small town garage
Miss December
nineteen ninety
Grant D Savage
The Heron’s Nest 12.2, 2010
*When I was growing up, my father was given a calendar by the local garage, which featured a single Norman Rockwell image for the year. A calendar that generally went up in the toilet so there was plenty of time to take in the painting!
Echidna Tracks issue 9: Journeys has now finished publishing. My haiku published on August 19 was dedicated to my Scottish great-great-great grandparents Jean and William Risk. They and two of their children, including my 6-year-old great-great-grandmother Mary, emigrated to Australia in 1841.
We’d gone to the local archives where we’d been told we could get information about the cemetery. ‘Oh yes,’ the brisk woman said, ‘we have a map so we can send you right to the spot. What were their names?’ She ran her finger down the alphabetical list and ‘… ah’. All buried in unmarked graves. She could still send us ‘right to the spot’ though so I went and stood there and felt sorry for them.
goldfield cemetery —
my ancestors in the section
with no headstones
Sandra Simpson
Echidna Tracks 9
Mary, by the way, was a widow with two young children by the age of 21. Five years later she married my great-great-grandfather, an Englishman, in Maldon. They and their family emigrated to New Zealand some time from 1875-1877.
I took a pottery class earlier this year, something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time and, despite having to wear masks (and so occasionally having steamed-up glasses), at the end of the 6 weeks I had some things I could take pride in — two bowls, two jugs and a small planter pot, all glazed. It was a hand-building class, using slab and coil techniques, so now I’m keen to try working on a wheel.
first pottery class …
finding the jug
inside the clay
Sandra Simpson
The Heron’s Nest 24.3
maybe Covid-positive …
the day’s first shadow
bird shaped
Sandra Simpson
Kokako 37
autumn gales –
setting tonight’s fire
with acorns
Sandra Simpson
Kokako 37
The Asahi Haikuist Network was founded in 1995 by David McMurray, a Canada-born professor at the International University of Kagoshima in Japan, who still puts it together. It originally appeared in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper every week, but more recently has been posted every fortnight on the paper’s website.
David made a call for Southern Hemisphere-themed haiku and I’ve had a few selected for publication beyond the theme edition. The following haiku was written exactly as it happened, the spot being Tangimoana on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand, while the second one recalls a visit to a church, which I seem to think was in Paihia in Russell, an historic settlement in the Bay of Islands.
the road comes
to a ragged end…
tasman sea
Sandra Simpson
Asahi Haikuist Network, August 19
whalers’ church –
all the hassocks
hand embroidered
Sandra Simpson
Asahi Haikuist Network, September 16
The centre of Tauranga has been a building site for years — first all the earthquake strengthening work that had to be carried out after the 2011 Christchurch quake sparked law reforms, then big, new buildings going up that were slowed by Covid, and we’re even having some big ones deconstructed with something new still to go on the sites. Scaffolding everywhere!
cobweb clouds …
scaffolders shout
from floor to floor
Sandra Simpson
Presence 73
Delighted to be notified that my haiku was placed Third in this year’s Robert Spiess Memorial Haiku Award, a contest run by the Modern Haiku journal. You can see all the winning poems on the MH Facebook page, scroll down to June 1.
no headstone –
the rosemary finds
its shape
Sandra Simpson
Two senryu appear in the latest edition of Failed Haiku (#66) – this issue’s contents comprise poems that had been rejected by another journal/editor. Cute theme. Read the issue here (opens as a pdf).
abortion clinic —
red tulips
in reception
Helen Ogden
morning coffee
we listen to a robin
instead of each other
Kristen Lindquist
walking group –
someone new puts
their foot in it
Sandra Simpson
And it’s a fond farewell to much-loved The Heron’s Nest associate editor Scott Mason, being replaced by Tom Painting. The Nest has impeccable taste in its editors! Scott has a rich writing life of his own so hopefully his decision to step away means he has more wonderful work in the wings.
The power of scent to raise a memory has been scientifically proven, as has the link between scent and emotion, one that perfumiers strive to tap into. This article in The Harvard Gazette explains the science: Smells are handled by the olfactory bulb, the structure in the front of the brain that sends information to the other areas of the body’s central command for further processing. Odours go directly to the limbic system, including the amygdala and the hippocampus, the regions related to emotion and memory – and the oldest parts of the human brain.
