley Dioses and Ken Opperman, who write only in rhyme, or at least, for the most part. In writing free verse, I work to be sure I’m not being too heavy handed or preachy.
Do you explore particular themes? What are they and why?
Subjects I like to explore: types of people, actions and reactions, climate change and all its many ramifications, human frailties – all with a dark or ironic twist. Unsung heroes and villains, subjects with rich comparison & contrast. My 2019 Elgin winning collaboration WAR, with Alessandro Manzetti is about all types of wars down the ages, the leaders and victims involved, the conditions. Mary Turzillo and I have another collection in progress: Victims. Currently: The Demeter Diaries, with Bryan Dietrich, an alternative love story of Vlad Dracula and Mina Harker told in poetry (Vlad) and prose poetry (Mina).
What is it about dark (speculative) poetry that you think attracts people to read it?
There’s a plethora of subjects and types of dark poetry, something for everyone from vampires and ghosts to ghouls and zombies, you name it. Besides the unsettling, the strange and creepy in verse appeal to a very large range of people from royalty to the village goof-ball.
Permuted
She once was
Winter’s bride to be,
but she gave her heart
to Autumn.
She knows
Winter’s wrath,
his bitter-cold breath,
knows she is bound.
Winter was not pleased
to hear of her betrayal.
So with one icy blast,
he tore a hole in her throat
& then blew out her eyes.
She longs for
sweet September mornings,
sleeping lazy, sleeping late,
the smell of Autumn’s skin,
his dear touch just before
he entered her
with the bounty of
all his knowing.
Polu Texni, 2018
##
What projects (publications) are you working on or have coming up?
As mentioned, a dark collection with Mary A. Turzillo, Victims, and Sifting the Ashes (victims of fires, climate change) with Michael Bailey.
Is there anything else you would like to say about horror or poetry?
I enjoy taking the writing challenges from Lee Forman’s Pen of the Damned, and Nina Archangelo’s Women of Horror FB writing to prompts project (flash prose or poems). I also have been fortunate selling dark flash fictions to Daily Science Fiction.
[image error]Marge Simon lives in Ocala, Florida and serves on the HWA Board of Trustees. She has three Bram Stoker Awards, Rhysling Awards for Best Long and Best Short Fiction, the Elgin, Dwarf Stars and Strange Horizons Readers’ Award. Marge’s poems and stories have appeared in Clannad, Pedestal Magazine, Asimov’s, Silver Blade, Matter Press, New Myths, and Daily Science Fiction. Her stories also appear in anthologies such as Tales of the Lake 5, Chiral Mad 4, You, Human and The Beauty of Death, to name a few. She attends the ICFA annually as a guest poet/writer and is on the board of the Speculative Literary Foundation. www.margesimon.com Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B006G29PL6
Awards
Winner, Bram Stoker for excellence in a Poetry Collection: Vectors (with Charlie Jacob), The Four Elements with Linda Addison, Charlee Jacob and Rain Graves, and my own Vampires, Zombies & Wanton Souls, inspired by Sandy DeLuca’s art.
Twice winner, SFPA’s Elgin Award: Sweet Poison with Mary Turzillo and WAR with Alessandro Manzetti.
Winner, Best Long and Best Short Rhysling Awards
Winner, Dwarf Star Award
Grand Master Poet, SFPA
February 8, 2020
Women in Horror: Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert
You will notice a theme with many writers on the therapeutic nature of writing. Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert is my guest today and she talks about the healing nature and the joy of writing.
When did you discover poetry and who/what influenced you? [image error]
I have been writing poetry since I was quite young. I used to submit to and win poetry contests in my local newspaper. Poetry has always been therapeutic for me, even before I knew what “therapeutic” meant. I’ve always had this need to transform my thoughts and feelings into words.
