.
full moon tea
my book of beasts
lies open
.
tea leaves —
a fate worse than
cuticles
.
kallikantzaroi—
drinking tea they forget
the World tree
.
Three haiku included in Aubrie Cox’s collection Tree with Trolls, in her blog Yay Words. Twenty seven poets saying, in their own unique way, Happy Halloween! And thank you Aubrie!
bee hive
where the workers never
strike
.
Sketchbook 6-4, Editor’s Choice Haiku, John Daleiden: Life in the Mostly Unexamined World (scroll down)
.
eternal life
only the roaches
come close
.
in my salad
a green caterpillar—
life lesson
.
Sketchbook 6-4, Guest Editor’s Choice Haiku, Bernard Gieske : A Glimpse into the Past (scroll down)
and Editor’s Choice Haiku, John Daleiden: Life in the Mostly Unexamined World (scroll down)
Delighted! My haiku “starry night” came second (tied) in the July/August 2011 Sketchbook Kukai (peer-reviewed contest).
Here it is:
starry night—
growing old
together
Delighted also that several of my fellow haijin from NaHaiWriMo did so well, esp Terri Hale French (1st), Michelle Harvey, Cara Holman, and others…
Two other haiku I submitted received no votes! Food for thought, of course.
The entire thread can be read by clicking here
So pleased that my haibun ‘Drawings’ was accepted by Contemporary Haibun Online!
‘Drawings’ is now online on Contemporary Haibun Online, ‘The Quarterly Journal of Contemporary English language Haibun.’ My piece can be read here
My haiku ‘back to school’ was included in the Asahi Shimbun Haikuist Network showcase of the 16th of September 2011, edited by David McMurray. This showcase appears two to three times a month in the daily Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun and is a must read for haiku lovers. Click here and read all the poems! Really good work by poets from around the world.
(My haiku is in the section ‘From the notebook’)
Atlas Poetica, Special Feature From Lime Trees to Eucalypts: A Botany of Tanka, poem #20, (26 August 2011) (Olea europea)
The Mainichi Daily News, 29 August 2011. (‘warm morning’)
escarp, the ‘ selective, twitter-based review of brief poetry and prose’ (‘glacial’)
Red Dragonfly, Melissa Allen’s, excellent mainly haiku blog, (‘dark waters’ and ‘iridescent wings’) and
Asahi Shimbun, in David McMurray’s column The Asahi Haikuist Network, on the 19th of August 2011 (‘grey skies’ and ‘watermelon’)
Melissa Allen, of ‘Red Dragonfly‘ featured my haiku ‘tomato’ and ‘silkworm’ in her regular column Across the Haikuverse, No. 20 and No. 21 editions, respectively. An honour to be included there. What more could a haijin want?
Haiku buzz: My haiku came 6th and 7th in the Sketchbook Kukai (peer-judged contest) in the May/June 2011 issue. Sketchbook is a ‘Journal for Eastern and Western Short Forms.’ I am very pleased with the result; this was my first ever kukai! Watch this space…
Two of my haiku on the thread ‘Vegetables’ set by the editors of Sketchbook magazine, were picked, together with others, to be featured in the Editor’s Choice haiku thread. They were also featured in the Guest Editor’s Choice, of the same edition. You can read the haiku in my blog here.
Three of the haiku I wrote for the 2011 NaHaiWriMo and its extension during the following months, were picked and translated into French by Vincent Hoaru in La Calebasse: ‘geranium’, ‘wrong season(ing)’, and ‘have you thought’. Vincent’s blog is highly original and I am indeed honored to be included. You can find the three haiku by scrolling down here.
For one more of my haiku translated into French see my earlier post here
While the NaHaiWri Mo 2011, which I thoroughly enjoy and learn from, is continuing for the month of April, I am also joining NaPoWriMo 2011. The challenge, and pledge is to write a poem a day, each single day, for the month of April.
NaPoWriMo, or National Poetry Writing Month, is an annual project. In the words of its founder, Maureen Thorson, NaPoWriMo commenced in 2003, when she decided to take up the challenge (modeled after NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month), and challenged in turn other poets to join her. Since then, she writes, the number of participants grew larger every year, and many writers, organizations, national and international, take part.
Well, phew! What a challenge, though, naturally, the daily poems are, and can only be first drafts. And, cheating a bit, I plan to use some of the haiku, senryu, and micropoems I will be writing for the NaHaiWriMo challenge; or at least versions of them.
