Recent Publications

sparrow wings
the diminishing whirr
of her last words

John Hawkhead

summer solstice
the mail truck’s door
slides open

Brad Bennett

my blood turns cold soba noodles

Gregory Piko

winter drizzle
the shining jowls
of the stonemason

Michael Buckingham Gray

and one of my own from this edition …

the long note
of a wire fence –
Middlemarch

Sandra Simpson

Middlemarch is a small South Island town in central Otago, New Zealand. As you can probably guess from the haiku it’s surrounded by open country, a lot of it farmland. Middlemarch was named in 1876 and George Eliot’s novel of the same name may have been the inspiration. The Middlemarch Singles Ball was held biennially between 2001 and 2021, trying to find partners for local farmers and bringing out city singles from Dunedin on a special train!

Here are a couple of poems in Presence that allude to well-known works. I enjoy the occasional haiku like this when it’s done with a light hand, as here. From Wikipedia: Honkadori (本歌取り) is an allusion within a poem to an older poem which would be generally recognised by its potential readers – even including some of the original words. Honkadori has qualities of yūgen and ushin (有心, possessing heart). I have seen yūgen defined as: An awareness of the universe that triggers emotional responses too deep and powerful for words. They’re hard terms to define in English!

back of the fridge
the plums that were
so sweet and so cold

Allison Douglas-Tourner

The haiku above refers to the 1938 poem by William Carlos Williams, ‘This is Just to Say’, while the one below alludes to ‘Moondance’ written and recorded in 1970 by Van Morrison.

a marvelous night
for a moon dance
birch catkins

Jeff Hoagland

The following haiku may simply be a description of visiting the grave of Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) in west Yorkshire, but there’s the stabbing ‘each grass blade’ to contend with, for it was a blade of grass in an envelope that triggered her husband’s infidelity, that led to their divorce and her subsequent death. Read more here. (It could be I’m overthinking it!)

plath’s grave
each grass blade
catching light

Duncan Richardson

Other haiku from Presence, including one of my own.

first night in his crib
sleeping soundly
the executor of my will

Joshua St Claire

dogwood buds
how my father loved
a good comeback

Michele Root-Bernstein

grey drizzle
an apple in her pocket
for the horses

Carolyn Skanne

old mooring posts
at dusk the terns arrive
two by two

Sandra Simpson

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John Bird Dreaming Awards 2023

A pleasure to co-judge with Louise Hopewell the recently announced John Bird Dreaming Haiku Awards. See the results, read the judges’ comments and see the sumi-e painintgs by Ron Moss that are given to the three top-placed haiku by following this link to the Australian Haiku Society website.

Two new anthologies

Postal services in many parts of the world seem to be suffering from chronic under-investment, both financial and human, while at the same time ever-increasing their charges for their services and making the paperwork more and more complicated.

As soon as news came that the Haiku Down Under anthology was available, I purchased two. They were posted on the eastern seaboard of Australia on March 9 and finally reached my hands on the east coast the North Island of New Zealand on April 12! Sure, it’s international post, but flights are crossing the Tasman Sea every day. Perhaps they came by sailing ship or via the Northern Hemisphere …

Anyway, Poetry from the Edge, the slim volume that emanated from the October 2022 Haiku Down Under online gathering, is here. It represents work written during the conference as we listened to presentations – and were immediately inspired – or during down-time chats or in the evenings between conference days. Editor Carole Harrison has chosen one poem per submitter. “As you meander through the casual sequence, let yourself be taken back to those memorable and historical few days.”

One of the aims of Haiku Down Under, which is being mooted to be repeated next year, was to give our vernacular free rein.

A morepork pictured on Maungatautari/Sacred Mountain in Waikato, New Zealand. Photo: Wikipedia

morepork –
still there, my childhood fear
of the dark

Margaret Beverland, Katikati, New Zealand
Read more about, and hear, a morepork/ruru.

pobblebonk frog
not every question
needs an answer

Marietta McGregor, ACT, Australia
Hear pobblebonk (banjo) frogs.

