.

Instead of
cherry-blossom-viewing
she counts syllables
.

My poem in the Asahi Haikuist Network, From the Notebook, http://www.asahi.com/english/haiku/ 4 May 2012

.

Delighted that my tanka was selected to be included in Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, Volume 4!

It can now be ordered through Amazon, or the link here

.

Today, an old poem from 2011:

spilling its seeds
a broken pomegranate
bleeds for luck
.
First appeared in Unfold magazine, 2011

(NaHaiWriMo prompt: broken)

And the great news:

My poet page is up on The Haiku Foundation’s Haiku Registry site. It can be seen by clicking here

Many thanks to Billie Wilson for creating it and putting it up.

My haibun ‘Drawings’ is included in Contemporary Haibun, vol. 13, of Red Moon Press.

I am delighted to be in such a good journal and in such good company!

I am thrilled to report that:

my short story/flash ‘The Silence in my Cell’ is now online in the May edition of Tuck Magazine. They say it is a MUST read! See what you think. It can be read here

my tanka ‘Tin Mug’ now appears in ‘ars poetica 2′ – newest poems of Poets Online. It can be found on their site here  (This is a bit more complicated to find: go to Archive, click newest poems/ ars poetica 2)

In the continuing  celebrations of National Poetry Month I am thrilled to host

Mary Alexandra Agner, whose wonderful poetry I have been recently savoring.

She can be found online at: www.pantoum.org

Mary writes:

Female Science Professor (FSP) posted an article last month entitled “The
Hate Stage of Writing“. She discusses the ups and downs of attachment to your
work while writing scientific papers, including a brightly-colored graph showing her
attachment to the papers she’s written (ranging from hate to love) as a function of
the writing lifetime of the paper. I was struck by the similarities and differences
between her commentary and that in Diane Lockward’s thoughtful
discussion of when a poem is finished.

FSP’s article explores the idea that you know the paper is finished when you hate
it. And while Diane’s article doesn’t address that directly, her advice about
letting the poem sit while you “get uninvolved with it” is, to me, a similar stance.
Anger can make you objective. (It can also make you completely subjective, so
apply it to your writing process with caution.) Anger can give you a distance like
the one Diane is discussing but I’m intrigued that I don’t see poets blogging about
hating a poem and knowing it’s ready to go out, while a scientist does. Undoubtedly
my sampling technique needs improvement.

It is the graph in FSP’s post that catches at me. I would like to see similar ones
for poems, especially some that include the impact of the publishing process on our
attachment to our own work. We should all take to heart FSP’s comment that she
“certainly [doesn't] submit or finish any of [her] papers in the hate stage.”
Diane, perhaps, might add that we shouldn’t submit our poems in the love stage
either, when you are too close to the work to be objective.

It should not surprise you, this many words into my own commentary, that I enjoy
crossing the boundaries between science and literature, two cultures that have never
seemed that different to me, even after all the energy expended to display how far
apart they are. All the poems in my newest book, The
Scientific Method, came to me as a guilty pleasure, bridging that gap and making
art out of what I was told was not possible. And the majority of them finished the
revision process with a resounding thump, excepting “Jump the Chromosome”
which I fear I revised away into too little, mostly based on some kind commentary by
an editor (who did not publish the poem). My graph, for the book as a whole, was one
flat line up between “like” and “love”. The only thing that kept my spirits up,
waiting to hear back from publishers, was that the poems continued to ring true for
me year after year. And that, rather than the objectivity of hate, is what allows
me to keep offering poems to editors for publication.

.

You can read a really scientific poem of Mary’s here

.

This post is part of the multi-author poetry blog tour  Couplets, the brain-child of Joanne Merriam, of Upper Rubber Boot Books.

.

Anzac Day –

adding those who died

of a broken heart

.

This poem appears in the entry for Anzac Day, see Gabi Greve’s World Kigo Database here.

 .

jasmine rice                                                                   Jasminreis
the tongue twists into a new                                   Zungenbrecher in einer neuen
language                                                                        Sprache

.

In Bregengemme / Chrysanthemum Vol. 11.1, 2011

(With many thanks to the editors for the translation into German)

In November last year, I moved to a place near the river Schmutter, in the Greater Augsburg area. Some of you may remember my posts, and pictures, on ‘Leaving Ammersee’ from last year. Given the spectacular Ammersee lake and those sunsets – those sunsets! – it was difficult to imagine then how I would take to my new surroundings. Indeed, it has taken time for me to settle – still many unpacked boxes in the cellar! – but at least I have started going out for walks in the vicinity.

Almost next door, there are the Schmutter meadows: a nature reserve marshland by the river Schmutter (a tributary to the Danube), which is flooded several times each year. The soil is enriched by the flooding, and meadows become home to numerous rare plants, birds, and other animals.

And here, in the local marshland, its grassy paths, sludgy mud, numerous water channels, sluices, and flooded pools, the river itself twisting and turning, I have found beauty, again! This is a beauty I can neither own nor grasp in one go, i.e., in one picture, in one season, or one year. It is a beauty that develops, changes; a fragile, weather-beaten, marshland eco-system that I can only experience piecemeal on my walks through it.

If you have the time, take a look at this picture and haiku, imagine walking by the Schmutter. I will be posting more pictures from this area and writing haiku responding to my walks in the future. Am I trying to make this area ‘mine?’ Perhaps I am! You can come along for the experience.

Better still, choose an area near your own home, observe it, write about or take pictures of it, and turn it into your ‘most beautiful thing.’

This post is written in response to Fiona Robyn’s call for writers to write (and blog) about what they consider to be their most beautiful thing: a ‘blogsplash’ . In the context of her launching her new novel ‘The Most beautiful Thing,’ Fiona is making the novel available for free on the 24th and 25th of April 2012. Visit her blog for details here

Aubrie Cox’s PDF collection of poetry on the theme of Fox Dreams is now ready and up on her blog, yaywords, to be downloaded, shared and above all, enjoyed.

