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Rhysling award season is here–I got spectacular news this week that I have two poems nominated! Thank you to the kind folk out there who gave Pterosaur (Strange Horizons) and The Orchid (Sublimation) that measure of love.

I’ve had some Dwarf Stars noms before, but never the Rhysling. It feels a little heady, like I might pass out from lack of oxygen–a typical response to rare air, I suppose.

Rare air indeed. The company is magnificent.

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) established the Rhysling awards at the founding, celebration of the pinnacle of speculative poetics, and the annual Rhysling anthologies remain a place of endless inspiration and joy for me.

If you’re a member of SFPA (::tiny bow::), you have incredible access to some of the best speculative poetry in the universe. From this largesse, you can nominate only one poem in each category: short and long. It’s an excruciating decision process because there are so many exceptional poems and poets (literally dozens on my personal short lists of wow). See the whole inventory of nominated poems here–and recognize that those nominated are just the featured blooms in a world-class garden. There are a lot of hidden gems out there, some tucked into nooks and crannies. Go explore! Eye to the Telescope–and the Halloween and Valentine’s Readings–are easy access points if this genre is new to you.

Also, from this long list, the Rhysling anthology will feature only 50 short and 25 long poems. Yep, more pruning in one of those gardens where you could explore for weeks and still not see everything. Hey–neither of my poems may make the cut (cf RARE AIR did you see the awesomeness?)–but take a moment to stroll in the garden, especially if you are new to spec poetry or if you are SFWA member tuning in to the newest (but not youngest…) member of your tribe,

Pterosaur is my science poetry love child. I’ve said a bit on that poem before, and I’ll say more on it later. Short version: this is one of the best poems I’ve ever written. In it, I hold up the extinction of the dinosaurs as a mirror to the existential losses we face in our current ecology, building a small nest of hope amid the Anthropocene Extinction Event (welcome to my complicated world).

In the meantime, here is the divine orchid that inspired a poem with more simple beauty: The Orchid–thank you National Orchid Garden at the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Talk about out-of-this-world.