People Are Going To Be Walking On My Poetry

The city of St. Paul had a poetry contest, and I am one of the 20 winners. The prize is getting your poem installed on a city sidewalk for people to read. There is also going to be an anthology.

My fiction is always some kind of SF -- science fiction, fantasy, alternate history. But most of my poetry is realistic. Don't ask me why.

I did write a 65 page epic poem many years ago. It's set in the world of Spenser's Faerie Queene, though I was not crazy enough to use Spenser's stanza. That was fantasy. I've never figured out what to do with it. There is not much call for epic poems these days, even short epic poems.

I'm happy about the sidewalk poem. I like popular art forms, and there isn't much more popular -- or more urban -- than a sidewalk.

P.S. I sent 3 poems to the contest. Today I found out which poem got picked: not the two sweet poems about flowers and the moon, but the poem about a homeless man bringing everything he owned onto a bus.