2023 Halloween Poetry Reading

curated by Patricia Gomes

shimPoet Laureate of New Bedford, Massachusetts from 2014 to 2021, author and playwright Patricia Gomes is published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including the New England Horror Writers Anthologies, Wicked Women and Wicked Creatures. A Pushcart Prize nominee in 2008, 2018 and 2021, and a Rhysling nominee, Gomes is the author of four chapbooks. Ms. Gomes recent publications include Muddy River Review, Wicked Women, Apex and Abyss, and the anthology Daughters of Sarpedon. Ms. Gomes is the co-founder of the GNB Writers Block as well as a member of the Massachusetts Poetry Society, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, New England Horror Writers, and the Horror Writers Association.

To Possess

by Jean-Paul Garnier

Jean-Paul L. Garnier lives and writes in Joshua Tree, CA where he is the owner of Space Cowboy Books, a science fiction bookstore, independent publisher, and producer of Simultaneous Times podcast (2023 Laureate Award winner). He is the current editor of Star*Line Magazine, and deputy editor-in-chief of the soon to be launched Worlds of IF. He is the author of many books of fiction and poetry. https://spacecowboybooks.com/

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The Liminal Boy

by Silvatiicus Riddle

The Liminal Boy

by Silvatiicus Riddle

read by Eri Ferrer

Silvatiicus Riddle (He/They) is a Rhysling-Nominated Dark Fantasy & Speculative Fiction Writer and Poet. He was nominated for the 2023 Rhysling Award for his poem, “Exulansis”, which appeared in the penultimate issue of Liquid Imagination. He hails from the city of Gotham, and it is there that he hosts a glaring of chthonic gods disguised as cats, a hoard of books, and all of his imaginary friends. He has studied English and Literature at Kingsborough. He's appeared in Abyss & Apex, Dreams & Nightmares, Enchanted Living, Eternal Haunted Summer, and Spectral Realms, among others.

the inside of a closet door in black and white

The Closet Door

by Clarabelle Miray Fields

The Closet Door

by Clarabelle Miray Fields

Clarabelle Miray Fields is an award-winning, Rhysling-nominated writer from Boulder, Colorado. When not writing on the edges of reality, she enjoys watching 70s cult horror movies, drinking too much coffee, and being active outdoors. Her speculative work has appeared in the 2021 Rhysling Anthology, Corvid Queen, and elsewhere. Find out more at https://clarabellefields.com.

moon and clouds

Moon 300

by Leticia Toraci

Daughter-Witch

by Leticia Toraci

read by Diane Severson

Leticia Toraci is a Brazilian freelance writer, poet and artist who lives with her husband, her two sons and a cat in South Germany. She has a degree in Master of Food Science from the University of Reading, England. As a child, she won an Honorable Mention for two of her short stories in the Sao Paulo Public Servants Contest in 1986. She participated in theater in Campo Mourao, Brazil, where she recited several of her poems. She has also had art exhibits in Regensburg, Aschaffenburg and Munich, Germany.

an eerily lit funfair with a haunted house in the foreground

Haunted House on Funfair

by Robert Heiser (source)

Ghost at the Golden Fleece

by Colleen Anderson

Colleen Anderson is a multiple award nominee, and winner of the Rhysling Award in poetry, with work published in seven countries, such as Andromeda Spaceways, Space and Time, the award-winning Shadow Atlas, and Water: Sirens, Selkies & Sea Monsters. Rhysling nominated “Machine (r)Evolution” was in Tenebrous Press’s Brave New Weird. She lives in Vancouver and is a Ladies of Horror Fiction, Canada Council and BC Arts Council grant recipient. Author of two fiction collections, Embers Amongst the Fallen, and A Body of Work, and two poetry collections, I Dreamed a World, and The Lore of Inscrutable Dreams, Colleen is at work on more collections. www.colleenanderson.wordpress.com. "Ghost at the Golden Fleece" was first published in Star*Line #44.4, 2021.

