One of the surprise delights of ReaderCon this past weekend was learning via word of mouth that my buddy Shira Lipkin had won the 2012 Rhysling Award for short poem with her surreal prose piece “The Library, After,” which I published in Mythic Delirium 24. Shira ended up giving a reading of the poem during my Sunday morning workshop.

She describes how this poem came to be on her website. Excerpts below:

I originally wrote “The Library, After” at the very end of 2008 … I started reading it at conventions – I tend to prefer to read flash and poetry, because it keeps a reading moving, switching gears. It built a small following. … I had such affection for this story that, when I attended the Meet the Pros(e) party at Readercon 2009 (writers get one line from their work printed up on stickers and share it with people, creating a sort of absurdist poetry as you collect other people’s lines), I used a line from it: “Awakened, the library went feral.” I bounced up to Mythic Delirium editor Mike Allen and traded lines with him, and he said “Where is this from?” and then, “Has it been published?”

I sent him the story. And proceeded to forget that I’d ever done so. It was too short for his Clockwork Phoenix anthology series, and Mythic Delirium is a poetry magazine, so I was expecting nothing except that hopefully he’d enjoy it. But he ended up e-mailing me and asking if he could buy it for Mythic Delirium.

But – it’s not a poem, I said.

It’s poetic, he said.

Okay.

Illustration for "The Library, After" by Paula Friedlander

I’m pleased to add that this is now the fifth poem from Mythic Delirium to land a Rhysling Award. Here’s the complete list (with links):

• “Octavia Is Lost in the Hall of Masks,” Theodora Goss, 2004

• “Eating Light,” F.J. Bergmann, 2008

• “Song for an Ancient City,” Amal El-Mohtar, 2009

• “In the Astronaut Asylum,” Kendall Evans and Samantha Henderson, 2010

• “The Library, After,” Shira Lipkin, 2012

Posted in Awards, Editing, Mythic Delirium