Prompt: When you think about poetry, you might be used to exploring themes of romantic, deep, complex emotions, mythology, self-love, identity and the like. But sometimes these explorations of the self or the world can be expressed through an otherworldliness lense: Science Fiction. As Wallace Stevens said, “All poetry is experimental poetry.” Aliens, astronauts, the vastness of space, monsters, and clones can all have their place in poetry and still keep us connected to the human condition—poems that blur the line between speculation and reality. The experience of reading poetry can even feel risky, like entering another world, even if just for a few moments. If you value diversity, weirdness, contradiction and outer space in your reading, check out these out-of-this-world poems for science fiction fans. ANIARA BY HARRY MARTINSON We’re slowly coming to suspect that the spacewe’re traveling in is of a different sortfrom what we thought whenever that word “space”was decked out by our fantasies on Earth.We’re coming to suspect now that our driftis even deeper then we first believed,that knowledge is a blue naivetéwhich with a measured quantity of insightimagined that the Mystery has structure.We now suspect that what we claim is spaceand glassy clarity around Aniara’s hullis spirit, everlasting and impalpable,that we have strayed in spiritual seas.

Style: 3D Model