by Brenda Gates Spielman
When my first book was published in 1979, I had no difficulty describing myself as an author. I even won an argument with a friend about whether it took more than one book for such a claim to be valid. We were both working on Master of Science degrees in the Engineering Department, so, of course, she went off to research, including talking to another of her friends who had published enough that she did consider him an author. She was trying to prove me wrong, but instead, she ended up agreeing that one published book did indeed make me an author.
Poetry, however, was an entirely different matter. I started writing poetry in high school, and poems were my first publications. A poem was even the first piece of writing that I got paid for ($15, a good sum for a poem in 1964). But for some reason, I felt it presumptuous to label myself a poet. When I had to write a bio, I would say, “Brenda Gates Spielman writes science fiction, fantasy, and mystery. And sometimes poetry.” I do not focus on my poetry as I do my novels; there are just times when an emotion is so intense, it demands to be expressed as a poem. In those cases, a sparsely worded poem enhances the emotion instead of diluting it in sentences and paragraphs.
I might go months between writing poems. Poems were not something I planned for; they just happened. Joy, grief, contentment, rage, all at different times demanded words and stanzas, which were then mostly put in a folder to “do something” with at some unspecified future date.
Poems were sometimes words that I would not, could not say out loud. Where other people might post emphatically on social media, I would write a poem and then file it away, catharsis accomplished, publication unnecessary.
Short stories and novels were written with the knowledge that they would one day be submitted, and submitted again, and again, and again, until someone published them or I gave up. Poems were just written and filed (paper files at first; later electronic ones) and only sometimes submitted. And, to my surprise, sometimes published. But I still did not consider myself a real poet.
And then SFWA wanted volunteers to work on a poetry committee during a period when I had some spare time to commit, and I ended up on a whole committee of real poets who published whole books of poems, who published epic poems. And lo and behold, they told me I was a poet too. It took a while to sink in, and I do not know if I will ever say, “Here I am, a Poet,” but I did revise my online bios to read “…writes science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and poetry.” And, to me, it was a big deal to delete that “and sometimes.” Maybe it was not a major revelation, but it was a modification of my view of myself.
Speculative poetry is a poetics of accessibility (definition excerpted from an email from Holly Lyn Walrath). It does not demand knowledge of iambic pentameter or how a sonnet is structured. It only requires imagination and words that speculate what might be. Some of my poetry is speculative, a lot isn’t. Some of my poetry rhymes, most doesn’t. But all of it speaks to me and, if I am lucky, one or two of them might speak to someone else. Because, isn’t that the point of all writing—no matter the form—to communicate with someone else, to tell a story, to share an emotion?
If you think that poetry is something separate from what you write, some exotic realm that you have never visited and are not sure that you want to visit, maybe you should reconsider. Delve into works that are crafted not sentence by sentence but word by word. It may be that you will never write a poem, only spend a moment or two in a bright image. But maybe you, too, will find that you have an inner poet who was just waiting for permission to emerge.
How many poems does it take to make you a poet? I would say one, published or unpublished. But how many poems does it take to make you believe you are a poet? That is a different question. It might be one, or it might be dozens, or it might just be having a committee of real poets accepting you.
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Brenda Gates Spielman writes mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, and poetry. Her prior publications include Lost Sun, a space opera; Death and Secrets, a mystery; Umbar, a FRP module; and short stories in Fantasy Book and Dragon Magazine. Her poems have appeared in the anthologies Never Forgotten and Whispering Willow Tree Poems. She has worked as a software engineer (avionics and telecommunication) and a teacher (HS and Adult Ed). Brenda lives near Richmond, VA. Her website is www.bgspielman.com.