2025 Best Poem Hugo Nominees

Completed 7/3/2025, Reviewed 7/4/2025

In this blog entry, I review and rank the six Hugo nominees for Best Poem.  This was a new experience for me as I’ve eschewed poetry for a long time, claiming to not get it.  The first poem was a little difficult, but on a second read, I got the point.  The rest came naturally after that.  All the poems were short, two to three pages.  One was novel length, and played with form.  I have a full blog entry for that one.  Here, I just give a quick impression of the poems, as they don’t really have plot, but are just an amuse-bouche of a thought.  Here is my list from favorite to least favorite:

“Your Visiting Dragon” by Devan Barlow – I liked this one the best.  Just a simple, delightful poem about what to do when a dragon comes to your place to settle in for the winter.  

Calypso by Oliver K. Langmead – An epic poem about a colony ship on the way to terraform a planet for human habitation.  It plays with form and has multiple POVs.  I liked it a lot.  Here’s the link for my full review of Calypso.

“A War of Words” by Marie Brennan – Not sure of the meaning of this one.  It may be about censorship and oppression.  That was my feeling, but I may be putting too much into it.  It just feels like what’s going on right now with ICE and detention centers, the expunging of inclusive language from government documents, and the loss of democracy to fascism.

“We Drink Lava” by Ai Jiang – Perhaps about authoritarianism and failing to respond to it, couched in images of old gods drinking lava and turning to glass as it cools down the throat.  It’s written in a way that feels very immediate.

“there are no taxis for the dead” by Angela Liu – This is about the dissipation of essence after death, I think.  Definitely weird, as it sounds like horses pulling an old-time hearse as the soul forgets its life and memories.

“Ever Noir” by Mari Ness – It’s either about a murder-for-hire or fairy tales.  I didn’t get this one.

Well, those are my rankings.  It’s odd how I really like some of the poems and don’t quite understand them.  It’s like the words just evoke a mood of calm or uneasiness or dread.  That’s how I responded to several of these.  The poems can be found in magazines like Uncanny, Strange Horizons, and Haven Spec, except for Calypso, which is published as a book.