What Winter Chills Await You!

Welcome to the first annual HWA Chills of Winter Poetry Series

Introduction written by Sumiko Saulson Series Curated by The Horror Writers Association Dark Poetry Blog Team Devin Anderon, Sumiko Saulson and Stacie Harrington Winter can be dark, lonely, and consuming. In some places, frost sets in, cloaking the land in ghostly white. Trees drop their leaves, branches and twigs extending like eerie, skeletal fingers and arms. Urban legends and wintertime ghost stories such as A Christmas Carol abound, along with terrifying holiday lore such as the demon Krampus, who punishes naughty children. These tales of the supernatural, allegories about mankind’s inhumanity to man, ecological horrors, and primordial tales of winter’s inherent terrors (freezing to death, starving to death) show up not only in prose forms, but frequently, in verse. “Merry Christmas” by Langston Hughes (the second of the three poems on the page linked) was originally published in December 1930, and tells of the terrors of war, and how they go on unabated despite the Christmas holiday. “A Christmas Ghost Story” by Thomas Hardy (December 1899) relays the horrors of war by conveying the haunting image and story of a fallen soldier through his mouldering bones. While “Yule Horror” by H.P. Lovecraft (December 1926) delivers imagery of mysterious Druid altars and reminds its reader that Yule and its traditions far predate Christianity itself.

How did the hallowed tradition of supernatural stories in winter begin?

The oldest such tales are ancient. The 10th-century Anglo-Saxon poem “The Wander” is a story laden with lament, ghosts and regret, told by an exiled warrior who is haunted not only by the spirits of his fallen comrades, but of a winter personified that threatens to take his very life. While spring is associated with birth and new life, summer with joy and relaxation, and winter with final feasts before a time of scarcity, winter itself is associated with famine, lack of access to resources, coldness, darkness, dead trees with frightening winter branches, and very real dangers of starvation, freezing to death, winter plagues in times when seasonal ailments like colds or the flu killed many people, or attacks by animals such as wolves made desperate by their own lack of resource. This is likely the original source of the edgy, lonesome, fever-dream that is the winter’s tale.  Join us this year for original chilling and visceral winter verse by amazing horror poets such as Eugen Bacon, Michael Baily, Jonathan Maberry, and Ashley Dioses, a heady mix including established voices of the dark poetic and up-and-comers in the genre you should definitely know about. 

Join in the fun with Winter Writing Prompts for inspiration!

We’ve asked each of our poets for a writing prompt in honor of National Poetry for you writers who wsh to play along at home! Use these prompts as inspiration to create your own wintery works!