My own poem is on page 10, together with a number of really great haiku. To read them all, click here

.

stealing away
from my yard again, little fox!
first blossoms

.

I am pleased to report here that Cara Holman, in her blog Prose Posies, celebrated April the 17^th, National Haiku Poetry Day, by hosting a virtual haiku poetry reading event. Several poets, including myself, were given the space to ‘read’ their haiku at this event.

Thank you, Cara, for organizing this wonderful space, and for including my haiku. In such good company!

The link, which makes the poetry reading accessible to those interested is here

.

moonless night

a pair of gumboots

inside the door

.

In Gabi Greve’s World Kigo Database: Gumboots, Saijiki for Kenya and Tropical Regions, here (scroll down)

Tomorrow, April 17, is National Haiku Poetry Day, a day dedicated to celebrating haiku – locally in the United States and globally in the hearts of all those loving this genre. The Haiku Foundation has organized a number of events all around the country. You can see the schedule of events here

If you live outside the US, there’s still lots to do. Explore the website of the Foundation, taste the Per Diem: Daily Haiku straight from its box, write haiku, spread the word…

Whatever you do, Happy National Haiku Poetry Day!

National Poetry Month 2012 – Update. Taking part in Couplets, the multi-author poetry blog organized by Joanne Merriam of Upper Rubber Boot Books, I was honoured to be featured:

On the 1^st of April 2012 at Margaret Dornaus’ wonderful blog ‘haiku-doodle’

On the 6^th of April 2012, at Angie Werren’s great blog for micropoetry ‘feathers’

In the same project, Couplets, 1^st of April, I hosted the exquisite poetry of Margaret Dornaus on my own blog. Margaret offered three of her excellent tanka poems.

I also had the pleasure of hosting Lisa Cihlar, whose poetry I love. Lisa wrote a fascinating article about the creation of one of her characters, ‘Swampy Woman.’

There is more to come in the second half of the month. And there are so many good poets taking part in this project! Visit the Couplets site and enjoy! And don’t forget to come back!

Don’t you sometimes wonder where poets and writers’ characters come from? I do! Several times a day! Especially when I am waiting for mine to appear. Well, Lisa J. Cihlar, celebrating National Poetry Month with me today, is posting here exactly about this matter.  And about the gestation, birth and life of her books. Fascinating … Enjoy! 

 I.   A Character Emerges From the Swamp

Somewhere around a year and a half ago I wrote a poem and there was a character in it called Swampy Woman.  Who knows where she came from?  It happens that I grew up on a farmette in the middle of a swampy area in Door County WI, so I had wetlands always in my psyche, but I didn’t intentionally bring the swamp to my poem.  Besides, that was just one poem and I had no design to write any more.  But then, months later, who shows up but Swampy Woman.  I was hooked after that.  At that time I was writing a poem-a-day with a group of online poet friends and I took off with the character and wrote one poem after another.  When I had about 25 of them, they just stopped coming.

Now that I had them, I wondered what to do.  With the help of my wonderful teacher/mentor Terri Brown Davidson, I revised the poems and shaped the whole bunch of them into a chapbook titled The Insomniac’s House, from a line in one of the poems.  I sent them out to a half dozen contests, and had no nibbles.  Plus it was expensive.  The book was now languishing in a computer file.  Then I saw that “Dancing Girl Press” was accepting submissions—no money involved—and I sent the manuscript off and forgot about it.

A couple of months later I got an email saying that Kristy Bowen of DGP loved the book and wanted to publish it.  I was over the moon.  Kristy hand-makes chapbooks and she does lovely work.  When I asked if she would mind if I got my own cover artist she was happy to let me do that.  I knew Siolo Thompson through Facebook and thought her artwork fit Swampy Woman perfectly.  Siolo read the manuscript and went to work.  When I saw the cover design, I knew I had picked the right artist.  I love the deconstructing bear on the cover and the woman in red; weird and haughty enough to be Swampy.

I got the first of the books in my greedy hands in January 2012 and it was wonderful holding something I had made from nothing but the thoughts in my head.

The thing about this character is that she seems to have caught the imagination of a lot of folks.  Women especially are intrigued.  I think it is because the character has sass.  She is not Mother Nature as we typically see her, all gauzy and pastel.  Rather she is sexy and pushy and apologizes for nothing.  Because of this, the book has sold very well.

As a post script to this story of the genesis of a character, I can add that I have written a couple more Swampy Woman poems.  She just pops up now and then, kind of showing me that she is still stomping around in the cattails.  I’m always excited when she does.

II. A Character Who Remains Unnamed

After The Insomniac’s House poems were done I went back to writing poems on disparate topics.  Then I became interested in prose poems.  I bought a copy of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry and devoured it.  After that I wrote some pretty bad prose poems.

Luckily practice makes better.  I was writing a lot of poems and themes were emerging.  When going back over the work I noticed I had a bunch of poems written about a character that had no name.  They were all about She.  And She was losing parts—her voice, her ears, her scream.  I didn’t want to look into the psychology of this too deeply, so I just kept writing.

One day I was noodling around on Facebook and John Burroughs who runs Crisis Chronicles Press announced that he was doing a 24 hour chapbook contest.  He would publish his favorite chapbook that was sent to him in the next 24 hours.  That was too fun to pass up so I threw a book together and sent it in.  I expected nothing so when I got an email from John telling me he loved the book and wanted to publish it, I was amazed.  After I digested the news, I asked if I could have some time to edit and put the book in better order.  John graciously gave me the time I needed.  Again I worked with Terri Brown Davidson and made some huge changes to the chapbook:  swapped out some poems, wrote new ones, changed the title, and gave the whole thing a loose storyline.

