Speculative Poetry and Labours of Love: An Interview with DJ Tyrer

Greetings Traveler,

Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with returning Arcanist contributor and owner of Atlantean Publishing, DJ Tyrer. In addition to Tyrer's excellent poetry featured on our blog and in our Winter 2025 issue, he has been involved with small press publishing for nearly thirty years.

With Atlantean Publishing he has shared hundreds of writings, publishing several zines (Awen, Bard, Monomyth, among others). Some of these zines still run when time allows (Awen's most recent issue was February 2025) and Tyrer actively maintains two online publications: View from Atlantis and 5-7-5 Haiku.

I became enamored with the DIY vibe of the Atlantean selection and I perused the Atlantean Wiki with wonder. I grieve for the days when makers passionately pressed their writings at a Kinkos after work; simultaneously I jump with joy that there are still people who care enough to print their own zines, handing them out in person or even sending them through the post.

There is an organic quality to the numerous publications of Atlantean Publishing, demanding art be shared for art's sake and distributed to those who yearn to read through any medium that works. This has become such a rarity in the slog of our modern internet.

I asked Tyrer about his upcoming anthology, The Roseate Mythos, based on the cosmic horror of Robert W. Chambers's The King in Yellow. We talked also about poetry in general, and what makes a poem ideal for publication in a speculative journal like View from Atlantis or in a fantasy magazine like The Literary Fantasy Magazine.

This was our conversation:

Q: What inspired you to become a poet/writer? Could you share a bit about your background that led you on the path of small press publishing?

Words have always been the focus of my life. I grew up surrounded by books and writing, so penning poetry and fiction is something I’ve done since before I can remember. If I wasn’t being published, I’d still be writing, just for myself.

I stumbled into small press publishing (and, through it, submitting to small press magazines) without any plan or knowledge. At sixth-form college, a group of us decided we should publish a magazine and, with no experience nor real understanding, we just did it, starting Monomyth (which is still, erratically, published today). It was a literal labour of love.

Initially, we just produced a small number of photocopied issues for friends and family, but we started advertising in a roleplaying-game magazine and found a few more readers, then discovered the small press scene and things just expanded (with some bumps along the way) from there.

Q: The tale of Sir Blodry has an established history beyond the poem featured on our blog. As a recurring character appearing in many works, what is his significance to you personally? Are there plans to compile his adventures?

Sir Blodry first appeared in a story that I included in an issue of Monomyth back in 1999, so he’s been having adventures for over a quarter of a century, now, although I’m not sure how that’s even possible. One of the less-competent knights of the Round Table, that original story was a one-off, just a silly riff on the Arthurian mythology that fascinates me. (I’ve always enjoyed writing a good silly story.) But, the tale of an accidental hero clearly had more to it than I initially envisaged…

It was actually my Mum who asked for more of his misadventures, so I obliged, eventually producing an arc of stories from his birth to his final battle, of which about half have been published, plus some poems. It’s rather pleasant to write about a hero, if such a term can be applied to Sir Blodry, who would much rather live a peaceful life and enjoy a good dinner than get involved in violence, even if things seldom go smoothly for him!

Since completing the initial set of stories (I inserted a few more into the cycle later), it was clear that the series could be compiled and I’ve always had the vague intention of doing so. Although I don’t have any hard plans to do so at the moment, it’s certainly something I would like to achieve in the future, probably when a few more pieces have seen print.

Q: Tell me about the Roseate Mythos—what is the creative vision behind it and how will readers be able to access it? Are there any noteworthy bumps or highlights of the development process?

I’ve long been a huge fan of the ‘Yellow Mythos’ of Robert W. Chambers, the author of The King In Yellow, and have written fiction and poetry inspired by it. This, in turn, influenced my own ‘Black and Red Mythos’ of urban pessimism with a dash of cosmic horror. I began to consider the facets that make such mythoi fascinating, the recurring names and phrases, the enigmatic elements, and realised it would be an interesting experiment to create a collection of stories by different authors with such links, none of them aware of what the others are doing with the same elements, to see what would evolve.