My earliest influences were probably Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein. I don’t recall reading a lot of poetry at school, which is a shame. By junior high I’d discovered The Raven by Poe, which remains my favorite horror poem. Later, I discovered William Blake and liked his work, but wanting to read from women poets, I found Marge Piercy and Margaret Atwood. Much of their poetry has speculative elements, which dovetailed nicely with my lifelong love of scifi, fantasy, and horror.
Why do you write poetry?
I have said that poetry saved my life, and that sounds melodramatic even though it’s true. I’ve always struggled with depression and anxiety, and sometimes it felt as though putting my thoughts to paper was the only way to ease the darkness.
Aside from that, I love the way poetry can conjure images and descriptions in a way that other fictions cannot.
The Waiting Room in Purgatory
Chair pads of crushed red velvet,
singed;
stained by unknown liquids
over
countless centuries.
Ornate, carved wood backs darkened
with
age, gleaming from layers
of wax,
gouged by nails and claws
and
teeth
and
desperation.
The air is thick
with fetid breath,
and
smoke
and
dire need.
For eons, my tired eyes
have
traced, ev’ry thread; ev’ry
hole and
stain on the moth-eaten
tapestry that reads:
Neither here nor there.
## (Yet again, the wierdness of WordPress has allowed formatting for the second poem and not this one. The lines beginning with “over,” “of wax” and “hole” should be indented.)
What do you think is the most difficult aspect in writing poetry?
One of the more difficult aspects of writing poetry for me are when you have an idea—or a sense or mood you want to convey—and want to describe it poetically. You start writing, and you find that the words coming out are not doing justice to what is in your head. Sometimes that can be overcome. Sometimes it just spills out the way you intended. More often than not, for me, I save what I have and try to go back to it later to “get it right.” But usually I fail. The times I succeed feel amazing!
Do you explore particular themes? What are they and why?
I can’t say my poetry has any particular themes. My work does tend to be speculative and dark. And I’d say that a lot of it reflects a woman’s experience, but certainly not all of it. [image error]My one published poetry collection, Interview with the Faerie (Part One) and Other Poems of Darkness and Light is divided into three sections. The first, “darkness,” has “dark” poetry, including a short poem written from the perspective of a man who is physically abusive to his partner. The middle section, “shades of grey,” has one poem that is not dark or “light,” although it has an ominous tone. The last section, “into the light,” contains a poem about a goblin on his first day of school. It’s one of the few things I’ve written that is suitable for children.
What is it about dark (speculative) poetry that you think attracts people to read it?
I believe that horror-themed fiction is attractive to people generally. Horror-themed movies and books are certainly undergoing a resurgence right now.
Dark speculative poetry is appealing because it can describe the unfathomable, the unthinkable, the grotesque, in beautiful and stunning ways. It makes the true horrors of our world digestible. It’s easier for many to read a horror poem than spend ten-plus hours digesting a horror novel. And to others, seeing horror play out on a screen is too visceral.
What projects (publications) are you working on or have coming up?
I’m actively working on two projects: I’m finishing up a horror short story for an anthology call, and I’m in the beginning stages of pulling together a new collection of short stories and poetry. Some of the material will be reprint, but much of it is new. I’ll be looking for a publisher once I have it together.
I also discovered painting last year during a mental health break I took from writing. I’m hoping to explore some darker themes in my painting this year.
That Witch We Dread
A witch, sometimes,
should be dark. Should wear
a crooked nose,
a frock black like ink;
murky and stale
as the corner of a root cellar floor.
Some witches exist,
to haunt your thoughts. Dive
gleefully into your mind,
unseat logic;
pulling up shadows
that were well-hidden, placed with reason.
This witch is not
Wiccan, not Goddess.
She is horrible.
The pit in your belly,
the earth falling away,
the dread that lives tightly coiled,
dormant; awaiting its moment with
grotesque implausibility.
##
Is there anything else you would like to say about horror or poetry?
