I was going to do a much longer and more complicated blog post tonight, but I’m too tired. So instead, this is just to say that I have a copy of Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand sitting right here besides me, and that feels good!
Mark Pirie and I started on this project in 2004, when we called for submissions for our planned anthology of New Zealand science fiction poetry. While submissions were coming in, we went off and deepened our knowledge of New Zealand poetry by looking for previously-published SF poems. (Well, I deepened my knowledge – Mark’s was pretty deep already.)
By mid-2005, we had the first version of the manuscript pretty much sorted out. As I’ve previously recounted, finding a publisher proved to be difficult, and we were very pleased when Interactive Publications of Brisbane took the project on in 2008. We couldn’t include all the poems we wished, but those we have included look rather good to me. You can find sample poems from the book, by David Gregory, Meg Campbell and Mary Cresswell, at the Voyagers mini-site (bottom right of that page).
Mark and I will be sending out contributors’ and review copies over the next couple of weeks. There will be a New Zealand launch for Voyagers in July, but if you’d like to get a copy while it’s fresh off the presses, you can buy it from Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle e-book (search for “Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry”), or from Fishpond in New Zealand. You can also find out more about Voyagers, and buy it directly from the publisher, at the Voyagers mini-site.
Yay Tim! Congratulations to you and Mark for getting this project completed.