Call For 2019 Rhysling Award Nominations

The Science Fiction Poetry Association members have until February 15 to nominate eligible poems for addition to the Rhysling Award longlist.

Poems already recommended are listed here. (More will be added as nominations come in.)

The Rhyslings were first established in 1978, named for the blind poet Rhysling in Robert A. Heinlein’s short story “The Green Hills of Earth.” Rhysling’s skills were said to rival Rudyard Kipling’s. In real life, Apollo 15 astronauts named a crater near their landing site “Rhysling,” which has since become its official name. Winning works are regularly reprinted in the Nebula Awards Anthology from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Rhysling Awards are considered in the speculative literature field to be the poetry equivalent of the awards given for prose— achievement awards given to poets by the writing peers of their own field of literature.

David C. Kopaska-Merkel is the 2019 Rhysling Award chair.