This led to a call for submissions for what was, at the time, titled ‘the interlinked-fiction anthology’. The idea was that every story that was submitted would have to include at least one each of a character name, location name, arc word, and phrase. Not every story would include the same ones, but there would be echoes across the stories, some more meaningful than others.

As catchy as the anthology’s working title was, Joseph Bouthiette, Jr., with whom I’d earlier edited the ‘Yellow Mythos’ anthology, A Terrible Thing, brainstormed ideas for a better title for the anthology and the mythos as a whole and settled on the ‘Roseate Mythos’ from a recurring arc word and phrase.

Then, the project ground to a slow crawl, before being completely derailed by Covid, the anthology still not having seen the light of day, although I have published a couple of the pieces elsewhere in the interim and some stories I wrote later, drawing on the same ideas, have also been published. Releasing the collection is currently high on my list of priorities (having been kept in limbo so long) and anyone is welcome to visit the page on the Atlantean Publishing wiki with the challenge details and write a story or poem inspired by it.

Q: As the editor of Atlantean Press, View from Atlantis, and 5-7-5 Haiku Journal, what are the common pitfalls you see in poetry submissions and a bit of advice you would give to poets hoping to publish speculative poetry?

The major issues I encounter are practical ones of submission. People need to read the guidelines. Make sure what you are submitting actually fits the publication (View From Atlantis, for example, is very broad in terms of types of poetry accepted, but issues are themed and have reading periods; the 5-7-5 Haiku Journal, on the other hand, is always open and is open to any theme, but submissions must fit the specified syllable count). Format the submissions correctly (get those email headers right so your work isn’t misplaced or deleted as junk, make sure the editor will actually be able to read the submission). Target the right poetry to the right market (purely literary zines don’t want speculative poems, horror-only ones don’t want fantasy and science-fiction, etc).

Getting those practical aspects wrong wastes the editor’s time (and risks the submission being deleted unread). Most editors are deluged with submissions as is, and the more time that is wasted, the less time they have to give any kind of feedback on submissions or answer queries.

Q: What makes a poem a fantasy poem? What are some strategies you use to write fantastic/speculative poems?

Defining a fantasy or speculative poem is even more difficult than defining their prose equivalent. There is a lot of debate about constitutes a fantasy story (does it have to have magic or some aspect of the supernatural, or is an entirely-mundane fictional world still fantasy?) and whether specific stories fall into the genre or are literary stories with a fantastic element (and, probably, a faintly-embarrassed author). Given that many poems are quite short, the inclusion of a speculative element can be even more debatable, and it’s not uncommon to see editors stating that a speculative element must be central to the piece in some way.

Personally, I’m not rigid on the definitions and, unless I’m writing for a specific call, don’t give much consideration to whether what I’m writing would be considered speculative or not. Most of the time, it’s easy to tell if a poem can be considered speculative or not – it’s only if you’re trying to repurpose something that isn’t for a speculative call that you’re likely to have a problem, and I’m not sure why some people do that (unless they’ve had a genuine ‘what if’ thought about their piece, but then that is writing speculative poetry and no mere repurposing…)

For me, whether I’ve just had an idea for a poem or am drawing inspiration from a call’s theme, a poem usually begins with a hook of some kind, an image or a phrase that gets my creative juices flowing. Sometimes the hook won’t even survive into the final poem, if it wanders off in some new direction (although they may well allow it to be used in another one), but it is always what gets me started. When I don’t have an immediate idea for a poem, I will keep a note of such hooks, as well as partial poems, to revisit later and see if they inspire me. Sometimes, you have to be in just the right mood or have some other element of inspiration to turn that random thought into something beautiful.

About the Author:

DJ Tyrer is the person behind Atlantean Publishing, editor of View From Atlantis, and has been published in Gargoylicon, Lycanthropicon, and Vampiricon, and issues of Enchanted Conversation, The Horrorzine, Journ-E, Lovecraftiana, Scifaikuest, Sirens Call, Star*Line, and Tigershark.

Find out more: djtyrer.blogspot.co.uk