Rhysling Award | |
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Awarded for | Best speculative poetry of the prior year |
Country | United States |
Presented by | Science Fiction Poetry Association |
Website | http://www.sfpoetry.com/rhyswin.html ![]() |
The Rhysling Awards are an annual award given for the best science fiction, fantasy, or horror poem of the year. The award name was dubbed by Andrew Joron in reference to a character in a science fiction story: the blind poet Rhysling, in Robert A. Heinlein's short story "The Green Hills of Earth".[1] The award is given in two categories: "Best Long Poem", for works of 50 or more lines, and "Best Short Poem", for works of 49 or fewer lines.[1]
The nominees for each year's Rhysling Awards are chosen by the members of the Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA). Each member may nominate one work for each of the categories. The nominated works are then compiled into an anthology called The Rhysling Anthology, and members of the Association then vote on the final winners. From 2005 to 2011, the Awards were presented in July at a ceremony at Readercon. While the "Best Short Poem" category allows very short poems to be entered the SFPA also has the Dwarf Stars Award which is for poems from one to ten lines.[2]
In 2005, the SFPA published an anthology of the winning poems, The Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase.[3][4]
This collection presents more than twenty-five years of the best poetry in the field of speculative literature.