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Grandmother Frets at Each Full Moon

by Kate Boyes

Grandmother Frets at Each Full Moon

by Kate Boyes

Kate Boyes is a speculative nature writer who focuses on the near-future environments of Earth, Mars, and several choice exoplanets. Her poetry is included in Climbing Lightly Through Forests (honoring the poetry of Ursula K. Le Guin), Bark & Bone, and the 2023 Horror Writers Association’s Poetry Showcase X. Her debut novel, Trapped in the R.A.W., was published by Aqueduct Press. Her latest writing project is The Misadventures of GRUB and Associates on Alt-Earth, a collection of political horror poetry that grew like a death cap toadstool from her nightmares about a recent ex-POTUS.

You've Been Warned

by Patricia Gomes

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Halloween Night Sestina

by Miguel O. Mitchell

Halloween Night Sestina

by Miguel O. Mitchell

Miguel O. Mitchell, PhD, is a Black speculative poet, science fiction and fantasy author, visual artist, and retired chemist. He is fond of putting chemical imagery and neologism in his poems. His poems have appeared in Star*Line, Eye to the Telescope, Dreams and Nightmares, and Scifaikuest. Two of his poems, "A Descendant's Gift" and "Becoming," were nominated for the 2022 Rhysling Award in the Long Poem category, and "Becoming" was included in the anthology The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction (2022). With David C. Kopaska-Merkel, he co-edited the Dwarf Stars 2023 Anthology.

The Giants of Kandahar

by Anna Cates

Dr. Anna Cates resides in Wilmington, Ohio with her cats, Freddie and Fifi. She teaches college writing and literature and graduate education as an online instructor. She is author of the following collections: The Meaning of Life and The Frog King (Cyberwit Press), The Darkroom (Prolific Press), The Golem & the Nazi (Red Moon Press), The Journey (Resource Publications), Love in the Time of Covid (Wipf & Stock), and The Poison Tree: A Peace Play (Wipf & Stock).

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Granite Tears on Halloween

by RK Rugg

Granite Tears on Halloween

by RK Rugg

RK Rugg is a dark academic whose speculative poetry was recently short-listed for the Asimov's Readers' Favorites. He writes, researches and teaches in the heart of the Bridgewater Triangle. More info at RaymondKRugg.com.

Halloween Rave

by Julie Shiel

Julie Shiel lives in Maryland with a ginger feline fluffball and a dilute tortie that keeps him in line. She has a pair of crows named Zoltan and Zelda that visit her daily just to tease the cats. Her work appears in issues of Strange Horizons, Space & Time Magazine, Eye To The Telescope, Penumbric and others. When not writing she grows a moon garden and communes with her local murder.

The Confines Of Room 19

by Jeff Oliver

Jeff Oliver was born in Baltimore, Maryland on April 6th, 1982. A poet by passion and father of eight beautiful children, his dedication to his family and his craft is second to none. Currently residing in Western New York State, he is a writer of intense emotions, having started composing his dark poetry at just 11 years old. His gift for transforming darkness to words shone brightly from a young age. Jeff Oliver’s poetry has an ethereal quality. When others may have been destroyed from such a devastating darkness, he manages to weave lyrical justice into an otherwise unfair world. His published works include Venomous Words, Strange Sounds, Poetic Fiction: Journals of Silent Screams, Scattered Thoughts: Volumes I, II, and III, New World Monsters, and Infinite Black: Tales from the Abyss. "The Confines Of Room 19" appeared in Rooms: From the Confines of Room 19: An excerpt from Infinite Black: Tales From The Abyss.

Many Haunted Returns

by Adele Gardner

Adele Gardner (they/them) has a poetry collection, Halloween Hearts, from Jackanapes Press and over 475 stories, poems, art, and articles in Clarkesworld, Analog, Strange Horizons, PodCastle, Daily Science Fiction, and more. A full/active member of HWA and SFWA and a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, Adele serves as literary executor for father, mentor, and namesake Delbert R. Gardner and was cochair of the 2022 Dwarf Stars Award with Greer Woodward: https://sfpoetry.com/ds/22dwarfstars.html

“Many Haunted Returns” appears in Adele Gardner’s poetry collection Halloween Hearts, available from Jackanapes Press: https://www.jackanapespress.com/product/halloween-hearts

An artistically blurred photo of two people dressed in dark clothes and wearing face paint, one with a witch's hat. Behind them is a row of apartment buildings.

