Hook of a Book Poetry Project: Poems by the Award-winning Linda D. Addison

I feel very honored to start off my 2023 Hook of a Book Poetry Project, now in its fourth year, with fantastic poetry from the legendary Linda D. Addison. Linda is someone who has been so inspiring to me not only as a poet and through her poems, but for her extremely kind heart as well. She is a mastermind at wordsmithing emotions, encompassing love and hope in much of her daily work, but also writing the gamut of dark fiction and science fiction poetry and stories that dip into the deep side of longing and despair. Her writing mirrors our fears and hopes, grounds us, gives us pause, inspires us, transports us in fantasy and to universes beyond our own world.

She is the first African American to win a Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Award®, of which she went on to win five times and garner the Lifetime Achievement Award as well as the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Grand Master distinction. Of course, she’s won numerous and varying other awards as well for her writing and is a pioneer not only for all black people in writing and in the arts, but for all women, especially poets, too.

Linda has been very supportive of me and my poetry since I began sharing it to the world and I am forever grateful to her and very proud to call her friend. I’m thrilled to share a table of contents with her in an anthology called Dark Voices, which is an all-women’s voices book published several years ago by Lycan Valley Press. I hope there will be more in our future.

Linda has made her mark with her contributions to the writing world and our lives. Thank you, Linda, for sharing these three original poems with us. Readers, please enjoy Linda’s poems and I hope you’ll follow along with the rest of the Hook of a Book Poetry Project posts this month.

in a leap of faith
(a tanka poem)
by Linda D. Addison

in a leap of faith, 
filled with regret, i open
my heart, drink in full moon,
wait for unearned redemption 
or lingering emptiness

_________________

Palate Cleanser
by Linda D. Addison

My girlfriend’s clone sister tastes the same,
her lips curve sweetly as ever,
velvet brown eyes echo brightly
my hands remember skin made new
from old, almost dead cells…

___________________

Alien Blues
by Linda D. Addison

the day i came to earth
my soul was low
though you don’t think i have one
looking for a song for my people
i was so low
and you shot me down

my planet all gone
i want a song for my people
a riff for a lost planet
but one dark night
at the crossroads to the universe
you shot me down

oh i want to go home
but there is no sweet home
just stardust drifting
like the holes
in my spaceship
after you shot me down…

__________________

Linda D. Addison, Biography –

Linda D. Addison grew up in Philadelphia and began weaving stories at an early age. She is the first African-American recipient of the world renowned HWA Bram Stoker Award® and has received five awards for collections: The Place of Broken Things written with Alessandro Manzetti; Four Elements written with Charlee Jacob, Marge Simon and Rain Graves; How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend short stories and poetry; Being Full of Light, Insubstantial; Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes.

In 2018, she received the HWA Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2020, Addison was designated SFPA Grand Master of Fantastic Poetry. She co-edited Sycorax’s Daughters anthology of horror fiction & poetry by African-American women with Kinitra Brooks PhD and Susana Morris PhD, which was a HWA Bram Stoker finalist in the Anthology category.

She currently lives in Arizona and has published over 400 poems, stories and articles. Look for her story in the Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda anthology (Titan/Marvel).

More About Linda –

Website

Amazon page

Twitter

You can read Linda’s past published poems in the Hook of a Book Poetry Project here and here!

Thank you to everyone for supporting poetry and I hope you’ll join us to read all the other upcoming posts with more poetry, reviews of poetry books, and maybe even an article on poetry. You can read about the Hook of a Book Poetry Project, in its fourth year, and find the links to all the past published work and posts here.

Until next time… be well!

Leaf Art by Vecteezy