New Zealand Poetry Society Te Hunga Tito Ruri o Aotearoa
Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand
Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand ed by Mark Pirie & Tim Jones (Interactive Publications, 2009) ISBN 1921479213
Joanna Preston
When you think about science fiction, do you think of poetry? No? Well it's looking like time you did.
Any anthology has to try and balance the twin concerns of breadth and depth; having enough different contributors to provide interest and multiplicity, whilst maintaining the overall quality and coherence of the collection as a single entity. My initial concern about Voyagers was that there simply wouldn't be enough good material - after all, how many New Zealand poets actually write science fiction poetry?
As it turns out, the answer to that question is: quite a lot. More than 70 poets have work in Voyagers; from major luminaries like Fleur Adcock, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell and A.R.D. Fairburn, to protostellar entities like Katherine Liddy, Seán McMahon and Meliors Simms. Most are represented by only one or two poems, the vast majority of which are typical modern NZ free verse lyrics. They range in tone and mood from wonder (as in Nic Hill's ‘Somewhere Else'), through gleeful weirdness (Helen Rickerby's ‘Tabloid Headlines') and ‘Martian' strangeness (Tracie McBride's ‘Contact' and Jane Matheson's gorgeous ‘An Alien's Notes on first seeing a prunus-plum tree'), to the bleakness that has long made dystopian fiction one of science fiction's classic concerns (Fleur Adcock's brilliant dystopian epic ‘Gas' being one of the collection's highlights).
In their introduction, editors Mark Pirie and Tim Jones offer a very useful explanation of their working definition of science fiction - a literature of change; often (but not always) set in the future; counterfactual, with deviations from our own universe based on (or extrapolated from) genuine scientific principals. So magic is out, but future (or secret) technology is in. And merely describing things of an astronomical or non-terrestrial nature is also insufficient, unless there is some definite speculative component.
A good definition, although it leads me to question some inclusions. For example, the opening poem, ‘the poetry of the future' by Anna Rugis, doesn't appear to have anything to do with science fiction other than using the word ‘future' in the title, unless you argue that a change from written poetry to gestural poetry is an example of technological evolution, which seems a stretch. Jenny Argante's ‘Space Age Lover' equally fails to convince - it's packed with science fiction terms (like "trans-galactic surge" and "rocket-orbit link"), but they feel like decorations added to help the poem qualify for inclusion. It feels like an exercise, rather than a poem.
That said, the anthology overwhelmingly works. No matter what your particular tastes are (‘not so keen on aliens, but I like robots', ‘give me Space Opera every time!' or even ‘I don't go in for that kind of thing, it's too weird'); whether you're a poetry fan cautiously venturing into science fiction or a science fiction fan venturing out into poetry, Voyagers has poems you'll love, and poems that will stretch your imagination. What more could you ask of any anthology?