I sent the changed manuscript to John and kept my fingers crossed for two days until he wrote back that he liked the new version better than the first one.  Huge sigh of relief on my part.  He will publish the chapbook this year under the title “This is How She Fails.”  Again I got an artist friend of mine, Lisa Marie Peaslee, to design the cover and I can’t wait to see the final product.

For me there is something special about following a character through a collection of poems.  I feel like I know these people like I know my best friends.

….

Lisa J. Cihlar‘s poems have been published in The South Dakota Review, Green Mountains Review, In Posse Review, Bluestem, and The Prose-Poem Project. One of her poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  Her chapbook, “The Insomniac’s House,” is available from Dancing Girl Press and a second chapbook “This is How She Fails,” will be published by Crisis Chronicles Press in 2012.  She lives in rural southern Wisconsin.

This blog post is part of the Couplets project, a multi-author poetry blog tour coordinated by Joanne Merriam of Upper Rubber Boot Books “to help promote poetry and poets for National Poetry Month”.

.

.

.

.

Good news! Snapshot Press has announced the results of The Haiku Calendar Contest 2012, selecting the entries for next year 2013. I am very pleased that one of my haiku, ‘winter wind,’ written in response to a NaHaiWriMo prompt, has made it as a runner-up and will be included in the Calendar! The complete results can be seen here

About  the Haiku Calendar (I quote from their site):

“The Haiku Calendar has appeared annually since the 2000 edition was published in 1999. Edited by John Barlow, and featuring haiku poets from around the world, the calendar continues a rich tradition exploring and celebrating the relevance of seasonal references in English-language haiku.”

Of course, this proves the point: my daily haiku training at NaHaiWriMo  is doing me good!

Well, April, the cruelest month, is upon us! Thank God we have poetry to help us survive it. Poetry, Poetry, Poetry, Poetry!

The Haiku Foundation, the Poetry Foundation, Poets.org, brim with wonderful poetry to feed the soul – and the senses! Visit them and forget about April; or at least enjoy it! There is also Per Diem, the Daily haiku offered by The Haiku Foundation on their home page (bottom right-hand corner); Couplets, the multi-author poetry blog, coordinated by Joanne Merriam of Upper Rubber Boot Books, the Facebook pages of NaHaiWriMo,  and numerous other projects, workshops, readings, and poetry-related events.

On this first day of Poetry Month, I am very happy to host Margaret Dornaus, ‘writer, a teacher, wife, traveler . . . as well as a haiku-doodler.’  Margaret says about herself, ‘I live in a beautiful woodland setting, surrounded by native oak forests, that inspires me to record haiku snapshots of luna moths and our resident roadrunner, and even an occasional black bear as it hightails it across the top of my road, my mongrel dog barking at its heels as I watch with wonder’.

In her post hosted here, Margaret  kindly states, ‘I’m thrilled to exchange places with Stella for the day in observance of National Poetry Month and to have her wonderful work featured on my blog, Haiku-doodle (www.haikudoodle.wordpress.com).

Margaret herself chose to offer three poems (see below).  This is how she reflects on her offering:

‘After we decided to share three of our poems on each other’s site, I contemplated whether I should contribute haiku or tanka.  I    began writing both about a year and a half ago, and, although I was already familiar with haiku, I knew nothing about tanka until I accidentally stumbled upon a call for submissions to Pamela A. Babusci’s journal Moonbathing.  When I started studying this ancient lyrical form and reading the work of other tanka poets, I knew I’d found a home . . . .  And so I’ve chosen three tanka to feature here today.’

you remind me

how it felt that night we met . . .

our universe

filled with possibilities

and the soft hum of tree frogs

 .

Simply Haiku, vol. 9, no. 1, Spring 2011

.

years from now

I promise to remember

how you looked that night

alone on the verandah

holding moonlight in your hands

.

First place, Tanka Society of America

2011 International Tanka Contest 

.

in darkness

we forget our anger . . .

suddenly

the sound of wild geese

piercing the starless night

.

Ribbons: Tanka Society of America Journal,

vol. 7, no. 1, Spring 2011

.

This blog post exchange is part of the Couplets project, a multi-author poetry blog tour coordinated by Joanne Merriam of Upper Rubber Boot Books “to help promote poetry and poets for National Poetry Month“.

The Munich Readery, Augustenstr 104, is my favorite bookshop in Munich. I enjoy walking around the shop and discovering the amazing books that crop-up on its shelves. Lisa and John, the proprietors, are friendly and book wizards, so I know and can rely on their knowing! I love taking part in their author readings, coordinated by Lisa. Today’s reading (21.03.12) must be my fifth at this venue, though the first to be documented The other readers read excellent poetry and prose. And there was wine, water and cookies afterwards!

 According to scientists, we humans have receptors for between nine and twenty one senses available to us. Imagine! Up to twenty one points of entry to the world! I say imagine, because we do not appear to be aware of most of those senses. Beyond the five well-known ones, who thinks of their sense of equilibrioception (the sense of balance) or proprioception (the sense of the body’s position in space) – unless they go wrong, of course. What is more interesting is the use we make of these ‘inputs’! The emotional, geographical, cultural, historical worlds we build around them.

In this issue, twenty one contributors explore the senses – the primary but also some of the secondary ones – and the ways these interact to create a sense of place, rootedness, memory, history, and cultural identity. Using the taste and feel of words, the images captured on camera and in paint, their own individual experiences and associations, the artists reflect on the senses in diverse, entertaining, fascinating, remarkable ways and create the world of the senses anew for us to savour and celebrate. It has been a pleasure to host their contributions to the theme of edition #14: Locating the Senses in Language/Place!

