More about scifaiku
A couple months ago, I had a couple blog entries about scifaiku (Part 1 and Part 2). I just received my copy of the November Scifaikuest, so I just thought I'd mention that briefly. Like the CD, this one has two of my poems. Reading it in print is very different, in some ways better but in some ways not. I think ideal would be to have a CD with the poems printed in a little booklet accompanying the CD, but I don't know how feasible that is.

The magazine has four sections, the first being a smattering of individual haiku, much like the first track on Kuanta. There are some excellent poems and some that on a first read anyway seemed more cute. The next section is a bunch of haiku by the featured poet--or rather scifaijin--Charles Lucien. It's a strong section showing a variety of approaches to haiku, many of them with a Halloween-type horror tone to them. The third section is a review of a collection of haiku by John J. Dunphy called Stellar Possibilities. The collection is published by the same publisher as the magazine, which might raise some questions, but as there really aren't many publishers out there publishing collections of minimalist speculative fiction poetry, it's hard to fault them. The collection sounds interesting--the background of most of the poems is that aliens have come to Earth on vacation, all explored through haiku and haibun. It's a concept that could end up cheesy, but if it avoids that (and the review indicates it does) then it could be really cool.

The final section is a series of other forms of minimalist poetry, including two of the haibun from Dunphy's collection. It's an intriguing form that I'd like to explore more. Overall, it's an enjoyable issue in what for me is an under-explored sub-sub-genre.