Bringing our poetry week to a close, today's offering is Ann K. Schwader's In the Yaddith Time, published by Mythos Books in 2007, and illustrated by Steve Linex. Despite the fact this is another homage to Lovecaft's The Fungi from Yuggoth, Schwader's sequence of 36 sonnets is notably original on two counts: in the first instance, the sonnets taken together do tell a story rather than being random visions; secondly, the sequence has an interesting science fictional premise in which a team of explorers from Earth discover a strange gateway in a cavern beneath the surface of Mars, thus avoiding some of the rather trite and frankly rather unimaginative framing devices found in similar works. In any case, as one might expect, general unpleasantness ensues following said revelation. Of the Fungi homages I own, this is undoubtedly my favourite and Schwader's poetry is uniformly excellent. In the Yaddith Time can currently be found in the Hippocampus Press collection of Schwader's weird poetry, Twisted in Dream, which is a strong recommend.
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