Stella Pierides

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skinny dipping –
over the lake sickle moon
and zillion stars
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swallows -
coat and gloves
sent to the attic

“Swallows”, the haiku I wrote responding to a prompt in the Facebook NaHaiWriMo, was one of several picked to be featured for March (2011) by Vincent Hoarau in his sparkling site La Calebasse. I am both honoured and delighted – especially since he translated it into French! This is my first haiku translated into French, indeed another language, and I must say I love the sound of it. Thank you, Vincent!

Vincent’s site is well worth visiting. He generously collects and translates other poets’ work, presenting it alongside his own.  His work and collection were recently commended by Melissa Allen of Red Dragonfly, a must-read blog for haiku enthusiasts.

(To find my Swallows on La Calebasse, you need to scroll down the page here to find it – towards the end. I hope you will enjoy all the haiku featured there, they are delicious.)

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fish wife
stooped over the laptop keys
scaling words
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( Delighted to have this poem in Cuento Magazine, #73, 30 March 2011 – writing is a bit like that, isn’t it? )

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breaking waves –
walking by the shore
she steps on seashells
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crushed chamomile
an army tank points at
the chicken coop
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all those swallows
and no calendar
in sight
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earth report –
besides love, caesium
in water and in the air

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Following the news on the BBC that “leaking water at reactor 2 has been measured at 1,000 millisieverts/hour – 10 million times higher than when the plant is operating normally.”
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Publisher on hiatus

The waiting for Alexandrias 40: In the Shade of the Lemon Tree is getting longer. Voxhumana-books has gone on hiatus. My publisher has been seriously ill for some time, and is now no longer able to continue with the work. I am very sad about Philip’s fight with cancer and wish him all the best.

I will keep you posted about the book when I have more news. Meanwhile, I hope to see you around this blog and twitter (@stellapierides.com) for short stories, haiku and other forms of prose and poetry.

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Adam and Eve –
smell of apple blossom
on the breeze
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no prompt –
the sound of melting chocolate
without the taste
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director’s chair –
granny moves it out of
the sun
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harvest –
picking basil leaves
for mother‘s salad
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London to Munich.
cherry tree blossom
deja vue
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night train –
her shipboard romance
out of steam
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Whitstable beach –
piles of oyster shells
for seeding reefs
…

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super moon 2034
robotic arm
brushes my teeth

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Celtic knot –
waiting for the last tape
an apple rolls uphill
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One of the sources of inspiration for this haiku on St Patricks day is Beckett and the modernist movement. For Beckett click here

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Aegean shores
meltemi brings salt
to your lips
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radiation test
will frogs jump into our pond
next spring?
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stepping on catfish
once again we sit
under open blooms
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Thanks to Gabi Greve for her link on the catfish quake deity.

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spring quake
ahead of a boat, a house
sails out to sea

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Reflecting the horrendous destruction of the quake, this also associates to the news about a survivor picked up 9 miles out in the sea from the floating roof of his house!

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white silk kimono
on the shrine floor sake
on cherry blossoms
…

The horrendous violence of nature unfolding in Japan, and its effects on people and ‘things,’ made me wonder how words could reduce it to human scale; make it somehow comprehensible to me.

Haiku 11a was an attempt to reduce/freeze the violent, fulminant images I saw on TV to a simple, quiet one: a wedding at the shrine interrupted by the tsunami, the wedding sake spilled, the silk white kimono worn at weddings on the floor…

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Zorro, open air –
dad cracks pumpkin seeds
with his teeth
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moon shadows –
you let too many petals
fall softly

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swallows
coat and gloves
sent to the attic
..

This haiku was one of several picked by Vincent Hoarau to be featured in his blog La Calebasse, in a set of fantastic spring haiku he shared here.

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hidden
gurgling down the rain pipe
a waterfall

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déjà vu
outside the city walls
daffodils

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conference room:
one way or another
we scale the fish

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churchyard yew –
smoke rings hover above
teens’ heads

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stranded on the mudflats
mother ewe with two lambs –
sound of rushing tide

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under the laptop keys
long after my cat died
her hair
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Also posted on Stella’s Stones

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gazing
at the full moon I forgot
all about its hare

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Also Posted on Stella’s Stones

The National Haiku Writing Month, February 2011, is now over. This was a month of writing at least one haiku each day. It has been a wonderful experience: the writing was great, the organizer and host Michael Dylan Welch (Graceguts) guided the group gently but steadily and the comments were very helpful without being overwhelming. Thank you Michael Dylan Welch, Alan Summers, and fellow participants!

I treated this writing month as a writing retreat. Reading up on haiku technique, enjoying other people’s haiku and getting into the habit of observing my own personal responses to the world. It is like learning to frame in words moments, like a photographer captures them in pictures or an artist sketches them. It is a form of mediation of experience and meditation in one.

Now that it is over, while I miss the discipline of the writing challenge, the support and energy of the community, I also know I gained enough to continue the practice.

I was chaffed when one of my own haiku was one among those highlighted in Red Dragonfly by Melissa Allen. You can read her whole post and enjoy her selections; better still, read her blog!  By the way, she writes great experimental as well as ‘normal’ haiku.

While the actual NaHaiWriMo is now officially over, Alan Summers of With Words and Area 17 has agreed to continue prompting eager haiku poets for the month of March. I look forward to responding to the prompts as well as Alan’s, and the participants’ most helpful comments

I am finding out about the plethora of haiku groups and communities writing and commenting on each other’s work. I will be catching up with them soon. Meanwhile, I am exploring The Haiku Foundation’s site and blog: a vital resource for those bitten by the haiku bug.

As of today, I will be posting my haiku in my main blog, in my growing collection of haiku and also in Stella’s Stones; as usual, I will tweet it as well! Haiku published elsewhere will be presented with fanfare!

The file NaHaiWriMo (National Haiku Writing Month) will be active again next year, in February, when the next official NaHaiWriMo will be taking place.