Gulaga
a young whale rises
beside his mother

Gregory Piko, Canberra, Australia
Read more about Gulaga/Mt Dromedary.

fumarole –
the green stench
of jealousy

Sandra Simpson, Tauranga, New Zealand
Read more about fumaroles.

More copies of Poetry from the Edge are now available after the first print run sold out. See the website for details.

skipping stones is the latest annual anthology of ‘the finest haiku and related forms published around the world” in English in the past calendar year. As I’m one of the nominating editors for these annual collections under the stewarship of Jim Kacian, I don’t feel like I can say too much as an accusation of bias would be easy. Australian poet Greg Piko has reviewed skipping stones on his blog so you can pop over there if you’d like. I’ve been appreciating the odd cases of synchronicity that dipping in and out has brought.

my mother asks
if I am her sister …
entry to the maze

Maureen Sexton
Australia

trying to excavate the owl from my father’s well of forgetfulness

Jo Balistrieri
United States

blood moon
an almost-life trickles
down my legs

Baisali Chatterjee Dutt
India

mayfly nymph
she begins to speak about
that miscarriage

Florian C Ciobica
Romania

bedtime
my son asks how far it is
to the war

Joanne van Helvoort
The Netherlands

wildlife sign –
pinpoints of light through
the bullet holes

Mark Miller
Australia

And I couldn’t resist sharing this one, it’s a hoot! Ordering details for skipping stones.

mansplaining
mansplaining

Nathanael Tico
United States

Colour in Haiku

I’ve been meaning to write a post on this theme for a while and have off and on been collecting some exemplar haiku to illustrate how a colour name may be used in fresh and exciting ways beyond simple descriptors such as ‘blue sky’, ‘brown grass’ and ‘red rose’, which of necessity have their place, but are workhorses instead of show ponies. The haiku I feature here have colour as their central focus.

The nudge to get on with it came from hearing that composer, and haiku poet, Hilary Tann had died suddenly last month. This is from an obituary for her:

I write for the pleasure of the performers and listeners, and a glance at my titles reveals my joy in simply being alive in this wondrous green world.

That ‘wondrous green world’ really spoke to me. We are so very lucky to be here, aren’t we?

rumble of thunder
the floating dock
shifts with the wind

Hilary Tann (1947-2023)
opening stanza in the First Place nijuin, HSA Renku Award, 2022

sunflowers
the tube of cadmium yellow
squeezed flat

D Claire Gallagher (1941-2009)
Second place, HPNC contest, 2004

I couldn’t resist including this art-theme senryu:

art museum
the grade school children
make cubist faces

Gregory Longenecker
Prune Juice 16, 2015

The following two haiku both show what effect colour can have on us, if we allow our eyes and minds to be open.

ripe persimmons
the rest of the week
in monochrome

Lorin Ford
Presence 53, 2015

not seeing
the room is white
until that red apple

Anita Virgil (1931-2021)
The Haiku Anthology, 2000

The following haiku reminds us that we see only a limited range of colours. London’s Natural History Museum website notes that the eyes of nocturnal geckos, for instance, are 350 times more sensitive to colour at night than a human’s, while the mantis shrimp probably has the most sophisticated vision in the animal kingdom. Their compound eyes — which can move independently — have 12 to 16 colour-receptive cones compared to our three.

wild asters
the shades beyond purple
only a bee sees

Kristen Lindquist
Haiku Dialogue, THF, May 6, 2020

black coffee
the
drip
drip
drip
into Monday

Barrie Levine
Scarlet Dragonfly Journal 11, 2023

beachside suburb
the blue rim around
a hard-boiled egg yolk

Alice Wanderer
read at Chamber Poets’ International Day of Haiku, 2019

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln website tells me that this ring is caused by a chemical reaction involving sulphur (from the egg white) and iron (from the egg yolk), which naturally react to form ferrous sulphide. The reaction is usually caused by overcooking, but can also be caused by a high amount of iron in the cooking water.

lockdown
across the lake a traffic light
switches to green

Barbara Strang
Kokako 37, 2022

Barbara’s poem alludes to the fact that in New Zealand we used a ‘traffic light system’ during our Covid lockdowns.