And although we list taste as one of the five senses, science says that everything we taste is by way of being smelled. No sense of smell, no sense of taste.
Here are some haiku I think convey the sense of smell very well, even if they almost all use the word ‘scent’! I hope you’ve enjoyed this four-part look at haiku that engage with the senses beyond sight, I’ve had fun putting it together.
fallen eucalypt …
the scent
cut into stove lengths
Jo McInerney
from naad anunaad: an anthology of contemporary world haiku
(Viswakarma Publications, 2016)
gentle rain
scent of the seedbed turning
a deeper brown
Katrina Shepherd
from Before the Sirocco (NZPS, 2008)
yellow roses
at Uji the fragrance
of roasting tea leaves
Basho, tr Jane Reichhold
from Basho: The complete haiku (Kodansha, 2008)
The translator’s note to the haiku, written in 1691, is that as yamabuki flowers (Kerria japonica) have no fragrance, they must borrow smells from the roasted tea.
Uji was once one of the most important tea-growing areas in Japan. Read more here. It’s interesting to note that although the yamabuki plant is not a rose, its name is often used to mean ‘yellow rose’ in Japanese literature!
migrating geese –
her scent finally gone
from my pillow
Stephen Toft
from another country: haiku poetry from Wales (Gomer, 2011)
in the alleys
orange blossom scent . . .
the rest escapes me
Luci Cardillo
from Autumn Moon 2.2 (2019)
otoko kite heya nuchi suisen no nioi midaru
a man enters
the room, disturbing the scent
of daffodils
Yoshino Yoshiko, tr Makoto Ueda
from Far Beyond the Field: Haiku by Japanese Women
(Columbia University Press, 2003)
two boys giggle
as he enters the bike shop …
onion seller
Alan Summers
from Stepping Stones: a way into haiku (BHS, 2007)
family reunion
bad breath
has a name
Roberta Beach Jacobson
from H Gene Murtha Senryu Contest, 2019
summer breeze
setting aside the book
to smell her hair
Makarios Tabor
from The Heron’s Nest 22.1, 2020
beading
in a bull’s eyelashes
spring drizzle
Paul Chambers
from The Heron’s Nest 22.1 (2020)
I’m reading Field Notes from the Edge: Journeys through Britain’s secret wilderness by Paul Evans (Rider Publishing, 2015) and was pleased to be safe in my bed when reading this description of a tense bucolic encounter after the author allowed his attention to wander.
**
He may not have been the biggest bull but he seemed massive to me. A head the size of a washing machine, huge neck and shoulders, long back, all deep russet red and rounded muscle – a brick shithouse of a beast. I looked into his eye.
This eye was unlike the oxeye daisy, which is really a pastoral joke in which the ox is prettified and conforms to a bovine ideal of cud-chewing reverie and disinterested stare. He was also not the snorting, charging, angry bull of cartoons. He was watching me closely with his robin redbreast-coloured eye, perhaps with a flash of gold in it. The eye lay at the forward edge of a body that could flatten a wall, not with a furious charge but with a mindful harnessing of colossal weight and strength of will. He was considering what to do. This bull was dangerous.
He began to eat, ripping up hanks of grass with his tongue whilst walking slowly but never diverting his eye from me. This grazing was subterfuge, getting me to think he was not charging while slyly gaining ground. I had heard of bulls working out how to kill someone and this felt premeditated. Perhaps it was payment for some mistreatment he had experienced; perhaps his hormones were pumped by the cows and his blood was up; perhaps something had woken inside that boulder of a skull, some wild bullness was taking over from thousands of years of domestication. It was going to be existential for both of us.
***
The stand-off fortunately ends peacefully. The author, heart pounding, manages to assert the farmer’s ‘ancient claim’ to authority and sends the bull on his way.
spring fever
the farm gate swung wide
for the bull
Michele L. Harvey
from The Heron’s Nest 19.4 (2017)
This in-your-face haiku was written by Issa in 1812:
山吹にぶらりと牛のふぐり哉
yamabuki ni burari to ushi no fuguri kana
dangling
in the yellow roses
the bull’s balls
Translator David Lanoue says: “Here, as often in Issa, we find a startling juxtaposition. Fearlessly and without self-censorship, he presents what he sees. And also, as often is the case, after the initial shock of the image wears off, we find deeper connections to ponder. The bull’s testicles and the roses, after all, are sex organs.”
