Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire

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Shakespeare says...

...who wants to win a copy of A Local Habitation? This particular giveaway was incredibly fun the first time, and very rewarding, and that means I'm doing it again. So here's the game:

You all know that I adore structured poetry, from the haiku to the virelai. (Actually, that's a lie; I abhor the virelai. But I respect people who actually enjoy writing them.) You also know that you're a pretty creative lot. So here: the gates are thrown open! Write me a structured poem about A Local Habitation, Rosemary and Rue, or Toby in general. Since you haven't read the new book, it can be about anything from what you think it's going to be about to pre-ordering to how much you want a copy—whatever makes you happy. Any structured form is allowed, as long as you can tell me what it is when asked.

Entries will be taken through the end of the week. Then, next Monday, I'll put up a voting post, and let people vote for their favorites. The winner will receive, naturally, a copy of A Local Habitation. Just in case that's not sufficient incentive, there will also be a prize for participation—just entering a poem will enter you in a random number drawing for a signed cover flat. I don't have very many of these, so this is something pretty spiffy for you to stick on your wall.

Game on!
Tags: a local habitation, book promotion, giving stuff away, poetry, toby daye
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Fog rises with dusk.
A splash -- kelpie, selkie? No --
It's only a fish.
never really written a haiku poem before but here it goes:

I am October
Evening's murder on the loose
The curse I am bound
A half-elvish knight from Frisco
is a detective slicker than Crisco
The lines aren't long
and the metre's not wrong
But I'm damned if I can rhyme Frisco.
You could use "Cisco", but there's no route to that host. *rim shot*

(Or Sisko, but he's not a detective. Disco? Please, no, duck that.)
Rainy spring reading
A Local Habitation
what could be better?


There. Haiku *requires* an element of nature; anything else is just senryu, a lesser form. I imagine a lot of people here knew that alreddie, but I didn't learn it until a few years ago, so...
Haiku with no Frog
And Lacking allegory
Really just a short poem?

Deleted comment

seanan_mcguire

7 years ago

ohari

7 years ago

technoshaman

7 years ago

Haiku are seasonal
Is October a season?
Toby, I think, is not.

peachtess

January 12 2010, 21:28:10 UTC 7 years ago Edited:  January 12 2010, 23:55:25 UTC

In winters icy grip
the Koi swims unknowingly
for the sun beams touch



Poems are often witty
or full of deep navel gazing
but Koi have no navel
Unearthly wiles, a deathly spell
Displace the knight and find the Daye
A magic haven, fairy hell
Unearthly wiles, a deathly spell
To seek the knowe, to know it well
The shadowed hills may hold a way
Unearthly wiles, a deathly spell
Displace the knight, and find the Daye
Are we allowed to write more than one?
My human oaths by fae magic betrayed
More than a decade in waters alone
The loss of my family, all that I rue.

A blood curse makes me more than just rue
For by shutting out fae, my friend I've betrayed
And by blood must I avenge her alone.

Boxed within or without Fae, feel I ever alone
By cut grass and copper, this I ever shall rue
For my friends and my memories are revealed as betrayed.

Betrayed, still alone, I shall remember with rosemary and rue.
This is AWESOME.

Thank you for the triolet lesson the other day, by the way. :)
To seek; blood binds me
Slow justice for a slain friend
This path will pain me


Can we enter more than once?
Yes, but it will not necessarily increase your chances of winning.
Seanan McGuire's
A Local Habitation
In bookstores in March!

Rosemary and Rue
Gave us Toby Daye, a tough,
Fascinating girl.

Lovingly crafted,
McGuire's San Francisco
Lives and breathes magic.

Soon the second book
Will offer us even more.
I can hardly wait!

Emo vampires
And angsty teenage werewolves
Have been done to death.

If you want the best
In new urban fantasy
You must buy this book!
Not being shot is a noble endeavour -
one which we all can enjoy, friend or fae.
Still, though it pains her, there comes a however:
bullets find housing in October Daye.

Undines might help with medicinal waters;
cat-kings, by contrast, do nothing unplanned.
Help seldom comes from desireable quarters:
devilry lurks in once-friendly land.

Flotsam-like, some riddles surface through storming,
rising up sweetly like princesses' hair.
Toby, be cunning: take weapons and warning.
Faerie is full of old dangers. Beware.
Damn missing word! I meant:

Not being shot is a noble endeavour -
one which we all can enjoy, friend or fae.
Still, though it pains her, there comes a however:
bullets find housing in October Daye.

