All posts by Stella Pierides

Stella Pierides, British poet, writer and artist of Greek descent. Books include: Of This World (2017) and In the Garden of Absence (2012), both Haiku Society of America Merit Book Award winners, and Feeding the Doves (2013). Stella served on The Haiku Foundation Board of Directors. She concieved and co ordinated the feature Haiku for Parkinson's for The Haiku Foundation.
aros, Blog, Haiku, News, Other Writers

First Ever Mindful Writing Day

  This coming Thursday, the 1st of November, is the first ever Mindful Writing Day, organised by Kaspa & Fiona at their blog ‘Writing Our Way Home.’

To join-in, simply slow down, pay attention to one thing and write down a few words from this experience (thus producing what is called a ‘small stone’).

Fiona and Kaspa claim that ‘small stones’ are easy to write, and that they will help you connect to the world. Once you’ve started, you might not want to stop… I concur! You might want to polish your little ones too, expand them into a longer poem, or shrink them, prune them and polish them into a micropoem or haiku. It is up to you!

As an additional bonus, if you visit ‘Writing Our Way Home’ on Thursday you’ll find out how to download your free kindle copy of the new anthology, ‘A Blackbird Sings: a book of short poems‘. This is a lovely, richly-textured book of poetry and prose by several contributors who have been writing small stones this year. Two of my own poems are included in this book.

If you do write, you can submit your small stone and see it published on the blog, and be entered into a competition to win one of five paperback copies of the book.

I will be taking part. In fact, taking part in the Facebook community NaHaiWriMo (National Haiku Writing Month) which is on-going all through the year, I have been writing ‘smalls stones’ every day, several of them haiku, and have been posting at least one a day every day. For me to do something different on this Mindful Writing Day, may amount to not writing at all! Just joking, I couldn’t stop, if I tried!

But if, say if, you do not feel like putting pen to paper, or fingertips to laptop keys, you might visit the blog anyway, and read what the others have written; or start visiting the site of the The Haiku Foundation, in order to read one haiku a day, every day, expertly chosen for you by monthly poetry editors.  You will find this feature in the Per Diem: Daily Haiku panel, at the right hand lower corner of the Foundation Homepage. For the link click here

Whatever you decide to do, don’t forget to look at the sky. It is always there…

 

 

Blog, Haiku, In the Garden of Absence, NaHaiWriMo

The Wall

spring morning

she presses her palm against

the wall

.

The Wall (Die Wand), is a film directed by Julian Roman Pölsler (Austria/Germany, 2011)

and based on Marlen Haushofer’s (1963) best-selling eponymous novel. I have not read the

novel, though now that I saw the film, I am going to.

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I mention it here, not only because it is a great film I just watched, but also because it connects

with my own interests and forthcoming collection “In the Garden of Absence.”

It is on the same theme of loneliness and the development(or not) of the capacity to be creatively

alone.

.

In the story, right from the beginning, a woman on a trip to the Alps and shortly after she is

separated from the couple she is travelling with, is mysteriously trapped inside a transparent

wall surrounding her hunter’s lodge. While there is a big and beautiful area inside this wall –

including mountain peaks, meadows, a lake, forests – there is no contact  with the outside

world and no way of knowing whether it still exists.

 .

Without human companionship and with only her own resources to survive, her will to live

is tested. Through her sense of responsibility and, I would say, inner strength, she is able to

move towards a realization of the nature of her predicament and acceptance of loneliness,

to an understanding of the human condition in general and the role love plays in it.

.

A Robinson Crusoe without happy endings, but with an insight that goes to the heart

of the human condition. I look forward to the book.

 .

The film’s slow-moving, original and atmospheric cinematography enhances the story

and provides the right background for the perfect performance by Martina Gedeck.

A thought-provoking, emotionally demanding as well as rewarding film.

.

For a summary of the book see here

and film review here

.

spring morning

she presses her palm against

the wall

.

aros, Blog, highlight, NaHaiWriMo

‘blood moon’ #28 October 2012

What difference a week makes…





























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blood moon landscape painting with angels


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NaHaiWriMo prompt: stranger


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Blood moon, or Hunter’s moon, refer to the first full moon after the Harvest moon, in October. The light of the moon was used by hunters to  track and kill their prey, stockpiling food before the winter cold set in. The link between Blood moon and angels is for my reader to make…


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..


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			Blog, In the Garden of Absence
		

			
Solitude and aloneness

		

			 		

	


		

		
Do you ever wonder about the difference between loneliness and the capacity to be alone? Between the soul-destroying feeling of utter despondency, emptiness and despair, on the one hand, and on the other, the capacity to be creatively alone, to enjoy the space and freedom aloneness gives and to be productive? I do, often. I have been putting together a small collection of micropoetry, haiku, and senryu on this theme. Titled “In the Garden of Absence,” the collection aims to  reflect on this difference, without, I hope, rushing to answer any questions. Even if I had the answers…


Interested? D. W. Winnicott, the British psychoanalyst and paediatrician originally introduced this concept. If you have access to his work, fine. If not, Jean-Bertrand Pontalis provides the best explanatory note of Winnicott’s concept  (on this capacity to be alone) in the online Gale Dictionary of Psychoanalysis.


Risking oversimplification, I would say here that the capacity to be alone is not the capacity to simply bear being alone until the other person returns, but a capacity to feel and creatively use the space and freedom which being separate from the other person offers. In terms of the child, Winnicott argues, it is the capacity to disentangle herself from ‘mother’s madness’ or the most primitive needs of the mother’s attachment to her own offspring. It is in this sense, I believe, that this capacity, paradoxically, is compatible with the other’s or, in that case, mother’s presence.


I quote from Pontalis here:

“To be able to tell oneself  “I am alone” without feeling forsaken—such is the prerequisite for what Winnicott considers an essential achievement: to be assured of a sense of continuity as between oneself and the other person, or, better still, to perceive discontinuity in a permanent bond, or even its rupture, as the very precondition of that’s bond’s survival.”


Buffling? Visit the whole Pontalis entry when you have a moment… of solitude! Click here

	

	
	




























	
	

				

			Blog, Haiku, News, Publications
		

			
Chrysanthemum, October 2012

		

			 		

	


		

		
Chrysanthemum, the Internet Magazine for Modern Verse Forms in the Tradition


of Japanese Short Poetry, issue 12, 2012 is out. I am delighted to have three


of my haiku in this issue, translated into German. They can be found on page 21.


The Magazine can be downloaded from here


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Pleiades —                             Plejaden —


a hunter lowers                   ein Jäger senkt


his gun                                    sein Gewehr


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Translation: Chrysanthemum Editorial team.

	

	
	












	
	

				

			aros, Blog, Blog items Poetry, Haiku, News, Other Writers
		

			
“A Blackbird Sings: a book of short poems”

		

			 		

	


		

		
Thrilling news: A new book brimming with wonderful poetry is out this month. The even more thrilling news: it includes two of my own short poems!


“A Blackbird Sings: a book of short poems” edited by Kaspalita and Fiona Robyn, is now available on Kindle and will be available in print from the 1st of November 2012.


This book is the second anthology of  ‘small stones.’ What is a small stone?  “A small stone is a short piece of writing that precisely captures a fully-engaged moment.” It may or may not be a haiku, tanka, or other form.


The editors say:


“This is a book you can dip into and be nourished by again and again. It will surprise you, shock you, move you and delight you. It’ll remind you of the important sparkling details in your own life, and inspire you to pay more attention to what’s around you.”


Well, I can only say I am very excited to be part of this project! Buy the book! You will find yourself coming back to it again and again!