I’ll say a word about women and traditionally underrepresented voices in horror. The horror that women often write reflects our lived experiences, and too many of us experience horrific things regularly. Women’s voices in the speculative genres are crucial. I feel that often it’s the underrepresented voices that make you really experience the “otherness” that drives so much of speculative fiction. To provide a concrete example, the experiences of Octavia Butler as a poor woman of color allowed her to write about human-ness, other-ness, and gender and sexuality in a way I don’t think a
Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert writes short fiction and poetry in the science fiction, horror, [image error]and dark fantasy genres. Her short stories have appeared in the anthologies The Final Summons, Killing It Softly (Vol.1), and The Deep Dark Woods. Read her poetry in the HWA Poetry Showcase Vol. VI, the anthologies Beneath Strange Stars and Wicked Witches, the websites Tales of the Zombie War, Eternal Haunted Summer, and Strong Verse; and in The Wayfarer: A Journal of Contemplative Literature. She published a short collection of poetry, Interview with the Faerie (Part One) and Other Poems of Darkness and Light in 2013.
Suzanne is a freelance content creation expert, editor, and works as a technical services librarian. She writes in between driving her daughter around and meeting the incessant demands of her feline overlords. https://suzannereynoldsalpert.com/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7394656.Suzanne_Reynolds_Alpert
February 7, 2020
Women in Horror: Reyna Young
[image error]When did you discover poetry and who/what influenced you?
When I was younger I don’t know where I got it but I began reading an Edgar Allan Poe book, I fell in love with his words. As I got older I was reading whatever poetry I could get my hands on, especially Sylvia Plath. I started writing at a young age, poetry, stories, etc. I just love poetry; there’s something relaxing about cuddling up with your blanket and reading a poetry book.
Why do you write poetry?
I love to write poetry; there’s something quite therapeutic about it. I feel like poetry for me is all about getting out my emotions I hold in. Writing down how I feel through poetry helps me with my thoughts, and my emotions and my depression I have suffered since I was a little girl.
What do you think is the most difficult aspect in writing poetry?
Wanting to write but having a block, sometimes I can sit down and do some writing but I have to be in the mood for it. Poetry is a form of art that takes a lot out of me.
Do you explore particular themes? What are they and why?[image error]
I write when I am emotionally stressed out or depressed so my theme really would be dark, depressing poetry. I have a book of published poetry through Black Bed Sheet Books called Dislocated Thoughts and they are poems I wrote through high school. So a lot of depressing, teen angst and breaking up with boyfriend type of poetry. So I guess you can say I write depressing poetry.
All in All
All in all
I thought you were the one
All in all
I thought I was done
All in all
You weren’t the one
All in all
I am done
Take me
Only to hate me
Only to see me
Then throw me out
Take me
Only to use me
Only to cheat on me
I can’t keep count
I thought I was special
But you lied
I thought I was the only one
In the end I tried
So – leave already
I said I was done
Stay away from me
I want you gone
From my head
From my thoughts
From my memories
But most of all
From my heart
All in all
I thought you were the one
All in all
I thought I was done
All in all
You weren’t the one
All in all
I am done
##
What is it about dark (speculative) poetry that you think attracts people to read it?
People need outlets to go too when they are feeling blue. If it helps listening to a song or reading poetry, whatever helps them feel better and know that someone else is going through what they are or that you did go through it, helps people. I feel that’s why I read dark poetry, sometimes I need to read something or listen to a song or watch a movie. It helps.
What projects (publications) are you working on or have coming up?
I’m actually working on my second poetry book right now; I’m hoping to have it come out later this year. I am also working on an all women horror anthology book with stories written by 13 women and another Monsters book will be released in a few months, and my debut novel very soon. Been very busy over here.
Is there anything else you would like to say about horror or poetry?
Right now we are working hard at editing our fifth feature film; we’re hoping to have that wrapped up later this year and gearing up to shoot another feature film. I will also be heading into season seven of my show Miss Misery’s Movie Massacre in which I host late night horror movies.