Undines might help with medicinal waters;
cat-kings, by contrast, do nothing unplanned.
Help seldom comes from desireable quarters:
devilry lurks in a once-friendly land.

Flotsam-like, some riddles surface through storming,
rising up sweetly like princesses' hair.
Toby, be cunning: take weapons and warning.
Faerie is full of old dangers. Beware.

sheistheweather

7 years ago

A sequel is due:
A Local Habitation.
Springtime brings new books!

Rereading "Rosemary and Rue"
A sequel I feel should be due.
In April the orders
From Am'zon or Borders
Will come, or else I'll feel blue!
October Daye
Is a half-breed fae.
And Evening Winterrose's curse
Has only made things worse.
Oh, and it's a clerihew, if anyone's curious.

keristor

7 years ago

As thorny as a rose goblin may be,
He cannot out prickle October Daye.
Wounded, trapped, always needing to be free.
Of obligations to the devious fae.

Bitter carping cannot restore lost time,
Though bitter coffee helps her face the dawn.
The city has more than one kind of grime,
Their factions using Toby as a pawn.

She's driven by the binding taste of blood,
A desperate plea by recorded voice.
There are perils she could see if she would.
The prize, is the gift of dangerous choice!

A tough nut shell to keep the world away,
But even pride, can't keep the pain at bay.
Oo, I like this one!
Lady of the lake?
No - October cursed with fins.
Like Sedna she swam.

There... nature AND Toby. :)
Oh, that's goooooooooooooooooood. :-)

dulcinbradbury

7 years ago

This was done in the spirit of the "competition" though doesn't necessarily follow the fully structured component. I blame the fact that I was watching "So I Married an Axe Murderer" the other night. I'll try to do something properly structured, like a sonnet, later. :)

From Tybalt:
October, month in a year. She swam in still waters, surprisingly deep. Still Koi? Toby, cold month of the year, I've hated you so long so there's less to fear. Still coy? Toby, still Toby, still Fall, so needing, so thankful, I've fall... en? Toby, still Day.
In two worlds, with both human and fae blood
Toby fell victim to a ruthless charm
This is but the prologue of her account

An old acquaintance calls her to account
Toby seeks for the answers in the blood
And is bound even tighter to the charm

Daring trust neither enmity nor charm
Toby takes aid from those of no account
Though consequence can only end in blood

Blood will tell, through charm and spell, all taken in account

(Yet another person grateful for judifilksign's poetry lessons this week)
It's not quite right, but I don't think it's a bad attempt at a sonnet. It's supposed to be Italian rhyming scheme, if that matters to anyone's curiosity.

Remember I cannot what makes me cry,
I think instead upon the leaves above.
But I cannot forget that which I love
While binding spells my human life belie.
In fin and scales I do, while living, die:
This piscine head does not have room enough
To hold my mind, this hand won't fit this glove,
My mem'ries flee, and leave me no more I.
I know there used to be another way.
I haven't got a path to get back home.
This mind is not enough to keep me here.
I do not want to see another day
Of underneath of water, and of loam:
And so I lose it all, and shed koi tears.
So, I set out to write you a fibonnaci poem. I did that, then felt it was incomplete... so I inverted part of the fibonnaci sequence and added a second part. I'm calling it a mirrored fib. I hope it'll squeak by the rules!

Title: The Fae Cat Fib*

Cait
Sidhe
and King
snub the courts,
flaunting grand and tattered
fierce hearts in alleyway demesne:

every deep shadow there a road,
pride and claw always
oaths among
Cait Sidhe
and
King.



* Blame the title on the exhaustion. Going to bed now...
So long as a fish
Away from my life above
How to survive now?
October Daye takes
The toughest roads
Of tricks and glamours
Secrets and codes.
Of half-fae blood
And full-fae pride
Past full of regrets
Weapons at her side.
She can never give up
She'll fight to the end
(Blame it on tenacity
Or the blood of a friend).
And even when it's over
It shows no sign of stopping
A Local Habitation
Will keep our Toby hopping.
A fairy of worth
will call to your memory
rosemary and rue
October the month
Of ghosts and mysteries
And a fateful Daye.