English painter John Constable completed many cloud studies. This one is dated 1821-22 and is held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. It is reproduced here under the gallery’s Open Access policy.

Let’s close as we began this small exploration of colour, with another art-theme poem, although this one leaves the exact colour being referenced to each reader’s imagination.

constable clouds
the stylist applies colour
to my hair

Polona Oblak
Creatrix 58, 2022

Park Week Walk

A pleasure yesterday to stroll around the Haiku Pathway Reserve in Katikati with members of the Re-naturing Katikati group, volunteers who are looking after the banks of the Uretara Stream, much of their effort concentrated on weeding and replanting with natives, particularly sedges which have the happy habit of holding their ground during a flood and popping back up when it’s all over, unlike flax (harakeke) which tends to be pulled out in a flood, taking chunks of bank with it.

Getting ready to set out are, from left, Sharon Strong, Haiku Pathway Committee president Margaret Beverland, volunteer Dean Smith, and Kate Loman-Smith, Western Bay of Plenty District Council’s reserves and facilities volunteer co-ordinator, and previously the Re-naturing Group leader. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Led by Sharon Strong, who is a Kea (Katikati Environment Activator with Project Parore), the group works from a bit above the swimming hole at the top end of the Haiku Pathway, all the way along the river out to the harbour. As well, the volunteers also look after and work in other reserves around the town and are setting up their own nursery.

over smooth grey stones
summer trickles away

Shirley May (NZ)

Looking upstream from the pedestrian footbridge. The flaxes were planted in the 1990s when the thinking was that they helped save stream banks in floods. However, that’s no longer considered to be the case and native sedges (Carex species) are preferred. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Sharon and Kate had us spotting weeds, large and small, as we walked, some of the real bugbears being Taiwanese cherry (Prunus campanulata), Chinese privet (Ligustrum sinense) and Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica). Looking downstream from the swing bridge we could see an extensive patch of Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus) had re-established after previously being cleared. Someone’s garden waste either chucked on the bank, or come down in a flood.

above the flood plain
a double rainbow …
promises promises

Ron Rubin (UK)

The volunteers have different ways of dealing with weeds, ranging from hand-pulling to drilling and poisoning larger plants. Another regular task is to keep tending the new plants, ‘releasing’ them from surrounding growth, until they’re well established.

Sharon Strong gets in amongst some riverbank growth to teach plant identifcation. Photo: Sandra Simpson

We also got an interesting talk from Keith Gregor about the spawning habits of inanga (whitebait) and how they can be helped and encouraged to use the Uretara. Unfortunately, the stream has steep-sided banks, not the sloping banks inanga prefer, but planting the banks to shade the water and provide some leaves trailing in the water may help.

Click the link to see Western Bay of Plenty Parks Week events, and don’t forget that March is also Sustainable Backyards Month in the BOP, go here to find out more.

heading home
I return a stone
to the river

Stuart Quine (UK)

The three haiku used here form part of the Haiku Pathway, which features 46 poems.

And then there was a cyclone!

The upper North Island of New Zealand has had a record-breaking summer for all the wrong reasons – and now Cyclone Gabrielle has wreaked yet more havoc. Formed in the Coral Sea, Gabrielle bore down on the North Island on February 12, causing flooding and landslips from the next day, heaping further misery on those places that were devastated by flooding caused by an ‘atmospheric river’ from January 27. Tauranga has been affected by both events, but escaped relatively lightly compared to other places.

The late afternoon sky over Waikato on February 12, 2023 as Cyclone Gabrielle approached. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Gabrielle’s reach extended all the way down the North Island and flicked back up the west coast of the island, although as the centre of the storm moved eastwards, parts of the South Island were affected too. The Prime Minister has called it the worst weather event to hit the country so far this century and a national state of emergency was declared.

the leaves coming down in it –
the cat’s fur parted
to the skin

Gary Hotham
The Haiku Seasons (1996)

fields flooded
beneath the surface, somewhere
the river bends

Christopher Herold
Woodnotes 17 (1993)

looks like the rough sea
on the sweet potato field –
a storm rages

Tsuji Momoko
Far Beyond the Field (2003)

