Category Archives: Archive

Do you Haiga?

Do You Haiga?

Then this is for you! Jim Kacian, The Haiku Foundation Founder and President, and its Haiga Gallery Curator, invites submissions.

haiga

“The Haiku Foundation is accepting submissions for the THF Haiga Galleries. If you’ve been creating haiga for a while and are looking for a place to exhibit, have a look at what our space looks like https://thehaikufoundation.org/haiga-galleries/. If you like what you see, you’ll find contact information there. Maybe you could be the next THF Haiga Gallery Featured Artist!”

A Cluster of Lights

A Cluster of Lights is here!

This beautiful anthology is now out in the world! Celebrating the ten-year anniversary of the brilliant project ’52 / 250 -A Year of Flash,’ 52 writers (including yours truly), respond to their previous work with new creations.

Congratulations and many thanks to Michelle Elvy, John Wentworth Chapin, and all contributors!

The link at the publisher’s site is here: https://pureslush.com/…/anthologie…/a-cluster-of-lights/

• paperback – https://bit.ly/PB-CLUSTER

• ePub – https://bit.ly/ePubCluster

• Kindle – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C56JGVJ9/

For a ‘taste of a Cluster of Lights’, click below:

https://bit.ly/Clustertaste

In REFLECT, at Creek Creative Studios

I am happy to be included in the REFLECT and Intriguerium 3 exhibition at Creek Creative Studios, Faversham, England, curated by Robert Lamoon. Two of my tiny haibun, as two objects, are to be found in tiny boxes made by the curator!

One of the haibun, Who is, was inspired by a story I read in the news: the calcified remains of an unborn fetus were found accidentally during a scan for a totally unrelated health problem. The fetus had rested inside its mother’s body for over thirty years…

Who is

Lithopedion. The calcified remains. Bonded. Forever. The grief of the unborn, the consolation of eternity.

stone baby
the weight
of forever

Are you in the area? The exhibition is on till the 16th of April!

REFLECT

April is Parkinson’s Awareness Month

How to live well with Parkinson’s Disease? What helps me: Haiku for #Parkinsons and #tabletennis!

I have haiku in my Parkinson’s toolbox! Poetry, exercise grounding the senses, living in the moment. And I am sharpening my table tennis skills, as it has been found to help with the disease.

For all things haiku, including advice for absolute beginners, check out The Haiku Foundation https://thehaikufoundation.org/

For haiku for Parkinson’s see Parkinson’s Life, the magazine of Parkinson’s Europe, https://parkinsonslife.eu/the-aim-of-the-haiku-poet-is-to-capture-the-essence-of-a-moment/

More information about table tennis for Parkinson’s on Facebook and  website https://www.pingpongparkinson.de/

Live well and prosper! Or as I am increasingly learning, “bleib’ am Ball”!

Parkinson's Awareness Month

Busted! By Tim Roberts

I just received Tim Roberts’s wonderful book, “Busted: Reflections on Police Life” published by Red Moon Press. Congratulations Tim!

A poignant, powerful, and at the same time sensitive rendering in haiku of police life that shocks, informs, disturbs, engages, and changes the reader. Alan Summers sums it up: “….beyond bravery…”

Honored to have contributed the Introduction to this book. As Robert Epstein writes in his Foreword: “Prepare to be arrested by Tim Roberts’s bold, graphic, and gut-wrenching haiku memoir”! Indeed!

Tim Roberts

Interview, Parkinson’s Life

Thrilled and honored to have been given the opportunity to speak about haiku and Parkinson’s Disease in an interview for Parkinson’s Life, the magazine of Parkinson’s Europe. See here

Grateful also to Northern California Haiku Society’s Dave Russo for his post on my interview and latest work. See here

The 3 micro-haibun in MacQueen’s Quinterly

The three micro-haibun from the series-in-progress The Censored Poems

Bone Broth

The very antithesis of cherry blossom. On the one hand and on the other. And in between

breathing
the torpid air of the mausoleum
morels, porcini, chanterelles

*

Off Time

Play if you must. Laugh till you cry. But life is serious. The road is hard, paved with hunger, illness, war. Greed and envy. They will haunt you. Pick apples if you must. Oranges, figs. It won’t make any difference.

Hosannah!
at the nudist beach
my sunglasses

*

Wabi-sabi

Now that that illness accosted me and I stood up to it, I feel entitled to a few wisdoms.

minding the gap
the chilling beauty
of angels 

Parkinson’s Toolbox in the online resources of Parkinson’s Europe

Delighted to see that my article “Parkinson’s Toolbox: The Case for Haiku” is now included in the online resources of Parkinson’s Europe, the umbrella organization for PD societies.

The project titled “Parkinson’s and Creativity” aims “to create an online library of scientific papers, relevant articles, and videos with the aim of sharing knowledge of the latest scientific discoveries and mysteries of Parkinson’s creativity.” Check it out here

https://www.parkinsonseurope.org/get-involved/parkinson-s-creativity/parkinsons-and-creativity/

In Robert Epstein’s “The Haiku Way to Healing”

Pleased to see Robert Epstein’s anthology is out! “The Haiku Way to Healing: Illness, Injury and Pain” is a significant contribution to haiku literature, a testament to the power of this very short form of poetry to express and share even the most painful of moments.

Honored that my work is included in this collection.

Here is one of my poems from page 207, initially part of a haibun published in “Contemporary Haibun Online” 17.1, and recently included in my juxtaEIGHT article ‘Parkinson’s Toolbox: The Case for Haiku’ (pp.37-61)

dyskinesia…
how tall grass
sways

healing