[image error]Reyna Young resides in San Francisco California with her husband John Gillette and son Logan Gillette. Together they both run Last Doorway Productions, an independent film company. She is also known as TV Horror Hostess Miss Misery of Miss Misery’s Movie Massacre, Director, Actress and Author of the books Dislocated Thoughts and her Monsters book series which includes The Creature of Stowe Cabin, Hanover Falls, Horror Lullabies and Mr. Torture, published by Black Bed Sheet Books. She also continues publishing horror comic books through Scattered Comics. http://www.lastdoorwayproductions.com
February 6, 2020
Women in Horror: Trisha Wooldridge
Today’s guest poet for Women in Horror Month is Trisha Wooldridge who has had fiction in the EPIC award-winning Bad-Ass Faeries 2: Just Plain Bad, and Bad-Ass Faeries 3: In All Their Glory. She also won the Eye on Life prize for her poem “To Me, You Are Holy,” in 2011.
When did you discover poetry and who/what influenced you?
I discovered poetry in my childhood through nursery rhymes and nursery rhyme collections, many of which have surprisingly disturbing poems! I was probably only about six or seven when I read Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” and I was physically ill from the thought of eating that school of baby oysters. On the other hand, I couldn’t stop rereading it because I sensed that there was a Deep Truth to the nonsense: you couldn’t trust people; not everyone has your best interests in mind; people will hurt you to their benefit. In fact, if you look at a lot of children’s nursery rhymes, they talk about horrible and true things. London Bridge falling down, the plague, children getting hurt, being unable to heal from injuries… And then in grade school, we had Shel Silverstein, who also dealt with complicated and sometimes dark issues with nonsensical verse: being lazy, being bullied, things going wrong for no reason, dealing with the fair and unfair consequences to actions… So, from a young age, poetry was where I found a place to explore complicated and scary emotions.
Why do you write poetry?
I write poetry to process my most complicated and difficult emotions. While I love prose, poetry works on more levels than linear storytelling. With poetry, the white space, line breaks, punctuation are as much the message as the words—and word choice and word order carry more meaning than in a prose construction. So often emotions or situations—dealing with death, betrayal, self-analysis, pain, truest love—don’t fit into just words or just sentences. They need more—more dimensions, more meanings, more places to fit meanings. Poetry is a gift and tool for such feelings and experiences.
What do you think is the most difficult aspect in writing poetry?
Honestly, everything! If I’m writing a poem, it’s because I already have a complex, possibly painful or achingly beautiful—relationship with a topic. But the construction of a poem is also a challenge. Some poems are meant to be shorter free verse, others are 5,000-word rhymed and metered monstrosities! Some poems need a haiku, so you’re limited with an exceptionally short and rigid form. So, writing a poem is not only doing a deep-dive into emotions, it’s painstakingly finding the right form and then working it into that form. And then making sure it might hopefully make sense to someone else.
If I can share a bit of a story behind this one? It’s currently unpublished. I wrote it as a challenge to myself when I was diagnosed with ADHD about two years ago: I would to record the first month of taking Adderall by writing a poem about mental health every day. It was my most productive and poetic month; I’ve actually found myself able to write more poems overall since the diagnosis. At some point, once I edit them all, I plan on collecting all 30 poems and some other ADHD related ones into a chap book.
Poetic Coping Strategies – An Adderall Poem
I’m reading three
different
books of poetry—
one whimsical songs of birds, death, and dinosaurs;
one exploding, burning galaxy that equally loves and tears asunder;
one a musical road trip of drugs, sex, murder, and suicide—
not always in that order.
They are different sized books
with different textured covers,
and I read from each in parts
and in succession,
and together they make sense
in the coils and tangles
wiring my brain.
I’ve written more poems
than there are days
in these past months.
Last time I hyperfocused
on poetry,
Death was on the lines—
past and future.
That then-present medicated haze
left me leaving
metered and rhymed
text messages
unintentionally.
It rewired my brain—
not that it was
factory setting normal
in the first place.
Or ever.
