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Voyagers
Edited by Mark Pirie and Tim Jones
Bristling with insight, sections like Back to the Future, Apocalypse Now, Altered States, ET, When Worlds Collide and The Final Frontier will have you speculating right along with the poets.
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ISBN 9781921479212
Release date: 15.05. 09 |
RRP: AU $25.95 NZ $27.99 US $15.95 UK £12.95 |
Poetry Anthology |
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Reviews |
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| Who would have thought there were enough science fiction poems out there to make a New Zealand anthology? Mark Pirie and Tim Jones did. They found 92 of them, to be exact. Our intrepid editors have not only scoured the universe to find these exotic species, gone where none have gone before, but have brought them back and arranged them into handy thematic categories for our better edification. Under such rubrics as Back to the Future, Apocalypse Now, Altered States, ET, When Worlds Collide and The Final Frontier, the poems are set out (16 a piece) for the reader to easily sample, savour and enjoy. It belies the idea that science fiction is only a prose genre or an acquired taste. Present are old favourites such as David Eggleton’s nuclear end of world scenario, 60 Second Warning and Louis Johnson’s Four Poems From the Strontium Age. There are surprises. Southern man Brian Turner turns away from the mountains for a moment to stare at the stars and ask all the metaphysical and cosmological questions. There are trips to Mars, poems about time travel, talk of reverse energy, planetary extinction, neutron stars (a chandelier in a shipwreck) and rescue missions. Captain Kirk and Doctor Spock make an appearance. Helen Rickerby’s Tabloid Headlines are very funny while Peter Bland has a wonderful fantasy piece about lost in space. We also have alien visitations, plastic spangled ray guns, black holes, sex with aliens, Roswell and the ubiquitous abductions. Cryogenics, Doctor Who and the Daleks also figure. Michael Morrissey asks if Star Trek’s Andromedans go to church on Sunday. The moods range from comic and absurd to the more serious as fantasy and reality collide in entertaining and enlightening ways. This collection will delight both devotees and first time callers. It’s life, dear reader, but never quite as you’ve known it. – Peter Dornauf, Waikato Times |
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Mark Pirie is a Wellington, New Zealand writer, editor, publisher and critic. From 1995-2005 he initiated, co-edited and produced the literary magazine JAAM (Just Another Art Movement).
His works include 21 books of poems, a book of song lyrics, and a book of short fiction. In 1998 he edited The NeXt Wave anthology of New Zealand ‘Generation X’ writing. He currently edits the HeadworX New Poetry Series and the poetry journal broadsheet, and co-organizes the Winter Readings series of events in Wellington.
A verse novel, Tom, will be published by Poets Group, Christchurch in 2009.
Tim Jones is a poet, short story writer and novelist. His most recent books are the short story collection Transported (Vintage, 2008), which was longlisted for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award; the poetry collection All Blacks’ Kitchen Gardens (HeadworX, 2007); and the fantasy novel Anarya’s Secret (RedBrick, 2007).
Sample
Einstein's Theory Simply Explained
by David Gregory
When I returned
I went to see myself,
still working on the motor of the thing.
We had a pleasant chat,
so startling.
We talked of time, Einstein and you.
Then I went out,
denounced the project
and bought the weapon.
Knowing how he sleeps,
I shall kill him in the night,
so he will not have you
again.
The End of the World
by Meg Campbell
The shining cuckoo sings,
‘It will surely be like this.
Just an ordinary day
suddenly turned nasty.
Grey sky and an oily sea.
The sun will suddenly move
in a crazy fashion.
You won’t
believe your eyes. But, then,
free falling you’ll die
without a murmur.
The end
of the world is brief,’ sings
the bird in its whoops-a-daisy
voice. It has gone.
We think we hear it singing
from a distant tree.
Since when
have birds the gift of prophecy?
Metastasis
by Mary Cresswell
Tiny and trapped – the littlest name
a bit of a buzz, a wing of flame
melts amber back into waves
unleashing ten thousand years:
dragons and fire flies, damsels and may
flies spring from resin to molten seas
in their turn, no longer pinned down
but going where wide fast rivers
flurries, freshets, fly, leap, sing
down the sides of all the world
to swamps to standing water
where the minutes start again.