 Alegria Imperial, originally from the Philippines, now writing from Vancouver (Canada), explores in her haibun, “the tiresome coldness of winter, the longing for spring and its blossoms to spark again, a self-consoling reflection on what eventually awaits yet for now ‘this longing/at moonrise/the only star’”. See here

Elizabeth Kate Switaj, writing from Ireland, in her ‘Memories of Place: Fruit’ considers the way the taste and sight of two different kinds of fruit, persimmons and mangoes, can bring back memories of place. A slight difference in the variety of fruit means a different experience of memory entirely… here

Kristina shares with us a walk among the ruins of Paestum, an incredibly peaceful place, and draws our attention to the neighboring museum and the ways it imbues the ruins with a sense of place and time. And after the sights and the history, pizza with mozzarella and courgette flowers! What a treat! Here

Penn Kemp, writing from London (Canada) says, the “two poems in ‘A Carnival of Senses’ celebrate the senses, celebrate language, celebrate place, in this case my bedroom”.  Here

Brigita Orel writes: “Senses are the inciting sparks of stories and poems and the places and times at which I became aware of them shape how I use them, maybe even how I interpret them.” In her essay, she reflects on the difficulties and challenges of writing in a foreign language rather than her mother tongue, and what it means to think, feel, or sense in a language other than your own. See here

Driving Rain

Maria Pierides, Kent (UK), explores her sense of landscape using a non-verbal medium, painting. In her blog, she speaks in the language of color, image, movement, shape, density, contrast… In Gallery 3, Time and Tide, she explores the seascapes and landscapes of Kent and their relationship to time, culture, and history. Here

Martin Willitts Jr, writing from upstate New York (USA), in his poem ‘Dear Diary’ interprets the story of Hansel and Gretel; and he knows a trap when he smells one! Here

Jean Morris (UK), in her haiku/haiga reflects on her experience: it “has been lingering as a taste and texture of
icy cold in my mouth since the moment I saw/wrote it, last month before the weather changed.” Here

 Steve Wing, a visual artist and writer living in Florida (USA), in his work reflects his appreciation for the extraordinary in ordinary days and places. In this contribution, he writes about the unique cultural texture that some fragrances like copal acquire. Here

Abha Iyengar, writing from New Delhi (India), in ‘The Senses: Diverse Renderings’ immerses herself in sensations – she has jasmine under her pillow – in poetry written for this theme. Here

Fiona Robyn, from the UK, whose ‘mission is to help people connect with the world through writing’ writes: “To prepare yourself for nourishment, you need to allow your eyes, ears, nose, fingers, mouth, head & heart to open.” A true feast in ‘Feed your Head’ Here

Jim Martin, writing from Munich (Germany), in his ‘The Visitors’ takes us on a fascinating and mysterious journey, beginning and ending in a Tuscan farmhouse. Here

 Cathy Douglas, writing from the US, says:  “In my adopted home state of Wisconsin, winter is a big part of our image.  As the snow melts and the lakes thaw, we experience a brief, muddy identity crisis known as March”. Here

 Karyn Eisler, Vancouver (Canada), in her blog ‘Living ?s’ reconnects with her senses in Heviz. Where is Heviz? More important: what is Heviz for Karyn? Read Karyn’s post and see! Here

Michelle Elvy, writing from New Zealand, in ‘Close your Eyes’ explores the body and its history as a landscape, or rather an open book… Here

Dora, of ‘turns of endearment’, finds sanctuary in immersing herself in the experience of color… “an almost religious, aesthetic experience”. Here

Sherry O’Keeffe writes: “The Shoshoni Indians had made the river valley their home long before I showed up on the gravel bars, looking for the sound of a crow. I learn from their language to see the world as never belonging to any one, not even to the crows”. Here

Nine’s memoir piece is filled with emotion, color, images. Looking back, now in New Zealand, she tells us how she said goodbye to Berlin. Even now, she says, “it’s still largely what I think of when I think about Berlin” in a blog entry, which “I wrote almost about year and a half ago” Here

Siddartha Beth Pierce contributes 6 poems, each covering sensitively and thoughtfully one of the six senses… “making angels on the ground”. Enjoy here

 Steve Wing and Dorothee Lang, in an e-logue that moves back 35.000 years in time, reflect on neolithic art and modern works that reach back in time to capture the past in film, in image, and in story: “A sense of place in time” Here

Stella Pierides, writing from Germany and UK, in her haibun ‘Other Worlds’ explores the sometimes hallucinatory qualities of the senses. Here

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed to this edition. I enjoyed reading your entries and getting to know your blogs – do let me know of any mistakes in your entries and I will try to correct them. I am going to be a more regular reader and contributor from now on! A huge thanks you to Dorothee Lang, too, the founder of this blog carnival, and the ever-present support and inspiration to the changing guest editors.

Edition #14, this edition, was put together by Stella Pierides. She is a poet and writer and blogs here. She tweets @stellapierides. She also has a facebook page and would like more friends! Apart from that, she looks forward to the next edition #15.

Edition #15 will be hosted by writer and poet Abha Iyengar, who lives in New Delhi (India) and blogs at abhaencounter.blogspot.in and tweets at @abhaiyengar. The feature theme of Abha’s edition is “Encountering the Other in Language/Place“. Contributions are invited from writers, poets, and anyone with an interest in this topic. As always, we welcome a wide variety of posts. Guidelines here

diamond jubilee—
a girl practices
her curtsies

.

conflict diamonds—

boy soldiers sharpen

machetes

 .

diamonds—

the glaze on this girl’s

eyes

.

In Sketchbook 7 Jan/feb 2012, Haiku Thread ( in John Daleiden’s Touchstone Perspectives)

Delighted and honoured that my tanka was shortlisted for the Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, Vol 4.

