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alexandraerin...to the great and powerful ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
csecooney for her 2011 Rhysling win in the category of long-form poetry for her work "The Sea-King's Second Bride".
As a bonus for this being belated, I can also offer congratulations to the almightytithenai for her Rhysling win in the category of short-form poetry for her work "Peach Creamed Honey", the entry for Day 2 of her book The Honey Month.
This is only possible belatedly, because she won belatedly... after the poem that was initially declared winner was disqualified on account of the year 2009 not having occurred during 2010 after all, or so I understand. These poetry rules are so technical, I swear I can't begin to understand how it all works.
My dear, dear friendpopelizbet (who has recently discovered that she is secretly the Gregory Maguire of genre poetry) was also nominated in the long-form category for her incrediblepoem "Anything So Utterly Destroyed" (you can read it in Issue 17 of Apex for a reasonable price, or you can read her talking about it for free here), but I say with all the love I have in my heart for her that I am so glad that Claire and Amal won together.
Two of my strongest and most powerful memories of WisCon 34 (the one from before this year, the first one I went to) are associated with readings that were given (separately) by Claire Cooney and Amal El-Mohtar.
In the former case, I attended a reading called Goblin Girls and Bedlam Boys that included her. I was there in order to support my friend and circus family membershadesong and was absolutely blown away by Claire's reading from The Book of The Big Bah-Ha, a then-unpublished novella I raved about earlier this year.
In the latter case, I was at what was my favorite reading overall, the Split Tongues reading. The words were gorgeous and powerful and blunt. I don't remember everything that was read at it, but some things have stuck with me:
shveta_thakrar read a story that... after perusing her bibliography... I believe was "Padmamukhi (the Lotus-Mouthed), Nelumbonaceae nelumbo", but whatever it was, the mixture of mythology and a first-person account rooted in the hyper-real was haunting in all the good ways.
pgdudda performed a bilingual poem called "Train Go Sorry", which did more to cement the fact that ASL is not just a different way of communicating in English but a different language than anything else I've ever witnessed... usually, if something in ASL is conveyed to a hearing audience, it's all translated into hearing idioms for us.
And Amal read (in addition to some words belonging to the sadly absentshweta_narayanThe Honey Month, a lascivious and juicy and cool and sweet poem that begins something like, "They say she likes to suck peaches."
That poem? It is, of course, the one that won her the Rhysling.
By the time she had finished performing it, I knew that I needed to get a hold of a copy of that book and get it signed, because I was leaving Madison at the end of the con to fly to Hagerstown for what was to be only my second visit with Jack and I was determined that he should have a copy of that book so that I could stand before him and read it to him.
I've probably told this entire story on this blog and I've probably done so more than once, but to make a long story short*, that performance not only made me a fan of Amal's, but it led to me becoming a friend of hers, as well, when our whole big troupe ended up in her hotel room in the waning hours of a convention night.
Anyway... so Claire and Amal were already linked in my mind in a big way, as having both blown me away with their readings, and in the year since then as I've overcome some of my shyness and interacted more with the two of them online I've realized how very dear they are to each other. All those Facebook conversations I have been privileged to witness and take part in means that in my mind, where there is Claire there is Amal and where there is Amal there is Claire...
So to see a Claire-win without an Amal-win basically means that the entire universe is in danger of sliding out of balance and I'm glad the Rhysling folks realized that before we were all destroyed by flying space monkeys.
(Wow, still writing posts about WisCon 34. I really am behind in my blogging.)
csecooney for her 2011 Rhysling win in the category of long-form poetry for her work "The Sea-King's Second Bride".As a bonus for this being belated, I can also offer congratulations to the almighty
tithenai for her Rhysling win in the category of short-form poetry for her work "Peach Creamed Honey", the entry for Day 2 of her book The Honey Month. This is only possible belatedly, because she won belatedly... after the poem that was initially declared winner was disqualified on account of the year 2009 not having occurred during 2010 after all, or so I understand. These poetry rules are so technical, I swear I can't begin to understand how it all works.
My dear, dear friend
popelizbet (who has recently discovered that she is secretly the Gregory Maguire of genre poetry) was also nominated in the long-form category for her incrediblepoem "Anything So Utterly Destroyed" (you can read it in Issue 17 of Apex for a reasonable price, or you can read her talking about it for free here), but I say with all the love I have in my heart for her that I am so glad that Claire and Amal won together.Two of my strongest and most powerful memories of WisCon 34 (the one from before this year, the first one I went to) are associated with readings that were given (separately) by Claire Cooney and Amal El-Mohtar.
In the former case, I attended a reading called Goblin Girls and Bedlam Boys that included her. I was there in order to support my friend and circus family member
shadesong and was absolutely blown away by Claire's reading from In the latter case, I was at what was my favorite reading overall, the Split Tongues reading. The words were gorgeous and powerful and blunt. I don't remember everything that was read at it, but some things have stuck with me:
shveta_thakrar read a story that... after perusing her bibliography... I believe was "Padmamukhi (the Lotus-Mouthed), Nelumbonaceae nelumbo", but whatever it was, the mixture of mythology and a first-person account rooted in the hyper-real was haunting in all the good ways.pgdudda performed a bilingual poem called "Train Go Sorry", which did more to cement the fact that ASL is not just a different way of communicating in English but a different language than anything else I've ever witnessed... usually, if something in ASL is conveyed to a hearing audience, it's all translated into hearing idioms for us. And Amal read (in addition to some words belonging to the sadly absent
shweta_narayanThe Honey Month, a lascivious and juicy and cool and sweet poem that begins something like, "They say she likes to suck peaches."That poem? It is, of course, the one that won her the Rhysling.
By the time she had finished performing it, I knew that I needed to get a hold of a copy of that book and get it signed, because I was leaving Madison at the end of the con to fly to Hagerstown for what was to be only my second visit with Jack and I was determined that he should have a copy of that book so that I could stand before him and read it to him.
I've probably told this entire story on this blog and I've probably done so more than once, but to make a long story short*, that performance not only made me a fan of Amal's, but it led to me becoming a friend of hers, as well, when our whole big troupe ended up in her hotel room in the waning hours of a convention night.
Anyway... so Claire and Amal were already linked in my mind in a big way, as having both blown me away with their readings, and in the year since then as I've overcome some of my shyness and interacted more with the two of them online I've realized how very dear they are to each other. All those Facebook conversations I have been privileged to witness and take part in means that in my mind, where there is Claire there is Amal and where there is Amal there is Claire...
So to see a Claire-win without an Amal-win basically means that the entire universe is in danger of sliding out of balance and I'm glad the Rhysling folks realized that before we were all destroyed by flying space monkeys.
(Wow, still writing posts about WisCon 34. I really am behind in my blogging.)