Hello, fellow travelers! I’m Brandon O’Brien, your poet laureate for Seattle Worldcon 2025, bringing you a brand new segment on this blog, Con-Verse! Here we plan to talk about the speculative poetry scene, chat with poets about their work, and even help those who may think they don’t “get” poetry break down new ways to read (and write!) speculative verse for themselves.
What better place to start this blog, then, by trying to ask and answer the one question that comes up often from people outside the space: what is a “speculative” poem? But like most things in art, and poetry in particular, there are as many answers as there are poets and readers themselves. Hopefully, with enough of them we may notice some patterns of understanding, so I figured it was only right for you to hear from a multitude of expert voices on the matter. Here’s what some members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) had to say:
What is speculative poetry?
- “Speculative poetry is a portmanteau concept in which a number of genres, primarily science fiction, fantasy, horror, and the weird are lumped together. For a poem to qualify as speculative, it should include one or more tropes that belong to the constituent genres.” – Tom Rogers
- “Speculative poetry engages in the genres that violate reality, whether through things that cannot currently be (i.e., beyond known science) or things that can never be (i.e., magic). Like any genre of poetry, ideally it uses vivid imagery and emotion, interesting use of language, and a fitting, memorable presentation on the page.” – Katherine Quevedo
- “Speculative poetry is literature that departs from literal reality, so it includes surrealism, magic realism, slipstream, myth, fantasy, science fiction, paranormal, dystopian, fairy tales, steampunk, and related areas of writing.” – 2020 Elgin Award 3rd-place winner Herb Kauderer
- “Speculative poetry happens when imagination and possibility mingle. In that, it’s like all the best science fiction and fantasy—it holds the magic of ‘maybe,’ of ‘what if’ aloft like a guiding lantern, an inciting spark.” – SFPA 2024 Elgin Awards chair Felicia Martinez
- “Like all poetry, speculative poetry looks for pieces of truth, and reveals them under the prismatic light of folklore, mythology, fantasy, horror, and science fiction. If Keats were alive and writing today, his ‘Lamia’ and ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ would be considered speculative; if Coleridge were around, so would his ‘Christabel.’ We moderns labor under the label of genre and a reading public that cannot always reconcile spaceship and sonnet. But we still try to soar for the stars, regardless of the bounds of Earth!” – Deborah L. Davitt
- “Speculative poetry, ancient of days, older than the flood and newer than tomorrow, is humanity’s primordial literature. Inspired by the unknown: fantasy, magical realms, and futuristic worlds, speculative poetry explores mythological, science fictional, and otherworldly themes.” – 2021 Elgin Award-winning author of Otherwheres and SFPA Grandmaster Akua Lezli Hope
How is speculative poetry unique?
- “Its remit is the imaginary, things that do not fit into the world as we understand it today. Future, alternate pasts, other parts of the universe (exploring aspects of things that are not now known), other universes.” – SFPA Grandmaster David C. Kopaska-Merkel
- “On one hand, it’s not—it’s poetry, and it’s no more or less poetry than ‘literary’ poetry might be (just with more werewolves and fewer English professors going through a rough divorce). On the other hand… holding the speculative lens up to the poem allows us a more mutable perspective through which to examine the truth, and consequently more angles at which to attack or dissect it.” – Brian Hugenbruch
- “It is unique in its ability to execute vividly inconceivable images to words with stark or nebulous clarity, either which way drawing readers in, walking the rope of intrigue, and making them believe the plausibility of what they’d otherwise dismiss as illogical.” – Sheikha A.
- “Speculative poetry is not the brussel sprouts of literature, ‘noble, uplifting, and boring as hell.’ It’s not some legal deposition or profound documentary artifact opining obviously on the human condition. It is inherently, unabashedly impossible and improbable, and yet still calls us, compels us to write it down and to share it with others. And once in a while you get the ‘Jabberwocky’, Paradise Lost, a legendary inscription on a precious ring, or something even more amazing for which we had no words which can change whole worlds.” – Former SFPA President and SFPA Ambassador Bryan Thao Worra
- “We no longer have to mine only the tragedies of our own lives, but the entire universe.” – SFWA Poetry Committee founding member and Radon Journal founder Casey Aimer
What should an unfamiliar reader look out for when they encounter their first speculative poem?
- “A speculative poem should pull the reader into a world of wonder, not the world you know.” – past Dwarf Stars editor Miguel O. Mitchell
- “Lines that challenge your perception beyond its common scope, sometimes visually as well as mentally.” – SFPA Grandmaster and multiple Elgin Award-winning poet Marge Simon
- “Rather than approaching speculative poetry from the perspective of what seems strange or different from the world you live in, notice what may remain the same or similar. Songs can be sung on Earth and in zero gravity, but the tune and lyrics may change.” – Angela Acosta
- “Most speculative poetry is accessible to the inexperienced reader but a background understanding of science may be helpful, or there may be common tropes that the experienced reader will recognize and the inexperienced reader will not. A little research might make speculative poetry more pleasurable to read.” – Former SFPA Vice-President Sandra Lindow
- “Seek unique writing instead of falling for your favorite subjects. Instead of the cutest robot, look for words and sentences that spark your circuits.” – Former SFPA Secretary Brian U. Garrison
- “Don’t always be looking for metaphor. Sometimes an alien is simply an alien.” – David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Surely this is a good place to start, but over the next few weeks we’ll be digging deeper into what makes a poem speculative, what those speculative elements can do to heighten your experience of the verse, and even give a few exercises so you can experiment with writing your own poems!
Until then, may tomorrow and your good days always rhyme!
Brandon O’Brien is a writer, performance poet, teaching artist, and tabletop game designer from Trinidad and Tobago. His work has been shortlisted for the 2014 and 2015 Small Axe Literary Competitions and the 2020 Ignyte Award for best in speculative poetry, and has been published in many genre magazines and collections. He is the former poetry editor of FIYAH. His debut poetry collection, Can You Sign My Tentacle?, available from Interstellar Flight Press, is the winner of the 2022 Elgin Award. He is the poet laureate for Seattle Worldcon 2025, and the first poet laureate of any Worldcon.
I enjoyed this blog post about speculative poetry, and I am looking forward to meeting other speculative poets, including some people I’ve known for decades, for the first time at the convention. I hope some people new to the genre decide to get together with us and learn more about the fun you can have when you mix verse and magic.