dappled shade
the crunch
of pine needles
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NaHaiWriMo prompt: smell
Category Archives: Blog
Feeding the Doves: 31 Short and Very Short Stories, and Haibun
Feeding the Doves Now available to order from amazon.co.uk, amazon.de and Kindle
“Unique and surprising, tight and passionate language”
“Every once in a while, I get a book in the mail that is unique from anything else I’ve ever read. As a collection of short stories, Stella Pieride’s Feeding the Doves has given me a new definition of what short means, not to mention how quickly a story can be told… ”
“… I found her writing a refreshing and unique collection.”
Read Daniel Burton’s review here: Attack of the Books!
The review is also available on Amazon.com
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Extract from Mia Avramut’s review on Amazon.co.uk:
“From a symbol of the divine (“A Life-Changing Story), to an object of meditation and near-worship in Syntagma Square (as in the title story), to their possible end in a soup kitchen destined to feed hungry children (“Pigeons”), doves’ journey functions as a counterpoint to the human sacrifice and quest for nourishing truths. Several glimpses into silent, sometimes tortured lives, end in haiku. It serves to deepen the reader’s understanding, and add new dimensions to the prose. And it’s a treat, as Pierides is both an archeologist of experiences, and a mistress of haibun.
Since Yourcenar and Kazantzakis, nobody has illuminated with such wisdom and compassion the often unseen lives that make the humanity what it is: a traveling, travailing organism with feet of myth.”Mia Avramut is a Romanian- born writer, physician, researcher, and poetry editor at Connotation Press.
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Having left Greece in her youth, the author of “Feeding the Doves” returns to the country of her birth through a collection of stories that lie at the heart of Greek identity.
About the Book: Greece has been in the headlines for a very long time. Recently, the headlines have been gloomy and negative, the country facing some of its most difficult years. Against this background, “Feeding the Doves” explores recurrent elements of the Greek psyche, tracing them back to challenges posed by the country’s history, culture, and environment.
The widow, the old loner, the refugee, the immigrant, the young, the writer, the expatriate, tell us their stories, touching upon themes at the heart of Greek being: Love and loss, civil war, immigration and diaspora, emigration, poverty, religion, history and catastrophe, and above all, the will to survive.
“What I admire here are the shining moments of revelation, of truths large and small bursting through the lives and memories of these characters. So many characters, and so rich!”
—John Wentworth Chapin
Founding Editor, 52|250 and A Baker’s Dozen
“Stories to surprise and entertain, to wake and calm, to wrench and elate, to tell the Greek story, past and present, and everyone’s story.”
-—Michael Dylan Welch, poet, writer,
and editor/publisher of Press Here books
Email: admin@fruitdovepress.com
http://www.fruitdovepress.com
Perfect softbound
87 pages, 90gm cream interior paper
Full-color laminated cover
129 mm x 198 mm trim size
ISBN: 978-3-944155-03-6
Price: £8.00 UK
Available from August 2013 through Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de.
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‘dry spell’ #5 August 2013
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dry spell solace in your lips
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Photograph: Japanese Garden, in the Botanic Gardens, Augsburg.
Fate and Destiny
“Fate” and “destiny” are often used interchangeably to refer to the notion of predetermination; of future events following a predetermined plan or path.
Yet, implicitly, we also make a distinction between the two in terms of the degree to which each is allowing for alterations in the course of events to which it is applied. Fate is usually associated with unalterable events; we are in the hands of the ancient Fates, Gods, or cosmic forces; our lives, and actions, are out of our control. There is a belief in a prescribed future: a higher/supernatural authority (or authorities) has the future laid out for us.
Destiny, on the other hand, involves a course of events where we have a say, or a hand, in preparing or making our future. We may be destined in one sense to higher or lower things, but we can underachieve or push ourselves hard to achieve better than expected.
This month’s The Haiku Foundation Per Diem: Daily Haiku reflects on both of these concepts. Deb Baker, this month’s guest editor, using “Kismet” as the title of her splendid collection, invites us to reflect on the “hinge” moments” or forked paths we encounter and the outcomes that result when we follow one or the other road, believing in fate, in destiny, or a choice we made. She writes,
Poems like these can make a reader feel a sense of momentum, a possible turning or smoothing path. Perhaps such a poem helps a reader discern something happening in the present moment in his or her own life. Or to see a new possibility, a different way forward, through someone else’s hinge moment.
.I’ll be reading with an extra eye for the different ways Kismet appears in the poems. I’ll be having fun too! Join me? You can find the daily poem here
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The photo is of a path taken, crossing the river Schmutter, near Neusaess, Germany.
‘botanic garden’ #31 July 2013
botanic garden –
seniors in white, practice
Crane Spreads its Wings
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NaHaiWriMo prompt: garden
‘who is to say’ #30 July 2013
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who is to say it took the wrong turn passion flower
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NaHaiWriMo prompt: passion
‘evening glow’ #29 July 2013
evening glow
all those brake lights
ahead
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NaHaiWriMo prompt: red
‘blossoming eggplants…’ Shiki Kukai July 2013
blossoming eggplants…
the flutter
in the hen house
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Shiki Kukai Juy 2013
‘evening glow’ Shiki kukai, July 2013
evening glow
your cheek
next to mine
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Shiki Kukai, July 2013
‘ladybug’ #26 July 2013
ladybug
her polka dot
bikini
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NaHaiWriMo prompt: ruby
Feeding the Doves
Forthcoming
Feeding the Doves
31 Short and Very Short Stories, and Haibun
Greece has been in the headlines for a very long time. Since ancient times, her philosophers, historians, mathematicians, shipbuilders, traders, and artisans have been making the news – and, indeed, history. So, amidst the country’s most difficult years in recent times, many people believe that they know Greece and the Greeks.
