Why Speculative Poetry Matters to SFF

In partnership with

Suzette Haden Elgin, founder of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA), once remarked that speculative poetry would gain recognition in major genre awards when there was a work important enough to warrant that recognition. In her book, The Science Fiction Poetry Handbook (2005), she recalls advocating for poets to be able to join SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association) and failing, noting that she doubted she would see a book of poetry recognized by a major literary award in her lifetime.

I wish she was around to see 2025. Ten years after her death, the two major science fiction and fantasy awards (the Hugos and the Nebulas) are now both home to a poetry category. However, the legacy of advocacy Elgin carried cannot and should not end there. Despite what may seem like a full-throated acknowledgment of the genre, these awards are simply not enough.

Please allow me this small speech from my own personal well of dream-dust: Speculative Poetry is just as valuable and diverse a form as any other structure in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres, and as such, it deserves to be fully recognized by major awards.

The above is an erasure poem I created in 2022 using the guidelines for membership for the most well-known and much-praised science fiction and fantasy writers association, SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association). About a year later, SFWA decided to allow poets to qualify for membership. A few months later, I decided to join SFWA with the goal of joining the SFWA poetry committee and becoming an advocate for lesser-acknowledged and underrepresented forms like poetry, flash fiction, and nonfiction. In 2024, the SFWA poetry committee was able to spearhead the creation of the first Nebula Award category for poetry.

Imagine my delight when I learned that the Hugo Awards would also play host to a poetry award at 2025’s WorldCon. 2025 is truly a historic year for speculative poetry.

You can read more about the process of creating the award in the below interview that I participated in with the SFWA poetry committee co-chair, Wendy Van Camp:

So, why do I think that speculative poetry still needs more advocacy?

Having poetry as a category for the Hugos and the Nebulas is a huge win for poets. But it’s not enough.

Why? Because speculative poetry is still the persona non grata of the speculative literature world, poetry itself is far less recognized in the world of literature as a whole, despite being quite popular (In 2022, the NEA found over 29 million people read or consume poetry. There is no such large-scale survey for SFF genres.)

Despite poetry being recognized with a Hugo, it is vital that I point out that the Hugo is a special award this year. That means we may not see a poetry award post-2025. It’s kind of a test case. Secondly, the Hugo is just for individual poems, not poetry books or anthologies. Furthermore, the Hugo only recognizes poems that are three lines or more, which is a shame because there are many fantastic two- and one-line speculative poems.

Despite poetry being a now-permanent fixture on the Nebula ballot, only individual poems are eligible, not poetry books or anthologies. The Nebula Award is broader than the Hugo, with poems of any line length allowed.

From the perspective of someone on the poetry committee at SFWA, the main reason I think we need more advocacy is that while poetry is now award-recognized, there are still caveats to those awards that other speculative poetry. When making the decision to only“ask” for a poetry category on the Nebula, the committee did so because we knew it was the safest first step. However, I’m not sure what it will take to see the award widened to include books.

Speculative poetry has a rich history that dates back as far as genre itself. While it could be argued that the earliest poetic epics, from Gilgamesh to Beowulf, are speculative in nature, it’s not just that speculative poetry has existed forever, it’s that it has been a vital, embedded part of SFF culture from the beginning.

Isaac Asimov said, "The dropping of the atom bomb in 1945 made science fiction respectable. Once the horror at Hiroshima took place, anyone could see that science fiction writers were not merely dreamers and crackpots after all, and that many of the motifs of that class of literature were now permanently part of the newspaper headlines".

Asimov’s quote always makes me wonder what it might take for poetry to be seen as respectable. Poetry is uniquely situated to grab readers’ attention when it comes to processing today’s horrific news. Furthermore, many speculative poets today are also working at the juxtaposition of current events. Asimov’s quote is also an indicator of when things shifted, and SFF became A Thing.

The subject of poetry in pulps is the topic of research I’ve been conducting for a few years now. If we trace SFF’s roots to the golden era of science fiction, we find magazines like Weird Tales, first established in 1923, regularly publishing speculative poetry. It is frustrating that although it's easy to find information about short stories published during this time in the pulps, it's harder to find any repository of poems published in these magazines. Poems were often unmarked in the table of contents, or if they were, they simply said "verse" or "poem". Nevertheless, magazines like Galaxy, Scientific American, Science, all published poetry.

It’s important to look at these magazines in context. They can be seen as an offshoot of another important touchpoint in poetry history: The penny dreadfuls or chapbooks. These were affordable, short pamphlets or magazines that were distributed in the late 1800s, often featuring speculative or genre-adjacent topics (vampires, murder, urban myths, Westerns, etc.) These early magazines often featured poetry, including folk songs and fairy tales.

