Some flowers spread their fragrance in spring, some tease us until late summer: just when we think they’re dried up, spent, they surprise us with an explosion of blooms!
I’ve always had a soft spot for the late bloomers of literature. (Maybe because I myself identify as a late bloomer!) As thrilling as it is to read about young prodigies like S.E. Hinton of The Outsiders fame, (she wrote that book as a high school senior!), the late bloomers are just as amazing to me.
What is considered a late bloomer in literature? The general consensus seems to be a writer whose first major work is produced after age 40.
Debra Eve, publisher of the website Later Bloomer (now an archival site) has collected many fascinating essays and information about late bloomers in all fields of life, including literature and poetry.
Bloom (via Substack now) is another site devoted to the late bloomers in life.
This Write and Journal article states that late-blooming authors are more common than we think and why this may be a forward trend.
Eva Q. Tennant’s article on late bloomers shows how “the creative spark doesn’t dim with age — it deepens.”
One of my personal favorite literary late bloomers is Mary Wesley, who turned to writing adult fiction in her 70s and went on to write ten bestsellers in the last twenty years of her life! I learned of her work via the 1992 mini-series adaptation of one of her most well-known novels, The Camomile Lawn.
In poetry, there are many later bloomers, but one that may not come to mind is Thomas Hardy, whose early fame was built on his 14 novels, but who considered himself a poet and wrote poetry for 30 years before publishing his first collection when he was 58. After that, during the rest of his life, he published only poetry.
When I think of late bloomers, writer Winifred Watson also comes to mind, not because she was a late bloomer herself, but she wrote about an older woman experiencing a Cinderella-like transformation in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, an experience that mirrored her own rise to fame in late life when her novel was rediscovered and republished by Persephone Books and made into a delightful film of the same name in 2008 starring the incomparable Frances McDomand. This article on Anne Sebba’s site discusses how Watson’s unlikely second act came about.
So tell me, who are some of your favorite late bloomers? Please share in the comments!
This year’s National poetry month began with the successful liftoff of NASA’s Orion spacecraft as part of the Artemis mission, a forward step in manned spaceflight to the Moon—so it’s a perfect month to open a discussion about the future of Speculative poetry!
Speculative poetry is having a moment…
Speculative poetry, or SpecPo as it is also known, is coming into its own, especially in the last few years. Long overshadowed by science fiction literature, speculative poetry has finally been accepted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) as valid publications to become a member and even has its own Nebula Award category as of 2025, with perhaps a permanent Hugo award category in the works as well.
But with the addition of the Nebula and possibly Hugo awards, the momentum for speculative poetry is increasing.
What is Speculative poetry?
Speculative poetry generally refers to a poem with hard science-fiction or high fantasy elements, the latter which can include horror, mythology, fairy tales, folklore, so you can argue that it has been around forever. But it has evolved over time to be more futuristic and diverse in nature, a situation which I think will continue to gather speed as we race for the Moon and Mars via future space missions.
The SFPA’s founder addresses some of the difficulties in defining Speculative poetry in this essay:
Like many writers interested in science fiction, I started out writing poetry and then attempted to write science fiction short stories, never pausing to consider speculative poetry as a natural next step instead. When my sallies into short science fiction failed to match my vision, I began to explore poetry more deeply, especially narrative poetry, but again, never considered speculative poetry specifically. The truth is, I was not encountering much speculative poetry in my reading. In the science fiction magazines I read, poems seemed to appear as filler while the stories and novellas were the main attractions. The pieces tended to be very short and from a limited number of authors. This was my perception at the time, though I’m sure it was not unique. There were and have been many magazines publishing speculative poetry all along, but they did not come across my radar as a fledgling writer.
After many years of writing and publishing poetry, I began to explore short fiction again. I wrote an opening scene for what I first envisioned as a story, but it just didn’t materialize further. I was excited about the scene, though, and the vision would not leave me. Finally, the light bulb came on and I realized that this scene would work just as well, maybe better, as a poem! That reworked scene became a poem that was later accepted by Star*Line.
Speculative Poetry from Past to Present
To read some poems from speculative poetry’s past, peruse Poems of the Fantastic and Macabre a list curated by Theodora Goss, a professional fantasy writer, poet, and Victorian literature scholar who teaches Fantasy literature.
There’s a lot of excitement surrounding Speculative Poetry and in my research I ran across several articles that express that:
What you can do to support Speculative poetry right now
Join the Speculative poetry initiative to make the Hugo Award for Poetry a permanent category. It is a process that takes two years and must be ratified by the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) (TheHugoAwards.org) who administer the award.
Submit your work and read magazines that publish speculative poetry:
The SFPA publishes a market list of paying and non-paying speculative poetry magazines.
The future of Speculative poetry looks bright–it is a form exceptionally adaptable to our changing world and open to the increasingly diverse visions of reality and the future of humankind. It’s accessible and welcoming to the exploration of social, political and multicultural issues.
“Speculative poetry is not only for science fiction and fantasy fans. It is for any human with a heart and a desire to declare that their dreams should be heard.”
Our current theme for submissions is Al Dente. For more information click here.
AL DENTE In cooking, pasta or risotto al dente (/ælˈdɛnteɪ/, Italian: [al ˈdɛnte]; lit. ’to the tooth’) is cooked to be firm to the bite, requiring a brief cooking time. The term also extends to firmly-cooked vegetables. In contemporary Italian cooking, it is considered to be the ideal consistency for pasta.
What does al dente mean to you? To your neighborhood vampire it probably means something different. How about to the prospector mining gold?
Send us something that you haven’t overcooked!
Submissions close on July 5, 2026; the issue publishes SEPTEMBER 1, 2026.
OLD SCRATCH PRESS 