On the Irrelevance of Genre Poetry [Live]

At the fun "Raw Dog Screaming Press Book Party" at the Morgantown Poets group in West Virginia last month, I opened my reading by sharing a piece I'd written for Locus Magazine, a poem about why I write poetry, which I contributed to their running Roundtable series on speculative poetry.  Here's my recitation of "On the Irrelevance of Genre Poetry," recorded during the reading. I don't often write things like this -- an opinion essay told in the form of a poem -- but the audience really seemed to laugh and also get charged up by the poem. Press the…

Is the horror genre dead? Garth Marenghi has the answer.

That's Garth Marenghi above, responding to a question about whether the horror genre is dead. I did a spit take when I watched this (as I did with the rest of the DVD).  It's a childish response ("you are!") from a faux has-been in the genre.  I love it.  And yet there's some nugget of truth here, some wisdom to the comedy.  Genre critics have suggested that genres go through stages of evolution, with parody becoming the zenith of a genre (and a sign of its impending doom).  Garth Marenghi's Darkplace television series is to horror what Blazing Saddles was…