The anthology series founded by tanka poet and editor, M. Kei, announced the short list for the fourth annual volume (2011) in March 2012. The nine editors headed by M. Kei (USA), Patricia Prime (NZ), Magdalena Dale (RO), Amelia Fielden (AUS), Claire Everett (UK), Owen Bullock (NZ), David Terelinck (AUS), Janick Belleau (CAN), and David Rice (USA), embarked on the amazing feat of reading all tanka published in English during 2011 with the goal of selecting the best individual tanka, kyoka, waka, gogyohka, gogyoshi, tanka sequences, tanka prose, and responsive tanka for inclusion in the annual anthology. The team read approximately eighteen thousand poems to choose about three hundred for inclusion in this, the fourth and final volume in the Take Five series. Well done to the editors and to the poets among us who got selected! I for one am thrilled and hugely encouraged!

The announcement can be read here

.

autumn wind –
the weight of loneliness
lightens

.

In Issa’s Untidy Hut, 7 March 2012

Wednesday Haiku on the occasion of the 1st anniversary of the Japanese tsunami

Throughout March, The Haiku Foundation is featuring in its Per Diem, Daily haiku series my selection of haiku of the senses. Rich and sensual, these 31 haiku, by some of the best poets from all over the world, illustrate the interconnectedness of sensory experience. Read it and see how a particular haiku/senryu may evoke an image in one, dominant sensory modality, only to set off a cascade of associations in other modalities. For instance, while the sense of hearing may be in the foreground initially, eventually the senses of smell, touch, temperature, weight or time (or others) may come to be tingled. Uncannily (as we neither expect nor pay attention to it normally), in some way similar to synesthesia, a haiku/senryu gives rise to a 3-D, or multi-modal experience of the world the poet conveys. Read it and see! Every day a new poem; everyday a new test!

The Per Diem series can be read on the Home page of THF

.

at the bottom
of the glass
sentiment

.

In A Hundred Gourds, p. 14, March 2012

.

leap year
the rooster’s extra shrill
crow

.

NaHaiWriMo prompt: leap year

.

shooting stars…
the fizz of champagne
on my tongue
.
2nd place in the Free Format theme, Shiki Kukai February 2012
.
.

.

between folding
and unfolding -
a dove
.
bottle rockets, #26, February 2012

.

wearing white
at the moon party –
moonflower

.

Haiku Bandit Society, Moon Viewing Party, February 2012: My haiku got a Dottie Dot Award! Thank you, Dottie!

In March I will be hosting the Language/Place blog carnival on the theme “Locating the Senses in Language / Place.”  Submissions of poetry, fiction and non-fiction are open from February 1 – March 10, 2012.

My own contribution will be in haiku; here’s why. When I first came across haiku, I was puzzled by its brevity, and, given the size, the disproportionate impact it had on me. There was something in this form that attracted me in mysterious ways, enough to start me reading it and, much later, trying my hand at writing it.

Then in January 2011, I joined the small stones project (A River of Stones, then), focusing, noting, and writing down an immediate experience from my day; in February 2011, the National Haiku Writing Month (NaHaiWriMo for short), and felt I had found something precious, an area of writing and thinking that with study, practice and discipline would be rewarding to me.

And so it proved to be. This coming together of daily attending to my sensory experience of the world, and putting it into words, shaping it to the short form of haiku, became both an invaluable experience and a developmental practice, a sort of daily meditation on a material, physical input. The essence of this experience was not in the mind (where I lived for many, many years), but in this lived moment where, for me, both the work and the rewards were found.

So I didn’t need to think twice when it came to choosing a theme for the blog carnival Language / Place, #14. My contribution will be in the form of haiku. Yours might be in the form of a short story, a flash, a non-fiction piece, a travelogue, a recipe, an image.

Listen, taste, feel the weight, and lightness of the world and share this experience with us. Does a place associate in your mind with a smell, an image, a sound? Does a taste, say of aniseed, of olives, of papaya define a place for you? Do bird song, drumming, waves move you? Where do you stand on body odor? And how do you react as a writer? Do you have a voice recorder, notepad, or the back of your hand on the ready for recording your experience? Is the result a ‘small stone,’ a flash, or haiku? Do you have a Proustian gene in you? Perhaps a non-fiction piece detailing a sensation-awakened memory? Tell me. Tell us. I can’t wait to hear from you!

If you have already written something on this theme, great. Please submit your link(s). If not, and you are looking for inspiration, then have a look at The Haiku Foundation website: lots of (haiku) moments to inspire you, including Per Diem: Daily Haiku.  In March, my selection of sense-based, mainly non-visual haiku will appear, illustrating not only how good these sense-based poems can be, but also how the senses interconnect, each one stimulating one or more of the others. There is a digital library on the site with free books to download and enjoy, discussion boards, calendars of events and contests and more.

There is the ‘official’ NaHaiWriMo coming up in February once again, too. Perhaps you might like to join and write a haiku a day. Michael Dylan Welch has set up this site with iinformation about haiku and the NaHaiWriMo facebook community. I joined last year doubting I could keep it up. Well, I haven’t. I have been writing not one but several haiku a day! (FB community site here)

If you didn’t join the January Small Stones project, no need to worry! You can keep your senses alert with a little help from Fiona Robyn and Kaspalita Thompson’s  Writing our Way Home

Fiona and Kaspalita’s blog is full of ideas on how to record polished moments of experience. You could start from here:

Other contributions, not restricted to this theme are, of course also welcome. Submissions will open on the 1st of February and close on the 10th of March.

For information on how to submit your links to you posts see here

The blog roll of those taking part in the blog carnival so far can be read on Dorothee Lang’s BluePrint blog site.

Delighted that my tanka “bending light” appears in Issue 5, Fall/Winter 2011-2012 of Moonbathing: A Journal of Women’s Tanka. A wonderful journal of tanka! I am honored to be included in such company. Many thanks to Pamela A. Babusci, editor of “Moonbathing.”

