What is Speculative Poetry?
I never aspired to be a poet.
Poetry seemed too nebulous and highbrow a pursuit–something I attempted back during those angst-ridden days of high school but, in the clarity of adulthood, understood I lacked the chops to pull off.
But when a magazine I admired offered a speculative poetry workshop in exchange for a donation I was already planning to give during its fundraiser drive, I jumped at the opportunity. I figured studying poetry’s tools –imagery, rhythm, emotion and compression– could only help my regular prose.
How wonderful to discover I was right, but also, that I didn’t fully realize what speculative poetry really is, and that the line between poetry and prose is so blurred that I might someday attempt it again.
Here are a few (but not all) of the poems we discussed as part of the class, conducted by Strange Horizons Poetry Editor Vanessa Jae. Read them and see if you notice a pattern.
- Set operation of a country in the belly of wa(te)r by Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi;
- A Local TV Weatherman Describes the Apocalypse by Marcus Whalbring; and
- The Quantum and Temporal Properties of Unresolved Love by Massimo Mitolo.
Jae explained that while some speculative poetry is about a fantastic subject matter, like dragons or cyborgs, it can also be poetry about very real life where the form itself is the thing that is strange or unreal.
The distinguishing feature of Bobi’s poem, for example, is that it’s trying to make sense of political violence, atrocity and oppression with a math equation. Whalbring’s poem greets the end of the world with an uncanny weather report. Mitolo’s poem is research paper, complete with footnotes.
To be honest, I would have classified both Whalbring and Mitolo’s poems as flash fiction if I didn’t know any better. But I love the fact that a piece of art can be whatever its creator says it is, and magazines will respect that and publish it as such. I’m already thinking of other unusual short forms – a food label, a user agreement for a piece of technology, product directions – that could all make interesting prose and/or poems.
By expanding my definition of what poetry is, I’m finding it less intimidating and more inspiring.