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Against this backdrop, the stories – short and very short – collected in “Feeding the Doves” explore recurrent elements of the Greek psyche, tracing them back to challenges posed by the country’s history and environment. The widow, the old loner, the refugee, the immigrant, the writer, the expatriate tell us their stories, touching upon themes at the heart of Greek being, as well as our common humanity: love and l loss, war, civil war, immigration and diaspora, emigration, poverty, religion, history, and above all, the will to survive.
Cover Design:
Rob Ward, Freelance Animator
Fruit Dove Press
Email: admin@fruitdovepress.com
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[The title story “Feeding the Doves” and the cover image were inspired by a photo taken by Robert Geiss, titled “Feeding Doves” and posted on his (sadly, no longer active) blog “Daily Athens Photo.”]
Haiku From German Tongues
Pleased to be featured in Haiku From German Tongues.
The site founders, owners, and admin, Heike Stehr and Ralf Bröker, by presenting haiku in Englsih, aim
“to give at least a certain impression of the particular range covered by haiku from German tongues to a wider international audience.”
They are doing a great job. Visit and see… you’ll be impressed by the range of haiku and the haiku poets writing it.
‘evensong’ #22 July 2013
evensong
the boy soprano’s voice
cracks
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NaHaiWriMo prompt: music
‘soft fruit’ #21 July 2013
soft fruit
swelling on the branches
full buck moon
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NaHaiWriMo prompt: moon
From the Farmers’ Almanac:
“July is normally the month when the new antlers of buck deer push out of their foreheads in coatings of velvety fur. It was also often called the Full Thunder Moon, for the reason that thunderstorms are most frequent during this time. Another name for this month’s Moon was the Full Hay Moon.”
‘circus time’ 18 July 2013
circus time
a dove escapes
the magician’s hat
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Posted on Kirsten Cliff’s blog, Swimming in Lines of Haiku, 18 July 2013, in response to her July challenge, “I Quote, You ‘Ku.” Today’s quote was:
“Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.”
~Rabindranath Tagore
(The challenge, in Kirsten’s own words:
“… is to write a haiku or tanka (or choose one of your previously published works) that has a connection with the themes/feelings/images of the above quote, without just restating what has appeared in the text, to create a haibun. Play around with it and see what you come up with. Enjoy!”)
‘spring snow’ in Presence 48, June 2013
spring snow…
anything for a singing
insect
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Presence 48, June 2013
‘pine tree cicadas’ #15 July 2013
pine tree cicadas
the bleached cotton dress
of my youth
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NaHaiWriMo prompt: white
‘bindweed’ #9 July 2013
bindweed
lingers at the gate –
my teenage years
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NaHaiWriMo prompt: linger
‘death’s-head moth’ #6 July 2013
death’s-head moth
I pick a scarlet red
lipstick
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NaHaiWriMo prompt: moth
‘tuning in’ #4 July 2013
tuning in
to marshland songs –
heatwave
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NaHaiWriMo prompt: outside
‘your email’ #3 July 2013
your email
in my inbox –
cooing dove
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NaHaiWriMo prompt: chirp
Briefly noted in Modern Haiku
I am very pleased to share the news that a positive review of my poetry book “In the Garden of Absence” appeared recently in the print edition of Modern Haiku:
“This is an engaging collection…,” Modern Haiku 44.2, 2013 (in the “Briefly Noted” section).
Smashwords e-book promotion
I’m taking part in the summer/winter 2013 Smashwords e-book promotion. For the whole month of July, In the Garden of Absence, will be available as an e-book from the Smashwords site at the reduced price of $1.50 USD, that is 75% off!
To download a copy, please visit Smashwords by clicking here and use coupon SSW75 at checkout.
The offer is good through to the 31st of July 2013.
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“In Pierides’s meditations, imagination takes center stage, as do imaginary gardens, real toads, and their negative space… The result is a welcome debut in which the reader will find much to admire.”
“Briefly Reviewed,” Frogpond, 36-1, Spring 2013″
‘firewall’ #1 July 2013
firewall
the screen animals
disappear
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NaHaiWriMo prompt: wall
Welcoming new prompter for July: Gillena Cox
On the Road
The new THF Per Diem collection, Songs of the Open Road, is up and running over at the Haiku Foundation site. Guest-edited by Tom Painting, it takes us on 31 exciting, meditative, and always inspirational journeys. Highways and motorways, straight paths and winding lanes are there for us to explore all through July. In his introduction to the collection, Tom Painting quotes from Walt Whitman’s poem, Song of the Open Road:
“ Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me…”
I very much look forward to these journeys. Join me on board the THF Per Diem for the ride. Each day a new haiku here
‘marine life’ #Shiki kukai June 2013
marine life
two hermit crabs fight
over a shell
Shiki Kukai June 2013 (10 pts)
‘pearl necklace’ #28 June 2013
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pearl necklace song of a barefoot child
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NaHaiWriMo prompt: pearl
‘winding road’ Blithe Spirit 23:2, 2013
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winding road to nowhere rituals
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Blithe Spirit 23:2, 2013
‘warm days’ Modern Haiku, 44.2, 2013
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warm days wrapped up in a word too many
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Modern Haiku 44.2, 2013
‘sleeping beauty’ #25 June 2013
Remember my haiga ‘euphorbia’ posted here a few weeks ago? To see it, please click here
The original photo was of my pond. Below left is another photo, taken in May last year. Then we had a terrible storm. On the 20th of June 2013, the winds raged round the pond, the garden, the whole city; the impact of this storm on my pond can be seen below right:
needles, then trees
swirl round the pond —
eye of the storm
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sleeping beauty —
how the storm covered
your charms
