{"id":56694,"date":"2025-07-21T01:39:32","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T05:39:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/?p=56694"},"modified":"2025-07-22T06:57:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T10:57:09","slug":"speculative-poetry-and-the-hugos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/non-fiction\/azimuth\/speculative-poetry-and-the-hugos\/","title":{"rendered":"Speculative Poetry and the Hugos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speculative poetry has always been a part of my DNA. The very first poem I ever wrote was as part of a book report response to Mary Hoffman\u2019s Stravaganza<\/em> City of Masks<\/em>\u2014a YA portal fantasy. When I think of my favourite poems growing up, I think of Tennyson\u2019s Arthurian poetry, the walking songs in Tolkien, Plath\u2019s \u201cLady Lazarus,\u201d and others in a similar speculative vein. When I took a course in University on the history of Fantasy literature, over half the course was comprised of poetry: Beowulf<\/em>, The Faerie Queene<\/em>, Shakespeare. Poetry and the speculative are fundamentally intertwined.<\/p>\n

I began publishing poetry in 2017 and was floored to receive my first Aurora Award nomination in 2018. For a Canadian, the Auroras are the biggest spec award out there, and I had often heard about the greatest trifecta a Canadian speculative writer could achieve: an Aurora, a Hugo, and a Nebula, the so-called \u201cBig Three.\u201d I was devastated to find out that of these, only the Auroras recognized poetry. Despite this lock-out, the speculative community, and especially the speculative poetry community welcomed me with open arms. While the majority of folks in the SFF space are friendly, poetry folks in my experience are especially kind and encouraging, because we are used to tempting individuals down what people generally view as the scary rabbit hole of poetry.<\/p>\n

Poetry is often daunting to those unused to dabbling in its mystic waters for the first time because it is often less familiar to readers\u2014in part because it is not elevated and publicized through awards like the Hugos. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association is there to support speculative poets more broadly, and gives out important awards in the field, but the SFPA\u2019s specific focus on poetry silos poets apart from other writers. In general, the exclusion of poetry from the Hugos and the Nebulas is a deep wound which prevents the speculative community from properly supporting and including poets, and has at times pushed poets and would-be poets away from celebrating genre elements in the form of poetry.<\/p>\n

A novel cannot be a short story cannot be a flash story cannot be a poem, and vice versa. These are all different ways of telling stories, and particular stories are best expressed at certain lengths and in certain styles. Some genre work simply wants<\/em> to be poetry. It flourishes in poetry. Refusing to acknowledge poetry as a style worthy of a Hugo award diminishes its status within the genre, and disincentivizes the writing and publication of poetry.<\/p>\n

According to Jo Walton\u2019s An Informal History of the Hugos<\/em>, the Hugo Award continues to be the most influential speculative award globally, in terms of book sales. For good reasons or bad ones, the Hugos also tend to be the most widely covered genre award in big newspapers like The New York Times, The Guardian, <\/em>and NPR.<\/em> A high profile for speculative poetry, especially if that profile is to transcend the in-group of dedicated genre readers and writers, requires the inclusion of poetry in the Hugo Awards.<\/p>\n

Poetry, too, is a perfect point at which to expand the borders of the genre community\u2014after all, just as many folks read Tennyson as fantasy, many also read him simply as a poetry great. Poetry is in a unique position as a style to transcend the boundaries of literary and of genre categories, inviting new audiences to see the value in the trappings and subject matter of SF\/F.<\/p>\n

Hugo Award winning writer Amal El-Mohtar has often written about how poetry was a fundamental scaffold for her writing, and how that scaffold was inspired by Tolkien himself. She writes in an interview, \u201cTolkien began writing poetry, then moved into short stories, then novels. I thought, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s how you become a writer,\u2019 and set about doing the same thing.\u201d Similarly, Hugo Award winner Seanan McGuire notes in her bio and in several articles and interviews the importance of learning to write sonnets (first at the age of six, and later as an extended practice inspired by Pamela Dean\u2019s Tam Lin<\/em>) as an essential part of her writing journey.<\/p>\n

Hugo Award winner Catherynne Valente has a similar story, expressing even more strongly that originally she had \u201cno interest in writing fiction at all \u2026 Everything I ever learned about writing until after my first novel was published was in the realm of poetry.\u201d Sadly, she\u2019s also shared that as she gained recognition for her prose, she stopped writing poetry because poetry does not pay as well as prose, and because \u201cfantasy poetry folks still struggle for respect and attention.\u201d Having a speculative poem category on the Hugo ballot is the chance to give speculative poetry the respect and attention it deserves, and will incentivize great writers to continue writing poetry.<\/p>\n

For those who enjoy poetry and the speculative but are not so enmired in the bureaucracy and community activism that supports a speculative poetry ecosystem, I found it often came as a shock that there is no Hugo for poetry. Even editors I approached to support this initiative were surprised to have forgotten this oversight in the genre. R. Graeme Cameron, publisher of the magazines Polar Borealis<\/em> and Polar Starlight<\/em>, had this to say in response to my email asking for his support: \u201cI had forgotten there is no poetry category in the Hugos. I find this shocking. If the primary function of the Hugos is to celebrate science fiction literature, this failure to include poetry needs to be corrected. It is such a vital part of the genre.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is a strange dualism to straddle\u2014the idea that poetry can be so essential to the speculative genre, and also so much the maligned and redheaded stepchild when it comes to accolades and the ability to build a career off of the back of poetry alone. Poetry is the foundation upon which many of the SF\/F greats built their craft; it\u2019s the foundation upon which the genre is built going back as far as the ancient epics; and yet genre writers are now driven away from poetry because it lacks the opportunity for prestige that other styles have\u2014and because it simply cannot pay the bills.<\/p>\n

The tide is turning, though. The tireless activism of speculative poets like Brandon O\u2019Brien and Holly Lyn Walrath, among others, have meant that we do have a speculative poetry award at this year\u2019s Hugos, and that poetry can now confer eligibility to join SFWA\u2014the closest thing genre writers have to a union. My asks for support of the Poetry Hugo initiative were met with unanimous support from magazine paragons of the genre including Asimov\u2019s<\/em>, Analog<\/em>, and Strange Horizons<\/em>, and individual editors themselves. The tension of poetry\u2019s role in the speculative genre is surmountable.<\/p>\n

Accepting contradictory things and holding warring ideas both in conflict and in harmony is one of the things poetry excels at. Poetry is always crossing worlds, always living in multiplicity, quantum entanglement, in the realm of dreams and hope. It\u2019s time to let this medium of the speculative shine, and include it in the broader conversation of genre in a time where there are myriad disruptions to the field.<\/p>\n

If you are interested in ensuring that poetry can get the speculative spotlight it deserves, and preserving this important aspect of SF\/F\u2019s past and future, you can support the speculative poetry initiative by learning more at https:\/\/www.poetryhugo.com\/<\/a>, and\u00a0 you can sign up for email updates. If you are a member of WorldCon 2025, you can also join in the business meetings and vote in support of making poetry a permanent fixture on the Hugo ballot. If science fiction and fantasy are the genres of the future, and the genres of inclusiveness\u2014expanding our circles of care to those in other worlds and far-flung futures\u2014it simply must also include poetry. As a matter of preservation of the foundation the genre rests on, and as a matter of futurity in ensuring the genre remains open to the widest possible imaginings, poetry must be a part of the Hugos. It\u2019s time.<\/p>\n
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A guest editorial in support of adding a permanent Hugo award for poetry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-azimuth","category-editorials"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p82q22-eKq","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56694"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56711,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56694\/revisions\/56711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}