Also, “Gray morning (haiku),” in the notebook of the Asahi Haikuist Network, edited by Prof David McMurray, here.

The International Capoliveri Haiku Contest 2011 has announced the names of the authors selected to be included in their anthology 2011. Winners of the Contest will be selected from the authors included in their list, by March 2012.

According to the announcement, the winning poets will be granted a 7 day stay for two people in Capoliveri (on the Elba) and will attend an awards ceremony in May 2012. I feel honored to be amongst those chosen for the anthology. Now please cross your fingers for me to go to the next phase, I’d love to visit Elba.

The list of the anthology selections of international haiku poets can be seen here.

And if you are wondering what and where is Capoliveri, you could start from this site here.

I am looking forward to the anthology!

Delighted to find out today that my haiku received Honorable Mention in The 15th Mainichi Haiku Contest!

‘fish kites’ can be found on page 13 of the PDF announcement See here

.

.

flowering only

in soft moonlight—

dragon fruit

.

In anticipation of the year of the dragon, a delightful collection of dragon haiku edited by Aubrie Cox, of Yay Words! The language of Dragons is heart-warming, playful, witty, and wonderful.  I am delighted that one of my own dragon haiku made it there. The entire collection can be downloaded as PDF from Aubrie’s site, here.

old calendar

the writing on the wall

illegible

.

November / December 31, 2011 “old calendar” Kukai, Sketcbook, 6th place, tied.

.

old calendar

the sum of my hopes

fading

.

in my old calendar

you came first

seedlings

.

November / December 31, 2011 “old calendar” Kukai, Sketchbook, 10th place, tied.

.

candlelight

how pale the moon

looks

.

Choice haiku, Karina Klesko, US, Sketchbook, “Light a candle”

Choice Haiku, John Daleiden, Sketchbook, “Candle in the Wind”

.

power cuts

in this wind a candle burns

too fast

.

Choice haiku, Karina Klesko, US, Sketchbook, “Light a candle”

.

electric candles—

so, I record

my prayer

.

Choice haiku, Karina Klesko, US, Sketchbook, “Light a candle”

.

prayer candle—

she puts her lips

to the icon

.

Choice haiku, Karina Klesko, US, Sketchbook, “Light a candle”

Choice Haiku, John Daleiden, US, Sketchbook, “Candle in the Wind”

.

diamonds

sparkle in your eyes

candle flame

.

Choice Haiku, John Daleiden, US, Sketchbook, “Candle in the Wind”

.

All Choice Haiku poems can be seen here and here

.

full moon tea

my book of beasts

lies open

.

tea leaves —

a fate worse than

cuticles

.

kallikantzaroi—

drinking tea they forget

the World tree

.

Three haiku included in Aubrie Cox’s collection Tree with Trolls, in her blog Yay Words. Twenty seven poets saying, in their own unique way, Happy Halloween! And thank you Aubrie!

bee hive 

where the workers never

strike

.

Sketchbook 6-4, Editor’s Choice Haiku, John Daleiden: Life in the Mostly Unexamined World (scroll down)

.

eternal life
only the roaches
come close

.

in my salad
a green caterpillar—
life lesson

.

Sketchbook 6-4, Guest Editor’s Choice Haiku, Bernard Gieske : A Glimpse into the Past (scroll down)

and Editor’s Choice Haiku, John Daleiden: Life in the Mostly Unexamined World (scroll down)

Delighted! My haiku “starry night” came second (tied) in the July/August 2011 Sketchbook Kukai (peer-reviewed contest).

Here it is:

starry night—
growing old
together

Delighted also that several of my fellow haijin from NaHaiWriMo did so well, esp Terri Hale French (1st), Michelle Harvey, Cara Holman, and others…

Two other haiku I submitted received no votes! Food for thought, of course.

The entire thread can be read by clicking here

My haiku ‘back to school’ was included in the Asahi Shimbun Haikuist Network showcase of the 16th of September 2011, edited by David McMurray. This showcase appears two to three times a month in the daily Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun and is a must read for haiku lovers. Click here and read all the poems! Really good work by poets from around the world.

(My haiku is in the section ‘From the notebook’)

Atlas Poetica, Special Feature From Lime Trees to Eucalypts: A Botany of Tanka, poem #20, (26 August 2011)  (Olea europea) 

The Mainichi Daily News, 29 August 2011. (‘warm morning’)

escarp, the ‘ selective, twitter-based review of brief poetry and prose’ (‘glacial’)

Red Dragonfly, Melissa Allen’s, excellent mainly haiku blog, (‘dark waters’ and ‘iridescent wings’) and

Asahi Shimbun, in David McMurray’s column The Asahi Haikuist Network, on the 19th of August 2011 (‘grey skies’ and ‘watermelon’)

1. Delighted to have three of my haiku included in Melissa Allen’s mushroom collection, on her site Red Dragonfly. Hers is a wonderful post with photographs, drawings, haiga and of course, lots of great poetry. Here is the address

2. The Language/Place collection, issue #8 is out. Put together by Walter Bjorkman it  is a delight to read. Contributions from around the world!  My post Haiku from Lake Ammersee is included along with photographs, poetry, all different kinds of meditation on the spirit and the poetry of place. Visit and see! wbjorkman.wordpress.com

Three of the haiku I wrote for the 2011 NaHaiWriMo and its extension during the following months, were picked and translated into French by Vincent Hoaru in La Calebasse: ‘geranium’, ‘wrong season(ing)’, and ‘have you thought’. Vincent’s blog is highly original and I am indeed honored to be included. You can find the three haiku by scrolling down here.

