This year is all about co-ordinating and completing a large family history, as well as undertaking any paid work that comes my way over and above the ‘regulars’, so haiku is having to take a bit of a back seat, sadly. Some days I feel like I’ve puffed my way through a marathon, only to look at my to-do list and see I’m not really much further ahead. However, there are a few haiku-related things to report …
Delighted to hear that I’d won Second in the Sharpening the Green Pencil Haiku Contest with:
longest night –
the clay bowl’s
whorls and ridges
Sandra Simpson
Judge Julie Warther said: “Working a tactile sensation into haiku can be a difficult task, but here we can almost feel a lump of clay spinning on a wheel, taking shape in the potter’s hands. It is a slow process and one that requires patience. “Whorls and ridges” could describe the design of the bowl itself or contours of the artist’s fingertips. When fingerprints are found in a finished piece, there is no mistaking its individual nature and the care with which it was created. This alone is a striking image, but a resonance emerges when this image is paired with ‘longest night’ – a time when the seasons themselves turn, taking on more and more light – in the unique nature of time itself.” Click on the link above to see all the winning haiku.
The latest issue of Kokako (34) has arrived featuring an eclectic mix of poets and their work, including three pages of pandemic-theme haiku. The link takes you to submission / subscription details.
eucalypt breeze
the rattle
of a cicada’s husk
Gavin Austin
eddies of dust
the rooster’s comb blends
into sunrise
Debbie Strange
winter sun –
a pair of waxeyes
chest to chest in mid air
Sandra Simpson
haunted house
the carnie flicks his butt
and waves us in
Greg Schwartz
Gilles Fabre, the editor of seashores journal, sent me a copy of the latest issue (6) as thanks for my essay ‘Cracks in the Pavement’ about urban haiku that appears in the volume. I’ll post the piece here towards the end of the year.
hill walking
whether to get a dog
at our age
John Hawkhead
learning
to accept my baldness
dandelion flight
Adej Agyei-Baah
the silence
of the blinking cursor
winter stars
Jackie Chou
Earlier this year I judged the British Haiku Society’s David Cobb Haiku Award, renamed this year to honour one of the BHS founders (1926-2020). The award has two judges, my colleague being Charles Trumbull in Sante Fe, New Mexico, and we were under strict instructions (which we followed!) not to talk to one another until given the go-ahead by the contest secretary (ie, when she’d received both of our reports).
We did correspond by email once allowed and were delighted to find that we’d each chosen different haiku, although our short lists were pretty near identical. Subjective, much! Read all the winning haiku and our judge’s comments. A useful byproduct of the work was thinking about what I seek in a poem, which also informed my writing for seashores as the two were almost concurrent.
bluebells
carrying the drift
of rain into dusk
Joanna Ashwell (Sandra’s choice for First)
wind in the tamaracks
the sound of a screen door
sixty years past
Earl R Keener (Charlie’s choice for First)
Finally, a delve into the latest copy of the always-readable Presence journal (issue 69).
ebb tide
a limpet returned
to its home scar
Thomas Powell
dry leaves
scattering across the path
quail chicks
Margaret Beverland
woodsmoke –
I am that child
kicking leaves
Susan King
westering sun –
a skein of geese banks
into a glide path
Sandra Simpson
breath, a collection of haiku 