Features

In Guy Clark’s song ”Cold Dog Soup” he explains that, because poets never make any money anyway, they have total artistic freedom. (I’d quote the lyrics verbatim, but that would require paying for permission, and I’m a poet, too, so I don’t have any money.) It’s a true, if lamentable, point: Nobody gets into writing poetry in a serious way for the money. Writing short fiction is like owning …Read More

Suzette Haden Elgin, founder of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA), once described how the organization almost faltered early on. It wasn’t from lack of interest. Poets flocked to be part of the group! So many members signed up that it was hard to type, copy, and mail the monthly newsletter. Fortunately, volunteers jumped in to help, and the SFPA has survived since 1978 as a hub for …Read More

Science fiction poetry has been in the spotlight lately after SFWA added a Nebula award for Best Poem (to be awarded starting in 2026) and after the successful campaign to name the 2025–26 special Hugo Award category as Poetry. You won’t hear any complaints from me – as the poetry editor for both Asimov’s and Analog, I have a lot of love for the subgenre and hope that the …Read More

Poetry has always been a big part of my writing journey. I had early poems published long before I managed to sell any fiction, but it wasn’t until I tried sending poems to speculative magazines that I actually started getting paid for them. In the years since, magazines have come and gone, adjusted their pay rates and their open submission windows, or began charging submission fees in order to …Read More

Horror is one of the major forms of speculative poetry, but despite its storied history, it is often overlooked. Far older than science fiction, it sprouts from the fetid end of the same ancient pools of folklore and mythology as fantasy. At turns eerie, frightening, or subtly unsettling, horror connects humankind with its primordial fears, allowing us to process anxiety over subjects like death, extinction, dismemberment, abandonment, ego death, …Read More

We demand much of poetry. Most of us encounter poetry first in childhood. As we enter secondary and postsecondary school, our relationship with poetry might become combative. Instead of reading for pleasure or curiosity, our ”understanding” of poetry – how quickly we come to that understanding, and how correctly we express it – becomes evaluative. If we get the answer wrong, we are made to feel ashamed, unintelligent or …Read More

This roundtable was curated by Brandon O’Brien, who also was part of the driving force making this poetry feature happen in Locus. A set of optimistic convention conversations led to this series of features on poetry — so thanks, Brandon, for the time, energy, and encouragement!

What was the first poem you read that helped you understand what speculative poetry is?

Marie Brennan: I like how you’ve phrased …Read More

Less Is More

by Linda D. Addison

Even though I write poetry and fiction, poetry is and has always been my first voice. My imagination always turned to speculative writing, especially poetry. There were dragons, demons, and magic dancing under the thin veneer of reality for me, and the music of poetry always sang in my mind. Poetry has a rhythm to it no matter what form …Read More

The Great Shapeshifter

by Bryan Thao Worra

Speculative poetry is one of the great shapeshifters in human history, going by many names, at times beloved, at others shooed off as a niche interest in the genre fields. At various points we called it science fiction poetry, science fiction and fantasy poetry, escapist poetry, or sometimes just poetry, and presently the catch-all of ”speculative poetry,” which allows any number …Read More