Science Fiction Poetry Association President Deborah P. Kolodji writes that several officers of the organization presented the Grand Master Poet Award to Ray Bradbury during his 88th Birthday Party at the Mystery and Imagination Bookstore in Glendale, California (the award was announced in this article). She notes that this is only “the third time the award has been bestowed in the 31 year history of the organization.”
She writes of Bradbury that he “has published almost 20 books of poetry and 300 individual poems during his long writing career. Even his fiction is poetic, almost prose poems. Years ago, after reading The Martian Chronicles, Aldous Huxley told Bradbury, ‘You know what you are, Mr. Bradbury? You are a poet.'”
The photo (showing, left to right, SFPA Treasurer Samantha Henderson, Kolodji, Bradbury, and Rhysling Awards Chairman Drew Morse) was taken at the presentation. During the celebrations, Robert Kerr, a member of Bradbury’s Pandemonium Theatre Company, read a scene from Bradbury’s screenplay of Moby Dick (written in 1953 and recently released as a book by Subterreanean Press), and George Clayton Johnson spoke before the large crowd which spilled out of the bookstore onto the sidewalk.
Bradbury is also the recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 2000 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the National Medal of Arts (2004), the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award (1977), the Stoker Life Achievement Award (1989), and the SFWA Grand Master Award (1989).
The SFPA was founded in 1978 to bring together readers and writers of Science Fiction Poetry. The SFPA publishes a bi-monthly journal, Star*line, and two annual awards anthologies, The Rhysling Anthology and Dwarf Stars.