Meanwhile, many thanks to Maureen Thorson for her brilliant idea and sustained effort. Indeed, congratulations Maureen!
For simplicity’s sake, I will be using my main blog (on which I post on various other issues) for posting. I will be giving links to other places I home my little ones in. Join me on this journey. Or better still, join the NaPoWriMo and write them yourself!
Publisher on hiatus
The waiting for Alexandrias 40: In the Shade of the Lemon Tree is getting longer. Voxhumana-books has gone on hiatus. My publisher has been seriously ill for some time, and is now no longer able to continue with the work. I am very sad about Philip’s fight with cancer and wish him all the best.
I will keep you posted about the book when I have more news. Meanwhile, I hope to see you around this blog and twitter (@stellapierides.com) for short stories, haiku and other forms of prose and poetry.
“twentysix,” the second anthology highlighting short stories from a quarter of “52|250 A year of Flash,” is out. The editors of this writing project, Michelle Elvy, John Wentworth Chapin and Walter Bjorkman, challenge writers to produce a short flash of 250 words every week for one year. They provide a different theme each week and the resulting creative work is amazing: wonderful stories, and poems, of high quality from a prolific, creative, friendly, and excellent community of writers.
Each quarter, the editors pick and highlight in an anthology the best of the stories written on each week’s theme. The current edition also includes art work, readings, and reflections by some of the writers on their creating a particular piece and the ways they went about developing their take on the theme.
Beautifully and professionally edited, assembled and illustrated, it is well worth visiting, and reading. As you will see, the editors have put an incredible amount of work into “twentysix.”
I am honored to have two of my short stories included: on theme #25 “A private person” and on theme #26 “A hair raising story.”
.
You can read the anthology here
My stories in 52|250 can be read here
My haiku made it to the top five in the Iron Horse Literary Review haiku competition! I am delighted, especially since I wrote this haiku prompted by the name of the Journal and in response to their asking for haiku with either the word iron or horse.
I am particularly pleased because the competition caught me in the middle of writing my second novel, When the Colours Sing, set around the Blue Rider movement – it fitted so well.
The five winners: Marty Smith, Lauren Tamraz, Sarah Spencer Pokla, Benjamin Vogt, and Stella Pierides.
The IHLR is a review of poetry and literary non-fiction published six times per year by Texas Tech University. I am going to follow them and read what they are getting up to from now on!
You can find the results of the competition together with my poem here
The first edition of the Language/Place blog carnival is out. Why not visit here.
I quote from “virtualnotes,” where this particular blog carnival originated:
“The idea of “> Language > Place” is to create a collaborate virtual journey through different places, in different formats, and with different languages included – the main language is english, yet the idea is that every post also includes snippets or terms of other languages, and refers to a specific place, country, region or city.”
For more information and how to join this monthly event, here
Oh, yes, and I took part too!
15 November 2010
My flash fiction story “A Private Person,” appears in the 52/250 flash fiction project, week 25.
52/250 is a project involving around eighty writers from all over the world who made the commitment to write and publish weekly, flash fiction stories for a whole year: 52 weeks, 250 words max! There is a theme for each week, and contributors can suggest themes to the editors.
I joined during week number 25, and my first flash appeared on Friday 5 November 2010. It is a short story about two individuals who see themselves as “private” persons. You can read it here.
The 52/250 project feels like a very encouraging, inspiring and warm place to be. I am going to hang out there… so, watch this space!
Three of my poems have now been published by Vox Humana Literary Journal, “a literary journal focused on international writing, with a sub-focus on works from Israel and Palestine”
Winter Picture started its life at the North London writers’ workshop Word for Word, after a writer circulated photographs she had taken of a snow sculpture: two human-like figures made of snow on a Hampstead Heath bench. In my poem, the sculpture became a war-torn couple… read it and see.
Mystery Train was inspired by a photograph used as a writing prompt in the Tuesday poetry group of Word for Word. The photograph was of Elvis, on a train platform at the beginning of his career in the 1950s… so soon after the War…
The refugee grew out of a scene in my novel “Alexandrias 40: In the Shade of the Lemon Tree.” A refugee from Smyrni lies in her hospital bed in Athens, unable to join the other patients; she is forever caught in her own private despair.
Check out this link. And feel free to comment!
5 October 2010
I am delighted and honored! My micro-poem They send light to Earth was chosen to be the first piece to be published by new e-zine @textofiction.