While researching for a forthcoming post, I discovered that in Japanese literature ‘yellow roses’ are understood to be yamabuki flowers (Kerria japonica), not a rose at all and without any thorns! (Which was worrying me a bit about the image above …)
vacation’s end
sunlight catches the ring
in a bull’s nostrils
Polona Oblak
from The Heron’s Nest 20.4 (2018)
‘Boy on Ox’ is a woodblock print by Ogata Gekko, made in about 1890-1910. Image: Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Estate of Dr Eleanor Z. Wallace
Like Paul Chambers’ haiku that opens this posting, American poet Richard Wright subverts the typical view of a bull as one of uber-masculinity.
Coming from the woods,
a bull has a lilac sprig
dangling from a horn
Richard Wright (1908-1960)
Japan holds regular bullfights (togyu), held in front of paying crowds, which are a recognised folk custom. Unlike Spain however, there are no matadors and picadors; the bulls simply lock horns with one another and push. The bouts are run along the lines of sumo wrestling matches and no animals are put to death as part of the spectacle. Indeed, it seems the bulls are fed well and treated better. Read more here. The Choju-giga scrolls, painted from the mid-12th century to the end of the 13th century, are the earliest record of bullfighting in Japan.
small country town
the bull’s rosette
in the butcher’s window
Pamela Brown
from another country: haiku poetry from Wales (Gomer, 2011)
noon sun
the bull
in a knife’s reflection
Mary Weiler
from Presence 55 (2016)
It seems I’ve got a bit of catching up to do …
hot night –
the time it takes the rat
to stop screaming
Sandra Simpson, Fourth, NZPS International Haiku Contest 2019
Judge Greg Piko had this to say about the haiku …‘hot night’ asked: What is happening to this rat in the heat of the night? Perhaps this is a rat we wanted dead. Perhaps we feel sorrow for the rat. Either way, this is a strong haiku that highlights the impermanence of life and makes us think about how lives end. Indeed, it can make us think about how our own life might end.
Two other haiku were also selected for publication in the contest anthology, The Perfect Weight of Blankets at Night, edited by Raewyn Alexander.
Five haiku were selected for New Zealand’s haiku journal Kokako 31, which came out last September. Issue 32 has been delayed by Covid-19 restrictions.
blowing raspberries
on her tummy –
the moon’s curve
Sandra Simpson, Kokako 31
gap in the fence
I poke my head into
a world of sheep
Sandra Simpson, NOON 16 (2020)
Two haiku were selected for March issue of The Heron’s Nest …
spring winds –
the falcon’s eye
black to the core
Sandra Simpson, The Heron’s Nest 22.1
The following haiku was selected by the Golden Triangle Haiku Contest for a signboard that is being displayed in this business district of Washington DC. The theme was nature in the city.
road works –
the billow and sag
of a cobweb in the wind
Sandra Simpson
Martin Lucas Haiku Award judge Matthew Paul selected this haiku for a Highly Commended:
harvest moon –
the kitchen table laid
with pieces of gun
Sandra Simpson
The prizewinners, plus another two of my poems, will appear in Presence 66 which was posted from the UK in mid-March.
The final haiku appears in the online exhibition at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Masters of Japanese Prints: Haiku (it’s about two-thirds of the way through):
summer heat –
his shaved head glistens
in the lamplight
The UK museum put up a selection of its Japanese woodblock prints and asked for haiku written as a response to the art. This one is matched with Lantern Seller by Utagawa Kunisada I (1786-1864). Kudos to Alan Summers and Karen Hoy of Call of the Page for arranging this interesting project.
Putting together these posts, which someone has described as skiting, does let me see that I am achieving something with my chosen art form. It’s all too easy to not write, not publish and not enter contests. I’d rather keep trying even if it does seem like a bit of an effort sometimes!
