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In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Ciro Faienza presents Soren James's "Evolution for Immortals," with commentary by the poet.

 

From the poet:

The phrase “evolution for immortals” came to me using a Dada cut-up technique, and led to my wondering what that would entail—how would an immortal evolve? But I could only think of a recoiling from the horror of eternal life—a hiding from the full force of forever—and so I came up with ideas of de-evolution, a retracting into the immediacy of the flesh, shorter time-scales, memory loss, and the distractions of war/violence. Which led me to humans, and that was the final—the missing link—in the poem. Once I had this outline, I felt it would be ironic/amusing to have an impatient narrator recounting these details of immortality.

At least, that's the idealized version of the poem's evolution, in truth there were a lot of mistakes, dead-ends and fortuitousnesses along the way—like evolution itself.



Soren James is a writer and visual artist who recreates himself on a daily basis from the materials at his disposal, continuing to do so in an upbeat manner until sumptuously throwing his drained materials aside to resume a stillness without asking why. More of his work can be seen here: https://sorenjames.wordpress.com
Current Issue
16 Dec 2024

Across the train tracks from BWI station, a portal shimmered in the shade of a patch of tall trees. From her seat on a northbound train taking on passengers, Dottie watched a woman slip a note out of her pocket, place it under a rock, strip off her work uniform, then walk naked, smiling, into the portal.
exposing to the bone just how different we are
a body protesting thinks itself as a door out of a darkroom, a bullet, too.
In this episode of SH@25, Editor Kat Kourbeti sits down with Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li to discuss her foray into poetry, screenwriting, music composition and more, and also presents a reading of her two poems published in 2022, 'Ave Maria' and 'The Mezzanine'.
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