New Zealand’s prime growing area for kumara (sweet potato) has now been badly hit twice with flooding, just one of many food crops devastated, along with plenty of pasture.

tornado siren
the wind lifts a sneaker print
from home plate

Chad Lee Robinson
The Heron’s Nest 20.2 (2018)

One thing + another thing 3

YouTube has provided much enjoyable entertainment over the past year or so and at present I’m watching some of the long-running University Challenge series. One picture question showed a painting and it was name the artist. I was wrong (and so were the students) but it put me very much in mind of a Japanese artwork. Well, Dr Charles Cramer and Dr Kim Grant were there before me and feature the pairing below on the Smart History website in A-level: Japonisme (as well as many other interesting pairings).

Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge c.1872-5 James Whistler. Presented by the Art Fund 1905. Image: Tate Gallery

shipping oars
I hold my breath to hear
snow on the water

David Steele
from Haiku Ancient & Modern (2002)

The Tate Gallery site notes that Whistler would set off with his oarsmen at twilight and sometimes remain on the Thames all night, sketching and memorising the scene. He never painted his Nocturnes on the spot. The painting was later included in ‘the Graham sale’ at Christie’s in 1886. When it came up for auction it was hissed by the public, a reception Whistler described in a letter to The Observer newspaper as “flattering”.

In an 1877 review of another in the series, Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket, the eminent critic John Ruskin wrote: “I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.” Which led Whistler to sue Ruskin successfully for libel in 1878 and, although he had claimed £1,000 plus costs, Whistler was awarded a farthing. Bankrupted by the court costs, Whistler sold his lavish house in London and went to Venice to work. Read more about the case here.

When The Falling Rocket appeared at the first Grosvenor Gallery exhibition in 1877, along with Battersea Bridge, Oscar Wilde remarked that they were ‘worth looking at for about as long as one looks at a real rocket, that is, for somewhat less than a quarter of a minute’. James Abbott McNeill Whistler lived from 1834 to 1903.

Bamboo Yards, Kyōbashi Bridge by Utagawa Hiroshige (1857), woodblock print. Gift of Louis W. Hill, Jr. Image: Minneapolis Institute of Art

the full moon
I love a night
that simple

Michael McClintock
from Another Trip Around the Sun (2019)

It’s thought that the tall pillars shown on this bridge inspired Whistler’s rather dramatic-looking bridge, while similarities may also be seen between the boatmen and the limited colour palette. The website of the Brooklyn Museum, which has the same print, notes that the figure with the white hat (about centre) carrying a red lantern is a delightful nod of friendship, for on the lantern is the signature of Yokogawa Hori-take, one of the best known woodblock carvers of the day, and who worked with Hiroshige many times. On the left of the print are towering stockpiles of bamboo. Hiroshige’s own home was only a few blocks further on. Hiroshige lived from 1797-1858.

Kyōbashi was the first bridge on the Tokaido Road, south of the Nihonbashi Bridge, in Tokyo with which it shared the jewel-shaped metal rail ornaments known as ‘giboshi’. The bridges leading into the gates of Edo Castle were the only others allowed these ornaments. The ornaments on the Kyōbashi were preserved when the bridge was destroyed in 1965, and are today on front of a nearby police station. 

Earlier one thing + another thing posts covered Van Gogh and M C Escher.

Looking back and further back

If you’re out and about this summer in New Zealand, you may have time to visit some of the country’s art galleries, large and small. It’s a pastime I enjoy as you never know what you might come across.

Auckland Art Gallery’s major exhibition ‘Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera: Art and Life in Modern Mexico‘ is drawing the crowds until January 22, but around the corner is a series of quieter galleries where the work is just as interesting. ‘Robin White: Te Whanaketanga | Something is Happening Here‘ is a retrospective of this contemporary artist’s work that’s open until the end of January.

The galleries progress us through the work of Dame Robin White from the Bay of Plenty to Dunedin to Kiribati and back to New Zealand.

