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5 Reasons Poets are Secretly Science Fiction Wizards
by Writing Workshops Staff
A week ago
5 Reasons Poets are Secretly Science Fiction Wizards
When I was in my MFA program, one of the first questions you’d hear upon meeting a fellow student is, “are you a poet or fiction writer?” Your answer to this question had a kind of mystical effect—no matter what you said, your conversation partner would start to see you a certain way. And, maybe you, dear reader, see yourself a certain based on your answer to this question: what does it mean to “be a poet”? Or a “fiction writer,” for that matter? Why is there pressure to be one or the other when you could be both?
Of course, like many questions, these questions have a nearly endless supply of answers. That said, I’d argue that one of the things being a poet means is that you’re secretly (or not so secretly) pretty good at writing science fiction—even if you’ve never done it. Here’s five reasons why, though if you’re already convinced (yay, you!), you should sign up for my Science Fiction for Poets class, starting August 4, running for four weeks asynchronously.
1: You’re Already Building Worlds
When we think of some of the giants of science fiction—Octavia Butler, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin—their ability to build fantastic, rich, and textured worlds is one of the first things that come to mind.
Poets do that too, but much, much faster—often in just a line or phrase, and with that, we have a rich emotional landscape before us. Take the opening line to Stanley Kunitz’s “Touch me”: “Summer is late, my heart.” Immediately we have a relationship and a setting—we feel summer dwindling, coneflowers gone to seed, the thinnest glimmer of a storm approaching, in the sadness of “late” and “heart.” We feel the speaker’s love and desire. We sense epiphany on the horizon.
2. You Like it Weird
Much of science fiction relies on surprising approaches to consensus reality. Take The Matrix’s basic premise: what if what we experience is just a simulation imposed upon us by our robot overlords? Once Neo realizes “there is no spoon” (a visual poem in the midst of this action film), the film exposes its lyrical heart: what else can happen, when you realize the power of the imagination?
Sara Eliza Johnson’s debut collection Bone Map is a wonderful example of world-building in poetry as well as the value of weirdness. In her poem “When There is Burning Instead,” she writes
“…I will not be afraid of them
because my blood is bitter
and my marrow rancid
and my skin is a linen of bees
and my tongue is split
into two songs, two branches
that grow soured figs
up through the charred
rubble of my throat.”
A tongue that turns into two branches growing “soured figs” residing within a body composed of a “linen of bees” feels like the result of some genetic modification gone wrong—in a truly beautiful, haunting, and evocative way. So sci-fi.
3. You Ask the Tough Questions
As Walidah Imarisha offers in her introduction to Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, “whenever we try to envision a world without war, without violence, without prisons, without capitalism, we are engaging in speculative fiction. All organizing is science fiction.” What is a poem but a vision of the world that could be—that might be—of worlds that coexist alongside and within this one?
At the heart of science fiction is the question, “what if”? What if we met an alien species who experienced time differently than we do?[1] What if humans could be bred to increase their psychic powers?[2] What if the United States was bio-engineering mermaids to explore / colonize the ocean floor?[3]
My favorite poets accomplish the same kind of questioning in their work. Take the deep wondering at the center of Claire Wahmanholm’s Meltwater, for instance: what if one could visit the last glaciers on earth? What if there was a future with no children in it?
Or, this wonderful list poem by Chen Chen: “12 Questions.”
4. You Know Plot Isn’t The Only Way to Create Momentum
Some of my favorite science fiction stories, particularly those we’ll encounter in my class, are driven by character development, rich language, vibrant settings. If you are reluctant to write fiction because you have a hard time coming up with “what happens next” (same here!), then ask yourself: what if a story is driven by something other than action?
What if conflict came through a language barrier between two alien species?
What if your story was the inner monologue of an alien’s first encounter with a human (or human made object)?
What if a machine dreamed (of electric sheep or otherwise)?
What if…you get the drift. You can bring all your poetic sensibilities to prose. All you’re leaving behind is the line breaks.
5. You’ve Got a Playful Heart
Whether you’re a strict formalist or a free verse afficionado, you know that the best poems arise from surprise, from pushing at the edges of your comfort zone, the edges of your universe—and into a multiverse of possibilities.
So, if for no other reason, you should try writing some science fiction (with me! in August!) because it’ll spice up your poetry. You can write a story and scavenge it for the best parts. Or be a rebel and just write poems instead—I won’t stop you. Whether you leave my class with a stack of stories, a flash of fiction, or a bounty of words you can sculpt into your metal album about an alien takeover, you’ll come out of it refreshed: like a cyborg after a tune-up, a space fleet after a long cold sleep, a time traveler returning to their favorite birthday.
[1] Such as the aliens in Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life,” which we’ll be reading in my class!
[2] Please read Octavia Butler’s The Patternist Series if this question haunts you.
[3] Seanan McGuire’s got the answer to that in “Each to Each.”
Amie Whittemore (she/her) is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Nest of Matches (Autumn House Press), and the chapbook Hesitation Waltz (Midwest Writing Center). She was the 2020-2021 Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Her poems have won multiple awards, including a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, and her writing has appeared in Blackbird, Colorado Review, Terrain.org, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at Eastern Illinois University.
