Geoffrey A. Landis

Poetry

picture of Book of Whimsy cover
The Book of Whimsy (NightBallet Press 2016)

In addition to science and science fiction, I also sometimes write poetry.

I'd been writing a little bit of poetry here and there ever since I was in college, of course, but mostly not showing it to people. When I went to Clarion, Joe Haldeman got me interested in the possibilities of science fiction poetry, altough, again, I only wrote the occasional poem now and then, mostly as a way to keep writing in the bits and pieces of time that weren't enough to write stories.

In the late '80s, when I moved to the Cleveland area, I hooked up with the local poetry scene. Somewhat to my surprise, Cleveland has quite a vibrant poetry scene, and I started writing quite a bit of poetry, doing readings at local poetry venues like the Junkstock festival, and publishing in area 'zines like ArtCrimes and Icon and Coventry Reader-- as well as science fiction magazines like Asimov's and Amazing and Pulphouse. By the mid to the late '90s, as I got busy with other things, my poetry writing dwindled down (although I never completely stopped; I won the Asimov's Reader's Award, and the Rhysling award for best short poem in 2000), and had a few of my poems picked up for best-of-the-year collections and other anthologies. Then, in the early '00s, Cleveland glass artist and poet Marcus Bales started a reading series at his art gallery, Gallery 324, and invited me to be a featured reader; a year or two later, Joshua Gage informed me that I needed to be at the Deep Cleveland reading series, so I started being a regular (well, maybe an irregular) and occasionally a featured reader there. Somewhere in there, Mary and Jim Stanley and a few others discovered that there were a critical mass of SF poets within easy driving distance, and so a group of us started getting together for dinner and snacks... and critiquing poetry. So, stimulated by all the activity, I've been writing more poetry again lately...

Gallery 321 eventually closed shop, but by then Marcus had already founded a small press, VanZeno, with the goal of publishing poetry collections by some of the poets he'd featured in the readings, and other poets that he thought needed to be collected. So, to bring a long story to an end, my first collection of poems, Iron Angels, came out from VanZeno Press.

picture of Iron Angels cover

Other than my collection Iron Angels, my poems have been published in various places, including (in alphabetical order): 3Lights Quarterly, Aboriginal SF, Alchemy of Stars, Amazing Stories, Analog, Angels!, Aoife's Kiss, ArtCrimes, Asimov's SF, Astropoetica ... (click for longer (although somewhat out of date) list).

More recently, a chapbook of light poetry, The Book of Whimsy, came out from NightBallet Press in 2015.

Recent Award-winning poems

photo of me
Photo of me reading at the Haiku deathmatch

A selection of Science Poems

Some SF and Fantasy poems

Other poems

  • Not all my poetry is science fiction.

    Want to hear me read poetry?

    Writing about poetry



    thumbnail photo
    another photo of me reading at the Haiku deathmatch

    Links

    List price $19.95

    Iron Angels

    banner for SF poetry Association

    Page by Geoffrey A. Landis
    2008, revised 2011