Category Archives: Blog

Blog, Haiku, News, Publications

‘eating rhubard’ in Haiku News

My haiku in the Haiku News, Vol. 1 No.43 (8 November 2012)

.
“Haiku News is a weekly poetry journal which publishes socially engaged haiku, senryu, tanka and kyoka, pairing each poem with a news article to forge links between the poetic, the personal and the political.”

.
I paired the following article from The Independent newspaper “Teen spirit: What’s it really like to be a teenager?”
with the follwoing haiku:

.
eating rhubarb
faster than it grows
young love

.

Blog, Haiku, News

‘Autumn loneliness’ in Asahi #2 November 2012

Now my scarecrow has a wife! At least in the poem “Autumn loneliness”! Thrilled that my poem is included in the Asahi Haikuist Network, edition 2 November 2012, From the Notebook section! Scroll down slowly, enjoy great poems by poets you know on the way!  Click here

I have copied the absolutely wonderful  illustration from the Asahi Haikuist Network page in the Asahi Shimbun below, assuming it is OK to do so (I’d be more than happy to remove it immediately, if it infringes any copyright  or other rights).

(Illustration by Mitsuaki Kojima)

And here is David McMurray‘s reading of the poem:

“Hardworking farmhands in Germany sometimes need help finding partners…”

*

Autumn loneliness

a farmer makes a wife

for his scarecrow

aros, Blog, featured, Haiku

Happy Mindful Writing Day!

Here is my own  ‘smallstone’ of the day!

 

.

.

..

.

.

.

 

 

 

 

 

,

here is the now — 

this smalls stone I hold

in my hand

.

.

This is the first ever Mindful Writing Day; it is organised by Kaspa & Fiona at their blog ‘Writing Our Way Home‘.
Visit them to read what the other ‘stoners’ are writing, and better still, email them your own stone!


	

	
	




	
	

				

			aros, Blog, Haiku
		

			
Day of the Dead

		

			 			1 Comment
						

	


		

		
cemetery pines


whispering among the needles


the gentlest of songs


Margaret Dornaus, poet, writer, and teacher, as well as haiku-doodler in her own words, has put together for the third year running a wonderfully moving collection celebrating the Day of the Dead, also known in Catholic circles as All Saints’ Day. It is a privilege and a treat to be included in it, as well as to read poems by several poet friends from all over the world who answered Margaret’s call.


Visit her post and read the poems. There is a tanka I particularly like, written by Margaret for Hortensia Anderson. I love the thought in it: now Hortensia is dead, Margaret can only know her through the scent of her blooms, her poems.


Happy Halloween!


 


 

	

	
	






	
	

				

			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.


.


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…
































.


blood moon landscape painting with angels


.


NaHaiWriMo prompt: stranger


.


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…


.


..


.


.


..

	

	
	




	
	

				

			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


.


Pleiades —                             Plejaden —


a hunter lowers                   ein Jäger senkt


his gun                                    sein Gewehr


.


Translation: Chrysanthemum Editorial team.