Hello, all!
Today is not a full cup of afternoon tea—I was actually in the middle of scribbling one that would come out next week, as well as working on being more thoughtful about the newsletter schedule in general—but a thing happened that I cannot possibly neglect to mention to you all:
I'm beyond grateful for this honour. A massive thank you to Interstellar Flight Press and especially my publisher and editor Holly Lyn Walrath for shepherding this book into the wild world, to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association and all of its voters for their consideration of my work, and to everyone who has read and shared and loved this book, or has gotten anything at all from it as I had from writing it.
Having only come back from Chicon 8 a few weeks ago, I have been thinking about this book for a bit. Whenever I sign, I am particularly grateful that when Holly and I chatted about the art of the book (shout out the inimitable Trevor Fraley for the amazing cover that still takes my breath away!), we set upon the brilliant idea to put a tentacle in the title page. I am always just as pleasantly struck to see it there as folks are when they come to sign it; I am always pleased to tell folks who are only now hearing about the book and eager to get their copy signed that I am giving them exactly the gift that the book promised them.
So much of that book, I'm fortunate to say, is as much changing me long after having written it as I hope it offers something new to each reader. As the world keeps changing—as we still imagine a world free from police lapels, as we are still struggling under the weight of the nationalisms and tyrannies that call themselves utopias, as even the ways we consider the genres we love to read and write are slowly shifting—I look back inside this and something keeps urging me to find something new, from within each of these poems, or just off from the edges of them, in the margins, where another poem-branch would split if it could. I'm grateful that the book is a kind of timeline unto itself, beckoning all kinds of questions, not so much timeless as it is making begging gestures at time.
Thank you all for giving these tendrils a chance. A reminder that if you have a copy, feel free to ask me exactly the way the book does, and I will be glad to oblige.
Again, a proper cup of tea is coming in a few days. Until then, have a wonderful night!
—Brandon