Summer Grass by painter Robin White and calligrapher Keiko Iimuri is on 12 rolls of wallpaper. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Hanging in a gallery on its own is the large, multi-panelled Summer Grass, made in 2001 with Japanese artist Keiko Iimura and usually at Aratoi, Wairarapa Museum of Art and History. In 2021 the work formed part of ‘Another Energy: Power to Continue Challenging‘, an exhibition at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, celebrating the work of 16 female artists aged 70 or older.

Summer Grass is a response to an incident in a POW camp in Featherston in Wairarapa during World War 2. The information below the image is extracted from A History of Haiku in New Zealand.

Detail from Summer Grass, depicting the midsummer Wairarapa countryside at the memorial garden. The calligraphy renders Isaiah 40:31, which had significance for a prisoner. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Japanese Memorial Garden, Featherston
Also known as the Peace Garden, this garden commemorates the Japanese dead from the so-called Featherston Incident of February 25, 1943 when Japanese POWs staged a sit-down strike at their camp – after a Japanese officer was wounded the unarmed POWs rioted and camp guards fired without being ordered to do so.

Sixty-eight Japanese died and 54 were injured. One New Zealand soldier was killed by ricochet and six were wounded.

The camp at Tauherenikau, 2km east of Featherston had been the largest military training camp in New Zealand in World War 1. In 1942, at the request of the United States military, it was re-established as an internment camp for Japanese soldiers captured in the Pacific, mainly Guadalcanal.

Although a discussion about a “peace garden” at the site began in the 1970s, the Featherston Returned Services Association (RSA) always opposed the idea. In 1995 Nakamato Toshio, head of Masterton’s Juken Nissho timber mill, offered to finance a peace garden at the site but it still ran into local opposition. However, by 2000 the local council was supporting the plan and the garden opened in 2001.

Featuring 68 ornamental cherry trees in two rows, it also contains a plaque with this haiku by Matuso Basho (donated by K.J. Nysse of the Batavian Rubber Company in 1979, the translator is uncredited):

behold the summer grass
all that remains of the
dreams of warriors

* * *

To my mind, not a terribly good version of this famous haiku, which has been rendered in numerous ways over the years. For those who read Japanese, I have seen the original, written in 1689 about battlefield events of 1189 and their aftermath, quoted as:
Natsukusa ya/ tsuwamonodomo ga/ yume no ato

Detail from Summer Grass. Photo: Sandra Simpson

Summer grasses –
All that remains
Of soldiers’ visions

tr Geoffrey Bownas & Anthony Thwaite
from The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse (1964)

A mound of summer grass:
Are warriors’ heroic deeds
Only dreams that pass?

tr Dorothy Britton
from A Haiku Journey, Basho’s Narrow Road to a Far Province (1974)

The summer grasses
of brave soldiers’ dreams –
The aftermath.

tr Donald Keene
from The Narrow Road to Oku (1996)

Waves of summer grass:
All that remains of soldiers’
Impossible dreams.

tr David Bowles (2013)
from his website

summer grass
the only remains of soldiers’
dreams

tr Jane Reichhold
from Basho, The Complete Haiku (2013)

Summer grasses:
all that remains of great soldiers’
imperial dreams

tr Sam Hamill
from the pocket haiku (2014)

Perhaps you’ll find one among these that sits comfortably with you, or go hunting for another. This selection also serves to highlight the multitude of decisions to be made when rendering Japanese into English! My preferred version is quite simple:

summer grasses –
all that remains
of warrior’s dreams

Sad to say, I’ve never been able to find the name of the translator for this version. You can read more here about some of the various renditions and the choices the translators have made.

Haiku Advent Window 24

Christmas eve –
refugees act out
the role of magi

Sandra Simpson
Kokako 32, 2020

And, as we look forward to gift-giving, here’s a second seasonal haiku to end our Advent series (I couldn’t resist it). Thanks for reading along, I hope you’ve had as much pleasure as I had in putting it together.

four in the morning it begins with hooves on the roof

Alan Summers
Presence 74, 2022

Best wishes to all readers and their families for a safe and peaceful 2023.

Haiku Advent Window 23

snow globe
the perfect day
to stay inside

Peter Newton
old song, 2018

Zōjō Temple by Kawase Hasui, published in 1925. Image: Wikimedia