And to end, a ripple from the past … an email arrived on December 12 from Richard Oswin, a teacher and composer in Christchurch. Richard was asking permission to use The Gift, one of my longer poems, from Poetry Pudding (Raupo, 2007), a collection of poems for children. I had to find my copy of the book to even recall what the poem was – it’s been a long time since I’ve written anything longer than a haiku!
Richard used the poem as lyrics for a piece of music he’d been commissioned to write as a test piece for the Auckland leg of the national festival The Kids Sing and duly sent me an mp3 file of his composition which features two vocal parts. Although I haven’t heard voices with the music, it seems quite lovely. And the whole thing is quite extraordinary!
With a large storm approaching today it seems like a good time to knuckle down and choose my favourite 10 haiku from the 2017 editions of The Heron’s Nest. As the journal’s got larger, the choice has become more difficult – The Heron’s Nest is a beacon of excellence.
Anyone may vote, you can find the details here (scroll down, deadline January 15).
Here are four of the haiku (one from each edition) appearing on my list – no guarantees they’ll make it through though as I’m still at a top 100 or so!
feeling the silence
sink in —
moose tracks in the snow
Angela Terry, THN 19.1
where an army
swept through wheatfields
hopping sparrows
Michael McClintock, THN 19.2
late autumn
the stillness of blue
miles deep
Jenny Fraser, THN 19.3
enough mint scent
to cross the milky way
high summer begins
Burnell Lippy, THN 19.4
Thinking about haiku deeply enough to feel swayed to cast a vote is a fun way to start the year.
My writing has taken a back seat lately – and not just the back seat in a car, the back seat in a big bus! – so as the days lengthen I’m trying to kick start the brain and limber up the ‘haiku muscle’ in a variety of ways.
New books
I’ll write something more about the first two soon but can recommend all of them – and in my experience reading good haiku is invaluable towards writing good haiku.
Scott Mason is one of my favourite haiku poets so when he sent a note to say he has a new book out, imagine my delight. But it’s not quite a collection of his own work or at least not only a collection of his own work for Scott has produced a magnificent volume based on his thinking about haiku. If you’re quick The Wonder Code has a special pricing offer available until November 30.
The book is divided into themed chapters about haiku, each with a selection of poems previously published in The Heron’s Nest, followed by a ‘Solo Exhibition’ of his own work.
slave burial ground
a mourning dove
we can only hear
– Scott Mason
Carolyn Hall, another of my favourite haiku poets, has produced her fourth collection, Calculus of Daylilies, which doesn’t appear to contain a dud! Wish I knew how she did that – and how she makes many of her haiku so darn relevant.
cockleburs
the court reaffirms
open carry
– Carolyn Hall
Read more about cockleburs (Xanthium strumarium), a plant native to the Americas and eastern Asia.
The last of my new books I discovered by accident, reading something on the net that led to something else where I clicked on … well, I can’t remember now but the upshot was small clouds by Iza Boa Nyx, a 2016 collection of haiku, tanka and prose that is dedicated to her mother Jane Reichhold and which examines Jane’s sudden death and her ensuing grief and mourning.
It would be easy for the book to be maudlin and self-indulgent, the poems primal screams of pain. But the author has produced a slim volume that is essentially a series of linked haibun, although nowhere is it described as such. The prose acts not only as head-notes for poems that would otherwise be untethered on the page but also holds the book together as the story progresses from “At midnight she told me that our mother had killed herself” to “The peace of knowing that this life is all that it will be is echoed in the late summer heat that seems to stupefy even the lizards”.
cumulus, nimbus
cirrus, stratus and fog
all kinds of clouds
in the week of your wake
not knowing what to say
– Iza Boa Nyx
Recent publication
Presence 59 has wound its way from the UK recently and, as always, is packed full of good reading.
right where
the universe goes
fireflies
– Gary Hotham
an owl’s empire
the flecks of light
in snow
– Alan Summers
meteor night –
shaking the star chart
out of its folds
– Richard Tindall
wet spring –
in a box by the fire
a small bleat
– Sandra Simpson
Not so recent, but something I’d not seen until now … the results of the last Setouchi Matsuyama Photo Haiku Contest include an Award for this combination of my own image with my own haiku (there’s also a section where supplied photos act as prompts for haiku).