For one more of my haiku translated into French see my earlier post here

Wonderful news! One of my haiku, ‘Chrysalis,’ was highlighted in issue 17 of Haikuverse, in Melissa Allen’s Red Dragonfly. Honored indeed to be included alongside, well, I don’t even dare mention names… you have to go and read for yourselves.

Melissa Allen’s blog is a must read if you are interested in Haiku, Haibun, Haiga and related forms. Informative, and fun to read, it will blow your socks off; it will surprise and delight you edition after edition. Go and see…

Also in my news: my very short story (vss) ‘Cruelty’ has been selected to be included in the Upper Rubber Boot Books anthology of work from Seven by Twenty. The anthology will be named 140 And Counting, and is expected to be released as an e-book by the end of 2011.

Finally, forthcoming:

Haiku ‘Vineyard’ in Shamrock, the Haiku Journal of the Irish Haiku Society

Haiku ‘Zen Garden’ in ‘A Handful of Stones’

Flash Fiction in 52250 A Year of Flash: ‘Fishing’

While the NaHaiWri Mo 2011, which I thoroughly enjoy and learn from, is continuing for the month of April, I am also joining NaPoWriMo 2011. The challenge, and pledge is to write a poem a day, each single day, for the month of April.

NaPoWriMo, or National Poetry Writing Month, is an annual project. In the words of its founder, Maureen Thorson, NaPoWriMo commenced in 2003, when she decided to take up the challenge (modeled after NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month), and challenged in turn other poets to join her. Since then, she writes, the number of participants grew larger every year, and many writers, organizations, national and international, take part.

Well, phew! What a challenge, though, naturally, the daily poems are, and can only be first drafts. And, cheating a bit, I plan to use some of the haiku, senryu, and micropoems I will be writing for the NaHaiWriMo challenge; or at least versions of them.

Meanwhile, many thanks to Maureen Thorson for her brilliant idea and sustained effort. Indeed, congratulations Maureen!

For simplicity’s sake, I will be using my main blog (on which I post on various other issues) for posting. I will be giving links to other places I home my little ones in. Join me on this journey. Or better still, join the NaPoWriMo and write them yourself!

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.

“twentysix,” the second anthology highlighting short stories from a quarter of “52|250 A year of Flash,” is out. The editors of this writing project, Michelle Elvy, John Wentworth Chapin and Walter Bjorkman, challenge writers to produce a short flash of 250 words every week for one year. They provide a different theme each week and the resulting creative work is amazing: wonderful stories, and poems, of high quality from a prolific, creative, friendly, and excellent community of writers.

Each quarter, the editors pick and highlight in an anthology the best of the stories written on each week’s theme. The current edition also includes art work, readings, and reflections by some of the writers on their creating a particular piece and the ways they went about developing their take on the theme.

Beautifully and professionally edited, assembled and illustrated, it is well worth visiting, and reading. As you will see, the editors have put an incredible amount of work into “twentysix.”

I am honored to have two of my short stories included: on theme #25 “A private person” and on theme #26 “A hair raising story.”

.

You can read the anthology here

My stories in 52|250 can be read here

My haiku made it to the top five in the Iron Horse Literary Review haiku competition! I am delighted, especially since I wrote this haiku prompted by the name of the Journal and in response to their asking for haiku with either the word iron or horse.

I am particularly pleased because the competition caught me in the middle of writing my second novel, When the Colours Sing, set around the Blue Rider movement – it fitted so well. 

The five winners: Marty Smith, Lauren Tamraz, Sarah Spencer Pokla, Benjamin Vogt, and Stella Pierides.

The IHLR is a review of poetry and literary non-fiction published six times per year by Texas Tech University. I am going to follow them and read what they are getting up to from now on!

You can find the results of the competition together with my poem here

The first edition of the Language/Place blog carnival is out. Why not visit here.  

I quote from “virtualnotes,” where this particular blog carnival originated:

“The idea of “> Language > Place” is to create a collaborate virtual journey through different places, in different formats, and with different languages included – the main language is english, yet the idea is that every post also includes snippets or terms of other languages, and refers to a specific place, country, region or city.”

For more information and how to join this monthly event, here

Oh, yes, and I took part too!

15 November 2010

My flash fiction story “A Private Person,” appears in the 52/250 flash fiction project, week 25.

52/250 is a project involving around eighty writers from all over the world who made the commitment to write and publish weekly, flash fiction stories for a whole year: 52 weeks, 250 words max! There is a theme for each week, and contributors can suggest themes to the editors.

I joined during week number 25, and my first flash appeared on Friday 5 November 2010. It is a short story about two individuals who see themselves as “private” persons. You can read it here.

The 52/250 project feels like a very encouraging, inspiring and warm place to be. I am going to hang out there… so, watch this space!

Three of my poems have now been published by Vox Humana Literary Journal, “a literary journal focused on international writing, with a sub-focus on works from Israel and Palestine”

Winter Picture started its life at the North London writers’ workshop Word for Word, after a writer circulated photographs she had taken of a snow sculpture: two human-like figures made of snow on a Hampstead Heath bench. In my poem, the sculpture became a war-torn couple… read it and see.

Mystery Train was inspired by a photograph used as a writing prompt in the Tuesday poetry group of Word for Word. The photograph was of Elvis, on a train platform at the beginning of his career in the 1950s… so soon after the War…

The refugee grew out of a scene in my novel “Alexandrias 40: In the Shade of the Lemon Tree.” A refugee from Smyrni lies in her hospital bed in Athens, unable to join the other patients; she is forever caught in her own private despair.

Check out this link.  And feel free to comment!

5 October 2010

Murnau Moor

I am delighted and  honored! My micro-poem They send light to Earth was chosen to be the first piece to be published by new e-zine @textofiction.

Brand new, “Textofiction is an online literary publication dedicated to bringing the best writing in under 140 characters.”

