Category Archives: Blog

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!

 

100 Days of Summer, aros, Blog, Haiku, NaHaiWriMo

‘the woman in blue’ #5 October 2012

Woman in Blue

reading his last letter –

burning red leaves

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NaHaiWriMo prompt: haiku about a painting

83/100 Days of Summer

Small stone

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Found Haiku: The title of Vermeer’s painting is “Woman in Blue Reading a Letter.”

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One of my all time favorites. The stillness and silence in this picture, the allusion to pregnancy, waiting time, the letter/news almost associate to an annunciation.

Yet, it is likely that there is disappointment. The map associates to far away places. Where is he writing from? Perhaps he is not coming back… the autumn of the relationship in the haiku… will she burn the letter too? Where are all the feelings… .

Whatever you make of it, the stillness and containment in this painting keep bringing me back to it.

 

 

100 Days of Summer, aros, Blog, Haiku, NaHaiWriMo

‘autumn loneliness’ #4 October 2012

autumn loneliness —
checking whether flames
defy gravity
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NaHaiWriMo prompt: gravity
82/100 Days of Summer

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I have been working on a micropoetry collection about loneliness, and the capacity to be alone, titled In the Garden of Absence. This poem is not included in the collection, but fits well with the theme. Enjoy!

Blog, Haiku, Other Writers

Per Diem Haiku on the theme of Hands

This October, continuing the The Haiku Foundation Per Diem: Daily Haiku series, Ruth Yarrow packs a punch with a collection to delight the heart.

Ruth’s wonderfully touching, and humorous collection is “Hands-On.”  Hands? Yes, hands. This is what she offers by way of an introduction:

“We are a species heavily dependent on our eyes, especially for connection with others and world around us.  But our hands also connect, and that connection often reaches the heart.  Right now my beloved mother-in-law, who doesn’t see well, is dying, and when you approach her, she reaches out her thin hand to connect.  These haiku about hands touch emotion.  They range from humor, as in Randy Brooks’ hand in the cookie jar, to sadness, as in Cherie Hunter Day feeling the weight and warmth of her dying dog’s collar. They include fear, as in John Stevenson’s shiver at a warm hand before diagnosis, sex, as in Sari Grandstaff’s total attention to the hand on her thigh, and even exasperation or anger, as in Kenneth Elba Carrier’s deaf man grabbing at the other’s hands.”

You can read the whole post by clicking here

Gabi Greve has a number of haiku on Hands too; see her blog Haiku and Happiness, where she features the THF Per Diem on Hands. Please click here

Follow the THF on twitter: https://twitter.com/haikufound

And start the day right: pick up your first haiku by clicking here

 

 

 

100 Days of Summer, Blog, News

100 Thousand Poets for Change 2012

Today, 29 September 2012, is the day when 100 Thousand Poets for Change gather online, in person, and in print to celebrate poetry, art and music, and to promote social, environmental, and political change.

If you happen to be in Munich today, drop by the Munich Readery, the largest and friendliest secondhand bookstore in Germany. They will be hosting an evening of readings and performances from 19:00 – 22:00.

In observance of today’s 100 Thousand Poets for Change, I offer the following  prose poem: The Beach at Blakeney Point, first published in the North London Writers and Poets Anthology Gathering Diamonds from the Well, 2007.

The Beach at Blakeney Point

Hard as I try, I can’t recall the beach at Blakeney Point. Images blend and memories merge – this beach with that at Holkham, with Morston, Burnham Overy and Brancaster Staith.

I only see an expanse in my mental map, the horizon shimmer, Old Lifeboat House looking stern from afar. The salt marsh carpet, creeks, dunes and samphire. Now it is summer. Blue above and below, and the sharp pinpricks of the flying sand. Now it is winter. The saltings dim grey and dirty brown, freezing crystals on the scrub.

Hard as I try. My first walk to the Point fromCleyBeach. Before I knew about tide tables, I set off walking the deep shingle spit, bruising calves and blackening nails. I did reach the end, the sea and the tern’s nests. The feeling of space and the sense of infinity. The tide withdrew to sea while I rested, leaving casts of lugworms, deserts of sand behind. Buccinum and Hydrobia shells. Leaving the bottom of the sea to me. Its cruelty.

A baby seal washed up dead, lying in pools of water, alongside sparkling stones and Flustra fronds the colour of hope. Why, where is the…, what can I…? Too late. It was, I was, too late. I walked back barefoot, the seal receding with each step, ebbing away. The boom of the sea and the spray. The wind sculpted sounds, I licked salt off my lips.

Hard as I try. Sea holly, sandwort and sand sedge cling to shifting dunes. I can’t remember the beach at Blakeney Point. Only that seal, that wind, and my impotence.

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76/100 Days of Summer

For Blakeny Point, see here

The Beach at Blakeney Point, in Gathering Diamonds from the Well, ed. Brian Docherty, Laurence Scott, and Katie Willis (London: New Gallery Books 2007)