Several of my pieces have been reviewed over the past few weeks. I’ve collected the links here:
Charles Payseur reviewed My Heart Is Set On Wandering in Quick Sips as part of his review of Strange Horizons. Delighted to be featured with EP Beaumont in the review. Strange Horizons’ October poetry podcast also featured Ciro Faienza reading the same poem, alongside EP Beaumont’s chilling, “Their Song”, a timely examination of how real history becomes retold as myths and fables, just a few weeks ahead of the contentious American election. (I am a distant poem-uncle of this piece, and am frequently blamed for making EP into a poetry writer, so it thrills me to see such an important poem so warmly received.)
Editor Shannon Connor Winward wrote a lovely, long series of posts (begins here) about the poems in Eye To The Telescope’s Ghost issue, including her thoughts on choosing my poem “The Doppelganger and the Ghost” among the series. It’s lovely when an editor immediately grasps a poem on multiple levels, and Shannon clearly understood the way a folklore monster story-poem came to stand in for the experiences of dysphoria and social death that haunt many trans people. (Мind the trigger warnings for dysphoria and transphobia in the poem & its write-up.)
Finally, in an exciting first for me, Gillian Daniels reviewed my first short story “Backgame” in Myriad Lands II for Fantastic Stories of the Imagination with great sensitivity and thoughtfulness, exploring the apocalyptic elements of the story & tying them to the bigger trend of asking “how do we live after/as it all falls down?” in post-apocalyptic stories. Available from Amazon as a paperback or kindle copy (affiliate link!), it’s also available in other formats and from other retailers for global readers. If you haven’t picked up “Myriad Lands II”, it’s full of wonderful stories set in fantastical landscapes that aren’t quite familiar.
I had intended to release a poem around my birthday and haven’t quite gotten around to it yet but look soon for what’s probably my last poem (re)release of 2016. I’m also building material for the launch of a patreon with my spouse, Aleksei I. Valentin, hopefully in December. A busy end-of-the-year, but rather behind the scenes!
Lev Mirov 