The Hallowe'en Homicides, NYC, October 31st, 1981

by LindaAnn LoSchiavo

The Hallowe'en Homicides, NYC, October 31st, 1981

by LindaAnn LoSchiavo

Native New Yorker LindaAnn LoSchiavo (she/her), a four time nominee for The Pushcart Prize, was also nominated for Best of the Net, Balcones Poetry Prize, an Ippy, a Firecracker Award, the Rhysling Award, and Dwarf Stars. She is a member of SFPA, British Fantasy Society, and The Dramatists Guild. Recent titles: "A Route Obscure and Lonely" (Elgin winner), "Women Who Were Warned," and "Messengers of the Macabre." Forthcoming in 2023: "Apprenticed to the Night" (UniVerse Press), "Felones de Se: Poems about Suicide" (Ukiyoto), and "Vampire Ventures" (Alien Buddha Press). Forthcoming in 2024: "Cancer Courts My Mother" (Penumbra / Stanislaus State College).

Beware of the Conjuror

by H. Russell Smith

read by Fabra

H. Russell Smith lives at the intersection of mystery and enigma. A mad scientist and kind-hearted supervillain, he loves writing about space aliens, robots, cryptids, and the supernatural. Don't try to find him--he'll find you at the least opportune moment. This poem is read by NYC's Master of Dead Language Resurrection, Fabra.

Nephilim Rising

by Keech Ballard

read by Diane Severson

Keech Ballard. Ghost Writer on the Storm. https://keechballard.com

Acrylic on paper. A large grey moth hovers outside a yellow square suggesting a window, over a mottled background of black and yellow. The moth has underwings that are orange and black and suggest a jack-o-lantern face.

A Moth of Course

by Leslie Laurence

A Moth of Course

by Leslie Laurence

Leslie Laurence resides in a purple house in Northern California. A painter and digital artist, she is picking up the pen she set down twenty years ago.

a black dragon stands in front of an open door before a house lit from within, surrounded by pumpkins and bare trees

Tiny Dragon at My Door

by Akua Lezli Hope

a black person in a coat and hat holds a glowing pumpkin lantern in front of a street lined with houses, pumpkins, and leaves

The Invisible Black Boy

by Akua Lezli Hope

a black person with natural hair sits amidst notes and drawings, next to two creepy dolls with spikes protruding from their heads

Poor Black Kids Make Magic

by Akua Lezli Hope

a pale-skinned person in a jacket and hat holds a glowing lantern in front of bare tree branches adorned with skulls

The Invisible Boy

by Akua Lezli Hope


people in ceramic masks stand in a group, covered in dead leaves and branches

Masks

by Akua Lezli Hope

Masks

by Akua Lezli Hope

Akua Lezli Hope, a Grandmaster of Fantastic Poetry, is an award-winning creator, wisdom seeker & paraplegic who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, metal, & wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music, sculpture, adornments & peace. Author of Embouchure: Poems on Jazz and Other Musics (Writer’s Digest award winner), Them Gone, & Otherwheres: Speculative Poetry (2021 Elgin Award), she edited NOMBONO: (the first) Anthology of Speculative Poetry by BIPOC Creators. She created The Speculative Sunday Poetry Reading Series in 2020, now in its 4th season.

skeletons, ghosts, and spiders painted on top of a photo of a room

Bloody Ghouls

by John C. Mannone

Bloodlust

by John C. Mannone

John C. Mannone has poems in Windhover, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry South, Baltimore Review, and others. He won a Dwarf Stars Award (2020); was awarded an HWA Scholarship (2017), a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature; and served as celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). His full-length collections are Disabled Monsters (Linnet’s Wings Press, 2015), Flux Lines (Linnet’s Wings Press, 2022), Sacred Flute (Iris Press, 2023), and Song of the Mountains (Middle Creek Publishing, 2023). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and other journals. He’s a professor of physics teaching mathematics in Tennessee. https://www.facebook.com/jcmannone/

The Higher Dimensions

by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

David C. Kopaska-Merkel won the 2006 Rhysling award for best long poem (for a collaboration with Kendall Evans), and edits Dreams & Nightmares magazine (since 1986). He has edited Star*line and several Rhysling anthologies, co-edited the 2023 Dwarf Stars anthology, and is an SFPA Grandmaster. His poems have been published in Asimov’s, Analog, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. His latest collection, Some Disassembly Required, winner of the 2023 Elgin award, was published by Diminuendo Press in 2022. "The Higher Dimensions" was originally published in Black Petals, 1995. Blog: https://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/

A close up of a vulture's staring face

Vulture Eyes

by James Hall

Lena Slack

by James Hall

James Hall’s poetry collection Prairie Roots will be released later this year by Shanti Arts Publishing. His poems have appeared in Front Porch Review, Blood and Thunder, Love in the Time of Covid, Deep Overstock and others. Lena Slack was published in The Stratford Quarterly Issue 1 Autumn 2021 ISSN 2563-3619 and appears in his upcoming poetry collection, Prairie Roots.