But that was then—
an emotional fractal
honed by a deadline I didn’t
want to miss—
And this is now—
a mental fractal
tasting medicine
enhanced by the
promise
of opportunity.
No less
an interest-based
obsession.
No less
a force of nature.More me,
being the me
I want to be.
## Due to WordPress issues and to preserve the formatting–which is not spaced as Trisha wanted it–I could not get this to show in the same font.
If I can share a bit of a story behind this one? It’s currently unpublished. I wrote it as a challenge to myself when I was diagnosed with ADHD about two years ago: I would to record the first month of taking Adderall by writing a poem about mental health every day. It was my most productive and poetic month; I’ve actually found myself able to write more poems overall since the diagnosis. At some point, once I edit them all, I plan on collecting all 30 poems and some other ADHD related ones into a chapbook.
Do you explore particular themes? What are they and why?
I do tend to write in themes. A lot of my poetry explores mortality and the relationships people have with death and mortality through faith, spirituality, and religion—and how faith, spirituality, and religion can be positive or toxic to one’s life before they die. I’ve also recently been having quite the unwelcome roller-coaster of emotion in relation to health, mental health, the American medical culture, and the social culture around women’s health and overall mental health, so I’ve written a LOT of poems on that recently. I also love writing about the weirdly or eerily or creepily beautiful things in nature. And I have always been drawn to speculative topics—to magic, to monsters, to mythology, to the fae. So, while I do have some poems that are specifically fantastical or speculative, a lot of speculative elements work their way into my poems. As far as I’m concerned, magic is real and all around us, so most anything can and should acknowledge that.
[image error]
What is it about dark (speculative) poetry that you think attracts people to read it?
Everybody has things they are afraid of; speculative anything creates metaphors, thought experiments, that let people explore their fears from a safer distance than actually experiencing those fears; and poetry pushes the brain to think and comprehend the message in a different way than prose. Dark speculative poetry gives people a means to explore their fears, and thus give them some measure of power to handle those fears, through the use of metaphor and thought experiment in a form that both creates distance from the fear but also forces them to think about the fear in a different way. And in thinking about the fear differently and from a distance, a person can further empower themselves and perhaps see new ways to deal with that fear.
What projects (publications) are you working on or have coming up?
I’m really bad at putting together poetry publications. Usually I submit single poems to particular markets, and I currently haven’t got any poems I know are coming out soon. However, I am editing the next New England Horror Writers anthology, Wicked Women, and we are open to poems. It’s open to women who are current members of NEHW with a deadline of February 29. So, if you’ve got women readers in New England, they should check out the NEHW organization, join if so moved (it’s free!)… and send me some work! That should be out this October. Also, my contribution to New Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, also coming out this October, is poetic prose. As for what I’m working on, poetry-wise, I have a collection of Ekphrastic cards (poems paired with photos) that I’ve been bringing to events; I’m very proud of those. And I’m currently going through a set of poems I wrote when I was diagnosed with ADHD that deal with mental health and putting that together in likely a chapbook collection.
Is there anything else you’d like to say about horror or poetry?
I went for some years just writing fiction and non-fiction, focusing on those for publication, and then I happened to hear Linda Addison read at a SF/F convention in Long Island…and I like to say she broke my brain in the best possible way. I bought one of everything she had that day and consumed it all. Since then, I’ve actually had the honor and pleasure of getting to know her through the horror community, so I can’t recommend her enough. But once Linda set me right and back into poetry, life was altogether better. Besides Linda, I love the poetry by Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert, whose poetry may or may not get employed by Unseelie courts to entrap humans. Stephanie Wytovich’s poems cast amazing and beautifully profane spells that shatter reality into lacy spiderwebs. Donna Lynch (who I first discovered through the band Ego Likeness, which everyone should also check out!) will eat you alive, heart or liver first, with the jagged teeth of her poems, while you sing along. Um…many more. But those three happen to actually be in my line of sight while I type this. Check out the HWA Poetry Showcase collections!
