PS Cottier

On the sticky retirement of myth

Pegasus got too old
so Bellerophon melted him for glue.
Useless glue; for each pot is full
of feathers. Lovely scrapbooks
are ruined by inconvenient discards,
as grandmothers grow downy beards,
and babies sport Trumpy wigs.
And they fly into the air, too,
the photos, nay, the very books,
and escape into the ether,
to gallivant with feckless clouds.
Never use a famous wingéd horse,
where a broken legged nag will do.

P.S. Cottier

There’s a bit of my recently adopted veganism peeking around the corner of that poem!

A thoughtful review of my chapbook Quick Bright Things: Poems of Fantasy and Myth just appeared at the Science Fiction Poetry Association website (also extracts of the review appear in in Star*Line, the Association’s journal).  The reviewer is Sandra J. Lindow, a well-known poet in the speculative field.  (The review appears quite a way down the linked page.)

Ms Lindow writes of the chapbook that that ‘(t)he tone clip-clops down a slope elevated by the language [of] Victorian fairy-lore poetry…’.  I hadn’t consciously thought of that, but she is quite right.  That’s what happens when you write a PhD on Dickens, I guess!  And Goblin Market has always fascinated me.  The review refers to Christina Rossetti, author of that long poem.

Nice to have an Australian chapbook reviewed at the US based site.  I am a member of the SFPA, and recommend it to anyone interested in science fiction, horror, or fantasy poetry.

I was rapt to read that ‘P.S. Cottier’s slender chapbook of nineteen fantastic poems is like an elegant carriage ride through a department store of social criticism.’  Or perhaps I should say enraptured, in keeping with that older time?

Now I’m putting my fingers in my ears and repeating ‘la-la-la’ during a certain inauguration ceremony.  Feel free to join in.