Read my micro-poem and think, it packs a lot in. Better still, let me know your thoughts about it! Read it here

Date of publication: 29 August 2010

Frisian Lands

I brought back from my holiday this picture of the Frisian landscape  ( I’ve never seen so much sky! ) and a freshly-penned poem. Read it in escarp, “a text-message-based review of super-brief literature.”

My short, fast and deadly “The Collector” was published 13th of June 2010, in the Haiku-themed issue 27 of Short, Fast, and Deadly Online Journal. The line “For the love of God, no Haiku,”  made it to the front page (cover).

I went for a walk to the Dragonfly Sanctuary in the Lee Valley Park,  near Waltham Abbey, in the outskirts of London. Peaceful and dreamy, idyllic… though a different note entered my mind when I read the information provided about dragonflies: the lower lip technique of the dragonfly nymphs catching their prey, the cannibalism as a way of regulating population…
Reflecting on my experience, I wrote this poem which can be read both as a perfect idyll, with the dragonflies resting within a sssssh soundscape of silence; and as the calm before the next rush of the dragonfly for its prey.

The poem was published in escarp,  a text-message-based review of super-brief literature (www.escarp.org).

My Twitter-sized poem Sketch published in Escarp, sketches an idyllic picture of an old city. It also hints at  links between old cities, cobbled streets and Silence: http://www.escarp.org/

In April this year (2010) I committed to the Creative Climate diary project, a media and research project about climate and the environment run jointly by the OU and the BBC. As a global web log, it will chart online, through twice yearly diary updates, people’s ideas, concerns and experiences about the changing climate and its impact on the environment. Here is my first entry: http://bit.ly/9xd95H

I wrote this Twitter-sized poem on environmental awareness, the mania of cataloging, and our need, as well as the  impossibility, to recreate and return to Eden. Have a look: click here

Still Life, in Poets Online, Archive, Found Poems, February 2010

Novel Alexandrias 40: In the Shade of the Lemon Tree

to be published in 2010 by Vox Humana Books http://www.voxhumana-books.com

“In these tales of love, loss, and survival, Pierides embroiders a tableau detailing the lives of a refugee family in Athens, circa 1957. The novel is set in the house of the family on Alexandrias Street, where they came to settle years after their flight from Smyrni, now Izmir, Turkey. Framed by this house — a concoction of tin, cement, wood and mud, a paradise, a refuge and a prison to those who nestle in it — they struggle to come to terms with their predicament, attempting to establish themselves in Greece. Without idealising its characters, the novel unfolds — a tragicomic story, full of ethnic colour, warm sensuality and psychological insight. The book encompasses the “Catastrophe” of Asia Minor, the Greek Civil War, accusations and blackmail, adoption and betrayal, as well as the refugees’ love and bitterness towards their country. The characters’ traumatic past and struggle for survival, in a country that is both home and hostile to them, requires their ability to tap into psychological resources of generosity, masochism, denial and ruthlessness — and above all — humour and forgiveness. In a quick-paced narrative straddling both the genres of novel and short story, Stella Pierides recreates a world within a world, miles apart from the well-trodden tourist trail to Greece.”

“…Vox Humana Books…eclectic literature with a human voice”

Soul Song, in Poetry Monthly International, issue 15, January 2010 (p. 18). [Poem] http://www.poetrymonthly.com/15 PMI January 2010.pdf

The Refugee, Winter Picture, and Mystery Train, to appear in  Vox Humana Literary, Spring Issue, 2010. [3 Poems] http://www.voxhumana-lit.com

Girl, in the print Journal  Off the Coast, International/Translation Issue, Spring 2009. [Poem]

Song of the Aegean, in Poetry Monthly, issue 150, 2008. [Poem]

Article on the Munich literary scene Munich, in the summer 2007, issue 2 of the Berlin-based Literary Magazine Bordercrossing Berlin.

Short story It Could Have Been Love translated into Chinese by writer Yu Liwen http://www.yuliwen.com/463/

Stella’s very short story The Miracle was commended in the Micro-fiction competition, Leaf Books. It is included in the Leaf Books anthology of micro-fiction, Derek.  http://leafbooks.co.uk/New/Leaf%20Authors/Pierides,Stella.html

Stella’s poems Seferis’ Houses, What Was Left of Her and The Beach at Blakeney Point are included in Gathering Diamonds from the Well, the fourth ‘Word for Word‘ Anthology.

Stella’s poem Lake Ammersee appeared in the 2007 Anthology Sights to Behold. London: Forward Press

Stella’s poem If Trees, Then Olive Trees was awarded second prize in the Poetry Contest of the Canada based E-Zine Big Pond Rumours .

Stella’s poem History is on His Side included in Dance the Guns to Silence: 100 Poems Inspired by Ken Saro-Wiwa. Edited by: Nii Ayikwei Parkes & Kadija George. Published by Flipped Eye Publishing, African Writers Abroad and SableLitMag, the Anthology commemorates the tenth anniversary of the writer’s execution and celebrates his life. More information about Ken Saro Wiwa and his work on http://www.remembersarowiwa.com/poetry.htm

Stella’s contribution to Triplopia’s theme on Noise appears in the current edition of Trip Picks, “The Saddest Noise, The Sweetest Noise” edited by Tania Van Schalkywk. Stella’s choice of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami to illustrate Noise, and Silence, can be read at: http://www.triplopia.org/inside.cfm/ct/460

Stella’s short story “Her Brother’s Keeper” appears in the Spring issue of The Muse Apprentice Magazine. Read it: http://www.muse-apprentice-guild.com/spring_2005/fiction/stella_pierides.html

Read Stella’s review of Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicle in The Muse Reviews Section.

Stella’s short story “The Accident” appears in the print issue 4 of “The Quiet Feather” out now.