Saqer @saqeram@wandering.shop

#introductions

Hi folks, I'm Saqer. I'm an academic, finishing up grad school. I spend a lot of time translating short science fiction into Arabic, but haven't published any yet because reasons. Maybe that will change over the next year.

I also spend a lot of time listening to audiobooks of scifi novels, and the usual scifi podcasts. I spend a lot of time also wondering about backstories of minor characters and societal myths and languages in scifi.

I’m consuming a lot of horror these day, and I just googled “apple head doll” and I’m horrified. Anyways, that’s all because of @ethereallad’s story “Dessiccant” on @NightlightPod https://nightlightpod.com/episode/312-desiccant-by-craig-laurance-gidney/

I've been out of it. But I'm back to reading poems today.

Brigid Nemeton's #poem "A Training Session" is really interesting with this gestalt consciousness arising in it, and also the podcast version is interesting to hear.

http://strangehorizons.com/poetry/a-training-session/

I dug around the Strange Horizons archives and found a poem that suits my mood all the way back from 2000 by Wendy Rathbone titled "Grief"

And let me tell you: the five elements improved my mood.

http://strangehorizons.com/poetry/grief/

Yesterday I ended up reading Anna Cates's "Three Triolets"

The description of the outsides were cool, but I had to look up eglantines.

http://strangehorizons.com/poetry/three-triolets/

Okay, maybe two more! "Particularities" and "Consistencies" by S. Qiouyi Lu

The nice thing about both poems is the notion of home. I like Consistencies more only because I like the equal character length in each line.

http://inkscrawl.net/issue9-dec2015/lu-consistencies.html

http://inkscrawl.net/issue9-dec2015/lu-particularities.html

I guess I post links to two poems at a time pretty regularly so today both #poems are by Dominik Parisien, both published in Uncanny.

1. Afternoon with Grandparents
2. To a Dying Friend

https://uncannymagazine.com/article/afternoon-with-grandparents/

https://uncannymagazine.com/article/to-a-dying-friend/

So to catch up with a few more #poems. I stumbled on these translations by Kenji C. Liu of Morio Hayashida.

Three poems, link to the Translator's Note, click next for each poem:
1 Where to Go
2 Winter, Twenty-Four Years Old
3 Sick in a Foreign Country

http://waxwingmag.org/items/issue22/42_Liu-Translators-Note.php

I'm reading Ashley Bao's "a siren whispered in my ear one night"

This #poem plays with my feelings about home and the changes in a home.

https://arsenika.ink/poetry/a-siren-whispered-in-my-ear-one-night/

The #poem for December 6 is Valerie Valdes's "Making Accommodations"

This is quite a brilliant poem and the metaphor is quite lovely (at least from my perspective as a hobby bookbinder)

https://uncannymagazine.com/article/making-accommodations/

As usual I'm catching up, but just in time Strange Horizons just published 3 #poems for their Mexico special issue. The poems are by Raúl Gallardo Flores, Ruperta Bautista Vázquez, and Gabriel Ascencio Morales, with translators Juan Martínez and Morgan L. Ventura.

I'm linking the podcast, but the page links to the individual poems for your reading.

http://strangehorizons.com/podcasts/podcast-mexico-special-issue-poetry/

Looks like I missed yesterday's #poem because I'm slipping in and out of Zoom conference sessions so today I am doing two both by Noor Hindi:

"Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying"
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/154658/fuck-your-lecture-on-craft-my-people-are-dying

and

"Breaking [News]"
"https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/154659/breaking-news

Would you look at that, November ending, I'm reading Kurt Newton's "Earworm Indoctrination"

I'm reading it because my ear's blocked, and I dug around for a #poem that suits the mood.

http://eyetothetelescope.com/archives/033issue.html

A few more days of November, but I'm reading June Jordan's #poem

The best part of "Letter to the Local Police" is all the flowers.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48760/letter-to-the-local-police

November 28, It's Josh Pearce's #poem "Mare Anguis"

The way this poem moves scares me because it makes me think of the way oceans move.

https://mithilareview.com/pearce_06_20/