Cthulhu Haiku

by Lester Smith (Editor), Scarlett R. Algee (Contributor), Ralph Faraday (Contributor)

Popcorn Press's fourth annual celebration of horror poetry. This time the subject is the mythos of H. P. Lovecraft, and in particular his most famous creation, Cthulhu, the monstrous cosmic entity that lies dreaming beneath the ocean, waiting for the stars to align and free him.

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published October 18, 2012

About the author

Elissa Malcohn has been published in Amazing Stories, Asimov's, Hugo Award winner Electric Velocipede, Hugo nominee Helix: A Speculative Fiction Quarterly, IPPY Silver Medalist Riffing on Strings, Tales of the Unanticipated, Bram Stoker Award winner Unspeakable Horror, and elsewhere. Her story "Hermit Crabs" (Electric Velocipede #14) appears in the recommended reading list in The Year's Best Science Fiction, 26th Annual Edition.

She was a John W. Campbell Award finalist in 1985 for best new science fiction writer of the year, reached preliminary ballot for a Nebula Award in 1989, and is a four-time Rhysling Award nominee for best speculative poetry of the year.

Covenant, the first volume of her Deviations series, was released by Aisling Press in 2007. See this blog entry for publication changes.

Covenant is now available as a free download (ISBN 978-0-9819764-0-2), in formats compatible with Kindle and other e-book readers, Palm and other PDAs, HTML for reading on a browser, and PDF (Acrobat Reader) reflowed to fit different-sized screens. In May 2009 Elissa released Volume 2, Appetite (ISBN 978-0-9819764-1-9).

Downloads are available at The Deviations Series website, Smashwords, and in even more formats at Manybooks.net.

Thanks to Rachel Baker for this review of both volumes at the Old Musty Books website, and to hosts Mark Eller (Chronicles)and Cyrus A. Webb (Conversations LIVE!) for having me on their shows. You can listen to the Chronicles interview here (click here for a transcript with accompanying photos and links) and to the Conversations LIVE! interview here (links-inclusive transcript here).

Elissa's novelette "Flotsam" and poem "Derivative Work" appear in the Oct./Nov. 2009 Asimov's. Work is forthcoming in the Dybbuk Press anthology She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror (expected 2010), and elsewhere. Publication details here.

Elissa is also a participant in Operation E-Book Drop and keeps a Facebook fan page here."

Reviews

[DivaDiane SM · Rating 5 out of 5]

I backed this collection of poetry and prose on Kickstarter and am very entertained so far. Even though I haven't read much of any actual Lovecraft. Many of the poems are actually dwarf length and so one has a delicious sense of accomplishment reading this book, something I'm in desperate need of. Interspersed are longer poems and short short stories. Highly entertaining and highly recommended. Especially if you are a Lovecraft fan.

[Dwayne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Other than a few decent short, Short, SHORT stories, this book was terrible and easily forgettable. I consider it a blasphemous mockery of what it should have been.
There's a part 2. I've already bought it. I bought them both at the same time. I REALLY hope the next one is better.

[Fantasy Literature · Rating 4 out of 5]

The works of almost fifty authors are collected in this delightfully dark anthology of Cthulhu Haiku and Other Mythos Madness, which includes, other than Haiku, short- to medium-length poetry and about ten short-short stories in the horror genre; however, most of these short horror works are in the tradition of or comment on the tradition of H.P. Lovecraft, as the title makes clear. I think any fan of Lovecraft should check this book out. It’s a fun read. And it’s often a funny read as well. Consider the haiku tradition in English of writing the poems in a three-line, 5-7-5 syllable pattern. And then note that Necronomicon has five syllables! That word is just begging to be the first line of a haiku:... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...

[Brian Sammons · Rating 4 out of 5]

My flash fiction piece “For all of Humanity” can be found in this collection of poetry and very short stories full of Lovecraftian flavor.