[image error]
Trisha J. Wooldridge (or child-friendly T.J. Wooldridge) writes novels, short fiction, nonfiction, and poetry about bad-ass faeries, carnivorous horses, social justice witches, vengeful spirits—and mundane stuff like food, hay-eating horses, social justice debates, writer advice, and alcoholic spirits. Her publications include stories and poems in all of the New England Horror Writer anthologies, The HWA Poetry Showcase Volume 5 and Volume 6, the Pseudopod podcast, and The Book of Twisted Shadows, The Jimmy Fund charity anthology Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, and the upcoming New Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, as well as three spooky kids’ novels. Her poetry and art have been featured in the Blackstone Valley Artist Association Art-Poetry shows of 2017, 2018, and 2019. She is also editing the 2020 New England Horror Writers anthology, Wicked Women, open to all NEHW members who identify as women. Rare moments of mystical “free time” are spent with a very patient Husband-of-Awesome, a calico horse, and a bratty tabby cat. Join her adventures at www.anovelfriend.com, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
February 5, 2020
Women in Horror: Amanda Crum
[image error]Amanda Crum is my next poetry guest for Women in Horror Month. I’m not the only one who thinks she’s talented. See for yourself and enjoy her poem as well.
When did you discover poetry and who/what influenced you?
I started writing poetry as a kid, but I always disliked the rhyming kind that was so prevalent in children’s writing. I loved Shel Silverstein because his use of language was so different to me. He was writing for the daydreamer kids like me.
Why do you write poetry?
Poetry is a way to pull all the best words from the atmosphere and play with them. I love that. I love that it can tell a story or just a fragment of one.
What do you think is the most difficult aspect in writing poetry?
For me the most difficult part is getting organized, because I have so many ideas that it’s hard to distill them all into something cohesive.
From my book of horror poetry, Tall Grass, which made the preliminary ballot for a [image error]Bram Stoker Award nomination this year. “Sheets On A Line” is inspired by Dolores Claiborne.
Sheets On A Line
It comes to you as you hang the last piece,
knuckles cracked and bleeding
in the glacial air:
there are no borders too hard to fracture,
only cages with keys.
You’ve been hemmed in,
wary and circuital,
but even the cons at Shawshank
can’t be held forever.
There’s no weapon forged
that could do the job cleanly,
but these hills whisper
with every wave that breaks cliffside.
They say that opportunity is
veiled inside their curves,
that the sun holds shadows to her breast
that are yours for the taking.
Your eyes rove east to west,
regarding the line of billowing white sheets
laid out like a ligature across the landscape.
They twist in the wind, content to stay secure
even if it means dodging brutal currents,
but now you can see how easy it is
to break the pins and set them free.
##
Do you explore particular themes? What are they and why?
I like to get into the motivation behind things, and I tend to write a lot about grief and facing mortality because those are things that are on my mind a lot. With my latest book of poetry, Tall Grass, I took a look at a lot of famous horror characters and tried to get into their minds a bit. What was Dolores Claiborne feeling when she first thought of a way out of her abusive marriage? I want to look at the stories and characters that shaped us through a different lens.
What is it about dark (speculative) poetry that you think attracts people to read it?
So many of us are living with anxiety, we’re waking up to awful news everyday, and the thought of getting lost in beautiful language and stories that carry us away is too good to pass up.
What projects (publications) are you working on or have coming up?
I’m working on a full-length horror novel, and it’s my first attempt at something like that so it’s exciting and terrifying. I want to do it right!
Amanda Crum is a writer and artist whose work has appeared in publications such [image error]as Eastern Iowa Review, Barren Magazine, and Corvid Queen, as well as in several anthologies such as Beyond The Hill and Two Eyes Open. Her books of horror poetry, The Madness In Our Marrow and Tall Grass, have both made the preliminary ballot for a Bram Stoker Award nomination. She is also a nominee for the Best of the Net Award and the Pushcart Prize. Amanda currently lives in Kentucky with her husband and two children.
https://twitter.com/MandyGCrum
