Halloween Haiku

We don’t do Halloween in this house because it’s not a New Zealand “tradition”. We see it as simply another import from America designed to make money for retailers and a way for kids to torment their parents. Yes, I’m not afraid to admit it, I am the Grinch of Halloween.

I have experienced Halloween in the US and the novelty made it fun especially as, say,  your supermarket checkout operator was a witch or a pumpkin or somesuch. The friends we were staying with had no children but bought in bags of “candy” to pass out to those who came knocking. I asked one kid what he was dressed as –  his reply made no sense to me, yet he was looking at me as if I was from Mars! Someone had to explain what a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle was. I fear I’m just as out-of-touch with today’s cartoon favourites.

Halloween
the face in the pumpkin
winks at me 

– Tracy Davidson (UK), A Hundred Gourds 2:1, 2012

If you’ve ever read any of Ed McBain’s 87th precinct books that are set around Halloween, you’ll know of the nasty “tricks” his cops have to deal with on All Hallows Eve. Many churches in New Zealand now offer Light Parties on October 31 to counteract the “negative” side of Halloween.

Halloween party —
after a few drinks
the masks come off

– David Grayson (US), Frogpond XXVIII:3, 2004

Halloween Night
something orange
parked in our place 

– Helen Buckingham (UK), A Hundred Gourds 1:3, 2012

All Souls’ Eve –
tipping the spirit level
this way & that

– Sandra Simpson (NZ), A Hundred Gourds 3.2, 2014

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Soaping Fabulously 4

Yet another from the back of the wardrobe (still not my wardrobe, honest) is “luxury English soap” Bronnley Merry Christmas which comes in a box with a holly pattern on it, reminiscent of a Victorian Christmas card. At the time the box was made the company had warrants from HM Queen Elizabeth and HRH the Prince of Wales, but its website now displays only the former.

From a little bit of surmising I would say the soap was purchased in 2008 (the website has different Christmas soaps now available) but it had lost none of its soapiness or its scent – apple and cinnamon, which yes, did remind me of Christmas, a bit. A pleasant soap to use, a decent-sized bar and it lasted for a good length of time.

Although this particular soap is no longer available, on the basis of how much I enjoyed it, I would try a Bronnley soap again.

Cost: $9.90 for 100g. Rating 4 stars.

Also coming in a box (actually, there’s something a bit special about soap in a box) is Linden Leaves aromatherapy synergy in love again. My first recommendation is to this New Zealand company is to come up with a snappier name! The soap is branded as “vegetable soap” (large print on the front) and is certified organic (small print on the back), while the box itself is printed with “vegetable inks” and is “attractively packaged in a paper-based wrap”. Okay, I added the hyphen, I couldn’t help it. What’s “paper-based” mean, do you think? Some paper and some other yukky stuff we don’t want to mention? What’s wrong with using 100% recycled paper?

Back to the small print on the back – besides the rosehip oil and avocado oil there are  things with numbers and chemical names on the list of ingredients. I guess we have to figure that if it’s certified organic (why isn’t that on the front in big letters?) it’s all good.

The soap itself was pleasant enough, but it is one of the pricier ones I’ve used and that extra cost didn’t really stand out in terms of scent or skin feel. In fact, it was probably a bit less fabulous than the six-year-old Bronnley soap. This soap is tagged as having a scent of neroli, vanilla and sandalwood (although the box shows an orange and orange blossom, which is just plain confusing). You all know how I am about vanilla and, once again, I have been disappointed. Pleasant but not nearly what I wanted or was expecting. See the full range of Linden Leaves soap.

At the same time I bought the soap I also purchased a bottle of Linden Leaves ginseng and orange blossom bath salts, which smell divine. Oddly, there is no soap to match.

Cost: $14.99 for 100g. Rating 3 stars.

Haiku Husband has been gallivanting and one of my proceeds from a recent trip was a bar of Honey I Washed Teh Kids (sic) from a Lush outlet in Dubai. Here’s a link to the New Zealand branch of Lush, which is a UK-based company.

The soap is advertised as “toffee and honey” and the bar comes with a honeycomb effect on top of the slice. It does have a scent, but I clock it as something spicier than either toffee or honey. I’ve always wanted to love Lush products but often feel let down when I use them. The fun names and the unique look of the stores usually don’t translate into the same fun at home (website slogan: “magic is something we make”).

The soap lathers okay, but being brown the soap isn’t so pretty to look at and the “honeycomb” on the end is sharpish and/or falls off … and this stuff isn’t cheap! Not one I’d try again.

Cost: Dhr410/kg or $NZ140/kg (Dhr42.65 for my block/ $NZ14.61). Rating 2 stars.

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.かくれ家は浴過けり松の蝉
kakurega wa yuami sugi keri matsu no semi

secluded house –
a hot bath
and cicadas in the pines

– Kobayashi Issa, written in 1804.

This haiku (both Japanese and English) is from David Lanoue’s amazing site, Haiku of Kobayashi Issa.

Katikati Haiku Contest results – a judge reflects

They came in a box – all shapes and sizes of paper and card, most typewritten but one or two brave souls relying on their hand-writing. The judging for the Katikati Haiku Contest is done blind – that is each haiku entered is numbered, I see no names.

I sat down, armed with a pair of scissors, and began to read (the scissors were to cut  stand-out poems from a sheet of entries).

I sorted them, sorted them again and then re-read the whole lot for a third time.

I made piles – definite, definite maybes, maybes and, well you get the picture. The piles got shuffled. The piles got shuffled again.

The coffee table, couch and floor were decorated with strips of paper. The strips of paper got moved from one site to another. Well, several of the strips of paper … some of them stayed right where they were for the entire judging process.

Lorin Ford’s winning haiku was in the top four from the start – it’s a complex, profound and mysterious poem.

a last year’s lambskin where mushrooms gather dusk

It’s funny how sometimes there is more than one poem on the same unexpected subject in the same contest. I gave this haiku by Scott Mason a Commended:

rolling fields
    the vocabulary
           of sheep

I was equally enchanted by the Second-place haiku by Beverley George:

train journey …
the young student next to me
reduces stars to graphs

and by this Highly Commended haiku by Gary Hotham:

   floating in calm air
      too much light
for the engineer’s math

Third was Simon Hanson (an interesting statistic – all the top three haiku, three of the four Highly Commendeds and two of the six Commendeds were by Australians):

holding cover
the hare waits
for eye contact

Catherine Bullock of Waihi won the Best Local Haiku award with this great poem:

evening calm –
duck’s wake
the width of the estuary

I also want to mention this Highly Commended haiku by Beverley George – while judging the entries I went out one morning to find the snail bait around the parsley had claimed five (five!) snails overnight. I could really envisage those “stretched necks” during the dark hours:

parsley bed
the stretched necks
of snails

To read the full list of winners, and my judge’s report, go here.

Unfortunately, we had one disqualification due to haiku being entered that had previously been published. It saves red faces all round if poets keep good records and a track of what’s gone where, when and what happened to those poems (ie, while they may not have been prize winners, were they included in a contest anthology?).