Brand new, “Textofiction is an online literary publication dedicated to bringing the best writing in under 140 characters.”
Read my micro-poem and think, it packs a lot in. Better still, let me know your thoughts about it! Read it here
Date of publication: 29 August 2010
My short, fast and deadly “The Collector” was published 13th of June 2010, in the Haiku-themed issue 27 of Short, Fast, and Deadly Online Journal. The line “For the love of God, no Haiku,” made it to the front page (cover).
I went for a walk to the Dragonfly Sanctuary in the Lee Valley Park, near Waltham Abbey, in the outskirts of London. Peaceful and dreamy, idyllic… though a different note entered my mind when I read the information provided about dragonflies: the lower lip technique of the dragonfly nymphs catching their prey, the cannibalism as a way of regulating population…
Reflecting on my experience, I wrote this poem which can be read both as a perfect idyll, with the dragonflies resting within a sssssh soundscape of silence; and as the calm before the next rush of the dragonfly for its prey.
The poem was published in escarp, a text-message-based review of super-brief literature (www.escarp.org).
My Twitter-sized poem Sketch published in Escarp, sketches an idyllic picture of an old city. It also hints at links between old cities, cobbled streets and Silence: http://www.escarp.org/
In April this year (2010) I committed to the Creative Climate diary project, a media and research project about climate and the environment run jointly by the OU and the BBC. As a global web log, it will chart online, through twice yearly diary updates, people’s ideas, concerns and experiences about the changing climate and its impact on the environment. Here is my first entry: http://bit.ly/9xd95H
I wrote this Twitter-sized poem on environmental awareness, the mania of cataloging, and our need, as well as the impossibility, to recreate and return to Eden. Have a look: click here
Still Life, in Poets Online, Archive, Found Poems, February 2010
[poem] http://www.poetsonline.orgNovel Alexandrias 40: In the Shade of the Lemon Tree
to be published in 2010 by Vox Humana Books http://www.voxhumana-books.com
“In these tales of love, loss, and survival, Pierides embroiders a tableau detailing the lives of a refugee family in Athens, circa 1957. The novel is set in the house of the family on Alexandrias Street, where they came to settle years after their flight from Smyrni, now Izmir, Turkey. Framed by this house — a concoction of tin, cement, wood and mud, a paradise, a refuge and a prison to those who nestle in it — they struggle to come to terms with their predicament, attempting to establish themselves in Greece. Without idealising its characters, the novel unfolds — a tragicomic story, full of ethnic colour, warm sensuality and psychological insight. The book encompasses the “Catastrophe” of Asia Minor, the Greek Civil War, accusations and blackmail, adoption and betrayal, as well as the refugees’ love and bitterness towards their country. The characters’ traumatic past and struggle for survival, in a country that is both home and hostile to them, requires their ability to tap into psychological resources of generosity, masochism, denial and ruthlessness — and above all — humour and forgiveness. In a quick-paced narrative straddling both the genres of novel and short story, Stella Pierides recreates a world within a world, miles apart from the well-trodden tourist trail to Greece.”
“…Vox Humana Books…eclectic literature with a human voice”
Soul Song, in Poetry Monthly International, issue 15, January 2010 (p. 18). [Poem] http://www.poetrymonthly.com/15 PMI January 2010.pdf
The Refugee, Winter Picture, and Mystery Train, to appear in Vox Humana Literary, Spring Issue, 2010. [3 Poems] http://www.voxhumana-lit.com
Girl, in the print Journal Off the Coast, International/Translation Issue, Spring 2009. [Poem]
Song of the Aegean, in Poetry Monthly, issue 150, 2008. [Poem]
Article on the Munich literary scene Munich, in the summer 2007, issue 2 of the Berlin-based Literary Magazine Bordercrossing Berlin.
Short story It Could Have Been Love translated into Chinese by writer Yu Liwen http://www.yuliwen.com/463/
Stella’s very short story The Miracle was commended in the Micro-fiction competition, Leaf Books. It is included in the Leaf Books anthology of micro-fiction, Derek. http://leafbooks.co.uk/New/Leaf%20Authors/Pierides,Stella.html
Stella’s poems Seferis’ Houses, What Was Left of Her and The Beach at Blakeney Point are included in Gathering Diamonds from the Well, the fourth ‘Word for Word‘ Anthology.
Stella’s poem Lake Ammersee appeared in the 2007 Anthology Sights to Behold. London: Forward Press