Little Red Loves

by Pankaj Khemka

Pankaj Khemka is a practicing physician by day and an aspiring poet by night. His work has appeared in Star*Line, Rattle, and Ghost Light. He lives in Orange, California with Floyd the Ficus.

Thrusting Into Reverence

by Bill Ratner

Bill Ratner is a Best of the Net Poetry Nominee (Lascaux Review), published in Best Small Fictions 2021 (Sonder Press), poetry collection: Fear of Fish (Alien Buddha Press), poetry chapbook: To Decorate a Casket (Finishing Line Press), Missouri Review Audio, Baltimore Review, Chiron Review, Feminine Collective, and other journals. Bill is a 9-time winner of the Moth StorySLAM, 2-time winner of Best of The Hollywood Fringe Extension Award for Solo Performance. Readings featured on National Public Radio’s Good Food, The Business, and KCRW’s Strangers. Bill is a certified volunteer grief counsellor, an officer in his union SAG-AFTRA, and earns his living as a voice actor. https://billratner.com/author

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Don't Open The Box

by Kyla Lee Ward

Don't Open The Box

by Kyla Lee Ward

Kyla Lee Ward is a Sydney-based creative whose work has garnered Australian Shadows and Aurealis awards. She has placed in the Rhyslings and received multiple Stoker and Ditmar nominations. Reviewers have accused her of being “gothic and esoteric”, “weird and exhilarating” and of “giving me a nightmare.” This Attraction Now Late is her first collection of short fiction, released in September 2022 by Independent Legions Publishing. This joins the previously-published The Macabre Modern and The Land of Bad Dreams, collections of poetry and essays from P’rea Press."Don't Open The Box" was first published in The Macabre Modern and Other Morbidities, by Kyla Lee Ward, P'rea Press, 2019. To see some more strange things, try http://www.kylaward.com

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Picky Zombie

by S. T. Eleu

Picky Zombie

by S. T. Eleu

Raised in Vegas then exiled to Chicago, S. T. Eleu (they, them) has been a musician, teacher, and consummate Vulcan. Autism is their default universe, and though sparsely populated, is a glorious place to escape to, write in, and display an impressive collection of action figures. Their most recent publications were in Divergents Magazine, New Feathers Anthology, Haven Spec, and Aphelion Webzine.

Previous Halloween Readings


2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006

All publication rights revert to poet.
Submissions are now open.

Submission Guidelines

  • Send up to 5 audio poems in mp3 format and/or 5 images in 300-pixel-wide .jpeg or .png format, with a 100-word-max bio, to Patricia at patg73@hotmail.com with the subject line: "SFPA 2023 Halloween: [Creator's name]." No more than one poem per poet will be accepted. Preference will be given to artwork submitted by poets to complement their poems.
  • Reprints are allowed. Please provide the name of the publication and date of first appearance (If your work is available online, please include the link).
  • No payment. SFPA acquires one-time electronic rights for audio and images. (Please note that for the purposes of Rhysling Award nominations, posting on the SFPA poetry page counts as publication.)
  • DEADLINE: Submissions are now open. Please send all material by October 26. Accepted work will be added throughout the month of October.
  • Please keep in mind when selecting a poem to record that Halloween is a popular children's holiday. If we feel that there is a problem with using a specific piece, either because of the content of the poem or the quality of the recording, the editor will contact the poet about it directly.
  • QUESTIONS? Email editor regarding submissions or the Halloween page at patg73@hotmail.com with the subject line "SFPA Halloween."

Thanks to the SFPA members who have contributed their poetry and art to this page. All recordings and images are copyrighted by their respective authors and used by permission.

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