Early golden era magazines focused on speculative poetry itself include Challenge (1950-1951), Kineses (1968-1970), Speculative Poetry Review (1977-1980), Uranus (1978-1984), Treaders of Starlight (1978), Cthulhu Calls, Umbral (1978), Star*Line (1978-current).

It wasn’t just magazines that featured speculative poetry. Speculative poetry books, while much more difficult to research given the lack of resources (most SFF pulp magazines have been archived online for researchers), have existed since the beginning of SFF. Some have called the poetry collection Wine of Wonder by Lilith Lorraine (penname of Mary Maude Dunn Wright) from 1952 the first-ever volume of science fiction poetry. One of the earliest speculative poetry anthologies drawing from the pulps was Holding Your Eight Hands (1969), edited by Edward Lucie-Smith.

Perhaps it is not enough to argue that because speculative poetry has been a part of SFF from its inception, it should then receive the same recognition as short fiction and novels. You might argue that there is no audience for poetry (I think 29 million readers would disagree), or that poetry is too “high-brow” for SFF (although good luck telling SFF short story writers that the genre isn’t “literary”), or that speculative poetry isn’t published as much as short fiction (you’ll have just as much luck convincing me reading itself is in decline, given the precarious state of SFF short fiction).

The fact is, poetry has been here, it is here, and it will be here. We’re not going anywhere.

Why the Resistance to Poetry?

A far more interesting argument, which I will mostly save for another article, is the question of WHY people are so opposed to the recognition of speculative poetry.

In the fantastic 2007 book Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia, Brian Stableford makes the excellent point that poetry has always been at odds with science: “The anxiety that the progress of science has devalued or devastated the poetic element of the human imagination—by ‘unweaving the rainbow’, as John Keats put it—is as strong now as it ever was, and as plausible” (xviii). (Stableford is using the term “poetry” here as a kind of stand-in for “the arts,” i.e., narrative literature that incorporates science elements such as science fiction.)

He refers to poet John Keats’ assertion that Newton “destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow, by reducing it to the prismatic colours.” And I think this is an interesting point: Perhaps poetry is subconsciously seen as separate because of the decades-old battle between science and science fiction.

Sadly, I think the reason why speculative poetry has seen little recognition is far more sinister. My research has indicated that while it’s rare to see women writing short fiction published in pulp magazines at the same rate as men, I believe the rate of women publishing speculative poetry was much higher. Poetry is often perceived as feminine—in 2006, a survey by the Poetry Foundation found that people mostly believe poetry is primarily read by women.

Furthermore, I have a sneaking suspicion that speculative poetry is quite diverse in comparison to the larger SFF world, if only because the barrier to publication with poetry is much lower—or more interestingly, because poetry is a bigger space to experiment and diverse voices often operate on the fringe of literary conventions. I don’t have data to support this idea, but I do know that many writers I have met who write science fiction and fantasy got their start in poetry. A skim through the SFWA introductions thread on the forums showed that many people were writing poetry but transitioned into other forms to gain membership prior to 2023. Because it can be less time-intensive (can, not is) to write a poem, writers often start there and quickly realize that if they ever want larger recognition, they will need to publish novels. Many SFF writers also write poetry. There are countless examples of this in SFF, including J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, and so on. The so-called “ease” of writing poetry angers some members of SFF, who are frustrated at the idea of someone winning a Hugo with just a one-line poem.

For me, that idea is magical. Structure does not matter—what matters is writing something that speaks to people. Even if it’s just one line.

A Call to Action

I would love to see an absolute bonkers number of poems nominated for both the Hugo Award and Nebula Award in the first eligibility year. If you love speculative poetry, please consider nominating. The Hugo Award is open for nominations until March 14, 2025. If you were a WSFS member for 2024 Glasgow Worldcon or if you are a WSFS member for Seattle Worldcon, you can nominate poems published in 2024. SFWA members can nominate for the Nebula Award, which covers poems published in 2025.

Beyond that, share poetry. Share this post, share the poems you love, read more poems, buy poetry books, support poets.

Lastly, write and submit speculative poetry. If you’ve never tried it out, now is the time.

Write what you love, love what you write.

Upcoming Workshops from Your Host with the Most Writing Prompts, Holly Lyn Walrath

Self-Paced Workshops (Sign Up Anytime!)

And now a word from our poetic sponsor…

Use a Book to Grow Your Brand and Bank Account

Bring your ideas to life with Lulu.

• Print high-quality books on demand

• Sell directly to your audience using ecommerce plugins

• Retain 100% of your profit and customer data

• Get paid immediately

Create Your Free Account Today