11 week long collaboration

11 week long collaboration

Irish poet John W. Sexton has this note in the June 2006 issue of LYNX describing scifabulenga:

A Scifabulenga is a linked poem expressing science fictional and fabulistic elements, each separate link being a one-line scifaiku (here termed scifabulaiku). The themes and subject matter being all those elements common to the literature of science fantasy, from alternate history to alternate worlds to future visions to sociological satire, encompassing the general impingement of the fantastic into the logical universe. A scifabulenga is composed of 13 one-line links, with two paragraph breaks, forming two quintets divided by a central tercet. It can be composed solo or with two writing partners.

In that same issue is a collaborative scifabulenga John wrote with Moira Richards:

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This is a good example of the formal elements and of the SF/fantastic subject matter (space, genetic engineering, androids, dinosaurs, monsters, creation, and transcendence). The kaleidoscopic surreal sense is typical as well as the way the images shift constantly renga-style. John’s series of standalone scifabulaiku is in the June 2006 issue of Triptych Haiku:

Scifabulaiku

And from John’s piece in Triptych “Scifabulaiku: Notes towards a new speculative vanguard haiku” comes this description of this one-line form:

Scifabulaiku should contain a discernable narrative or fantastic “situation”. No less than its cousin, the fictional story, its scientific concept or premise should be encapsulated in a compressed “plot”. The aim here should be to approximate what the Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso was attempting in his celebrated one-sentence short stories.

I have a vested interest in promoting this new kind of verse. John and I have been busy working on a series of scifabulenga since the 20th of April. Working two poems at a time, we would trade lines back and forth until we had fleshed out the skeletons to our satisfaction. We just recently completed the set and are now showing it to those who would be in a position to get them out to an audience (one has already been accepted for publication on the Web later this year). I am happy with the way these turned out and enjoyed the process of writing much.

I shall post more information on that collection when the time comes.

Last modified: Thu Nov 30 07:24:38 EST 2006

Frabjous Times

11 week long collaboration