Poetry

☢ To start off 2015, The Poetry Page would like to finish our tributes to the nominees for the 2014 Bram Stoker Award for Poetry. Last, but definitely not least, Helen Marshall was nominated for the brilliant The Sex Lives Of Monsters.   HWA: Do you still have the first poem you ever wrote? Would you be willing to share it? HM: Ha! No, I very much doubt I have my first poem. I started writing poetry when I was about five years old—not good poetry, mind you, but definitely poetry—and I suspect none of it has survived after its…

The HWA Poetry Page is going to take a one-month break from covering the 2013 Stoker nominees in order to cover a 2014 poetry publication. One of my goals for the HWA Poetry Page is introduce new poets with an in-depth look at their debut poetry collections. This month, we’ll be looking at Embrace the Hideous Immaculate by Chad Hensley. One of the most interesting stories behind this collection is the wonderful series of events that lead to the publication of Embrace the Hideous Immaculate. So interesting, in fact, that I wanted to present the same story from two different…

for Superior Achievement in Poetry Collection: Marge Simon, Rain Graves, Charlee Jacob, and Linda Addison— Four Elements (Bad Moon Books/Evil Jester Press) Linda Addison: http://www.cith.org/linda/ Bad Moon books: http://www.badmoonbooks.com/home.php Marge Simon: http://www.margesimon.com Rain Graves: http://raingraves.blogspot.com Charlee Jacob: http://www.charleejacob.com Evil Jester Press: http://eviljesterpress.com/main We’ll be exploring the other nominated works in more depth throughout 2014 but I wanted to begin with the winner of the Stoker. Four Elements is a thoughtful, intriguing, brilliant and beautiful work (four adjectives, one for each element, obviously) that is a well-deserved winner. To celebrate, I interviewed Linda Addison and Rain Graves along with Roy K.…

On May 10, the 2013 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection will be given to one of the following five nominated works. Since April is National Poetry Month and the Horror Writers Association is celebrating with our inaugural Horror Poetry Showcase, I wanted to celebrate the five nominated collections as well, to provide a glimpse into the brilliant world of "horror poetry." Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection Bruce Boston – Dark Roads: Selected Long Poems 1971-2012 (Dark Renaissance Books) Helen Marshall – The Sex Lives of Monsters (Kelp Queen Press) Marge Simon and Sandy DeLuca…

To celebrate National Poetry Month, the Horror Writers Association will be holding their inaugural HWA Horror Poetry Showcase in April 2014. Open to all poets, the Showcase will be accepting submissions throughout the month of April with four poems chosen by HWA member judges to be honored on the HWA website. Submission Guidelines: Submissions will be accepted via Submittable from April 1-30, 2014 and all rights will remain with the poets. Those interested in submitting should visit www.horror.org on or after 1 April to access the submissions link. We are looking for more than "blood, guts, worms," etc. Just being…

With extreme pleasure, I'm thrilled that our guest this month is Wendy Rathbone. She has has had over 500 poems published in various magazines and anthologies including Asimov's and Strange Horizons, and dozens of stories published in anthologies such as: Hot Blood, Writers of the Future 7, Bending the Landscape, Mutation Nation and more. Her newest short story "I Keep The Dark That Is Your Pain" will be published in the 2014 anthology: A Darke Phantastique. Her new sf novel Pale Zenith from Eye Scry Publications is available in print at http://goo.gl/12A7lx or Kindle at http://goo.gl/oSkCw5. Her omnibus poetry book…

This month we have a reprinted column from the Blood and Spades column by the brilliant Bruce Boston, as well as a host of reprinted poetry from other luminaries--JG Faherty,  Ann K. Schwader, and Carol MacAllister--of the HWA. The poems were selected this month to exhibit the versatile styles and voices of our members, and next month we have a number of additonal pieces which define our poets' originality and their unique perception of the world. *** ILLUMINATING THE PROSE POEM by Bruce Boston * The human mind is prone to create labels in order to understand the world around…