I took the photo standing on the lawn of a friend’s home in Apia, Samoa. The waka-ama guys paddled one way, then the other – and catching sight of me dug deep, then howled with laughter, stopped paddling and waved! Waka-ama, or outrigger canoes, are used throughout the Pacific as sea-going vessels although in Aotearoa New Zealand the outrigger gradually disappeared. These days, waka-ama has also become a team sport.
You have until November 30 to enter this year’s Setouchi Matsuyama Photo Contest so get going!
And I’ve had my first haiku appear in Akitsu Quarterly, a print journal edited by Robin White in New Hampshire, US. Among them is
burn-off season –
riding home on the back
of a grey truck
– Sandra Simpson
Writing with a buddy
We’re going at our own pace and exchanging whatever we have. We can comment, or not, on the other’s haiku, we can chat about the weather, we can leave the exchange for days … the main thing, for both of us, is that we’re actually writing, instead of worrying about not writing. Fingers crossed.
The latest edition of The Heron’s Nest has been published and includes this haiku of mine:
low-flying geese sunlight on every leading edge
– Sandra Simpson, The Heron’s Nest 19.1
This was a real scene that I laboured to get right, partly in acknowledgement of all the great goose haiku that have gone before. Here is just a small sampling of the many that I like (by the way, New Zealand doesn’t have migratory geese which rather puts us behind in haiku terms). I’ve posted the first two before, back in 2014, but still love them.
stopt to allow geese crossing some idiot honks
– Janice Bostok (1942-2011)
Alan Summers has pointed out (see Comments) that my original posting using ‘stopped’ in Jan’s haiku was incorrect. In White Heron, her 2011 biography by Sharon Dean, Jan says:
“Everyone tries to correct me … I actually used the old-fashioned past participle stopt instead of stopped because to me it sounds more sudden, and I didn’t want to break the flow of the haiku for too long with an exclamation mark. Somehow that stopt allows the haiku to read shorter and quicker… In using stopt I wanted to convey to the reader that I was very definitely stopped – firmly stopped. I even had the car engine turned off.”
the sound of geese through the crosshairs
– Melissa Allen, Modern Haiku 44.1
river fog …
the sound of geese
coming in from the sea
– John Barlow, Wingbeats: British Birds in Haiku (Snapshot Press, 2008)
the first flakes of snow
drifting down the wetlands
Canada geese
– Billie Wilson, The Heron’s Nest 4.11
‘Wild Geese Returning to Katata’, one of Hiroshige’s Eight Views of Omi. Image: Wikipedia
somewhere
between bitter and sweet
migrating geese
– Michele L. Harvey, The Heron’s Nest 18.4
行雁がつくづく見るや煤畳
yuku kari ga tsuku-zuku miru ya susu tatami
the travelling geese
check it out thoroughly…
sooty mat
– Issa, written in 1807
from The Haiku of Kobayashi Issa
Translator David Lanoue offers this comment: The mat is a tatami mat made of woven straw. The fact that it is sooty implies that it belongs to “beggar” Issa.
Merry Christmas to all those who read breath – it’s been a pleasure having you along over the past year of haiku musings. And my very best wishes for a healthy and productive New Year.
Here are a few seasonal haiku to see us on our way to Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and beyond!
Photo: Menchi, via Wikipedia.
christmas eve
in the taxi cab
a scent of pine
– Tom Painting
bottle rockets 12 (2006)
toll booth lit for Christmas —
from my hand to hers
warm change
– Michael Dylan Welch
Second place, Henderson Haiku Contest (HSA), 1995
birthcry!
the stars
are all in place
– Raymond Roseliep
from haiku mind by Patricia Donegan (Shambhala, 2008)
summer solstice –
the flock passes into darkness
one by one
– Sandra Simpson
A Hundred Gourds 3.4 (2014)
Christmas eve
in the courtyard below
a flutter of wings
– Pamela Miller Ness
The Heron’s Nest 3.5 (2001)
Christmas night
the lights on the house opposite
blink blink blink blink
– Sandra Simpson
Prune Juice 19, 2016
shaving foam
Santa in my mirror
waits for wishes
– Alexey Andreev
Presence 56 (2016)
breath, a collection of haiku 