Eye To The Telescope 2: Robots, Time Machines, Aliens, And Joe Dolce

When the Science Fiction Poetry Association asked New Zealand poet, author and anthologist Tim Jones to edit an issue of their online magazine "Eye To The Telescope" featuring Australian New Zealand speculative poetry, he didn't expect to receive a submission from the singer-songwriter behind 1980s hit song "Shaddap You Face" - and he didn't expect to like it enough to include it in the issue, now online at http://www.eyetothetelescope.com/

"Shaddap You Face" was an Italian-themed novelty song that was absolutely inescapable in the early 1980s. 'All I knew of Joe Dolce was that he wrote that one song,' says Tim Jones. 'What I didn't know is that he's also a fine poet, with work published in many of Australia's leading literary journals. His poem "Aliens" makes a great concluding poem for this issue.'

Speculative poetry covers poetry that fits within the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres, plus other associated genres like magic realism and surrealism. 'It was really tough to choose only 20 poems from the much larger number of poems I'd like to have published,' says Tim Jones, 'but I'm happy to have included such a range of genres and styles.'

The first poem, Helen Rickerby's "If this is the future....", uses science fiction as a beautifully delicate metaphor, but there's also such hard-out science fiction poems as Chris Lynch's "Man in a wingsuit". There is apocalyptic menace in Grant Stone's "Bordertown" and Emily Manger's "A whimper after the bang", in contrast to the wry humour of Laurice Gilbert's "Exterminiknit".

'One of the things I'm most pleased about is that this issue brings together well-regarded poets, like Janis Freegard, Stephen Oliver and David Reiter, with authors best known for their fiction, like Mary Victoria and Peter Friend, both of whom contributed poems on fantasy themes, and Spanish-domiciled Australian writer Rod Usher,' Tim Jones commented. 'There's surrealism, a sonnet, and one dialect poem that reminds me of Russell Hoban's great novel "Riddley Walker".'

Whether you love poetry, you love SF, fantasy, and horror, or you just want to find out what on earth speculative poetry is, there is something for you in "Eye To The Telescope 2".

Links
 Eye To The Telescope 2: http://www.eyetothetelescope.com/
 Eye To The Telescope submission guidelines: http://www.eyetothetelescope.com/submit.html
 Science Fiction Poetry Association: http://www.sfpoetry.com/
 Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, edited by Mark Pirie and Tim Jones (2009): http://www.ipoz.biz/Titles/Voy.htm
 Tim Jones' blog: http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.com/