FROM THE BOOK OF LIFE
A time will come in your life when you too will feel like a prisoner. It may be love keeping you boxed in or hate sucking out the air around you. It may be illness clipping your wings, or simply the weight of years … no matter.
Bach cantatas... unpicking stitches from the kneeler
The Luitpold Bridge in Munich is closed. Climate activists have glued themselves to the road disrupting traffic. They are not afraid of a jail sentence, they say. Part of me yearns to be there with them. Making statements, taking action. Instead, I follow signs for an alternative route, like so many ahead of me, and so many behind. Our long, slow-moving queue snakes around our principles.
on the radio…
instructions for instant
gratification
In The Other Bunny 27 Feb 2023
The three micro-haibun from the series-in-progress The Censored Poems
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
*
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
*
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
Happy New Year 2023! And happy news! Issue 16 of MacQueen’s Quinterly is out!
Filled with excellent work by fellow poets, it makes for a great read! I am particularly chuffed to have 3 of my micro-haibun included from “Censored Poems,” a series in progress. My heartfelt thanks to Clare MacQueen for giving them a home.
*
before Zoom meet— I pluck my chin hair
A big thank you to the Editors Alan Summers & Pippa Philips for featuring my senryu.
Congratulations to all featured poets.
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
Parkinson’s the slowly advancing desert . HSA Members’ Anthology 2021
My haiku in Charlotte Digregorio’s Daily Haiku blog. Many thanks to the editor for re-printing the poem (Modern Haiku, 45:2, 2014).
Sixty years ago, she swallowed her grandmother’s most valuable possession: a ring, the only object to have survived the forced expulsion from their ancestral lands. The very ring that her grandmother, every night before bed, kissed and raised to the sky as if God needed the daily reminder that he had let her down.
Since that day of the half-accidental ingestion, and for two years afterward, the child was forced to use a potty, so that her grandmother could search its contents for the ring. To no avail.
In the summer of 2021, however, the ring exited the girl—now a grandmother herself—as if of its own volition. Effortlessly. The symbol of her family’s pain that her muscles had smothered, had been released. She heard the sound and to her astonishment, saw the ring lying at the bottom of the toilet bowl. Feeling nauseous, and while trying to steady herself, she accidentally pulled the chain that flushed away her long-held secret. She caught a glimpse of the ring before it disappeared in the swirling water to join the big, open sea.
letting go—
hunger for Scheherazade’s
stories
*
In Drifting Sands Haibun, issue 14, March 2022
Pleased to see that my “duvet” found a home in Blithe Spirit, vol 32, no 1!
Haibuphoria!
“For What We are About to Receive” my haibun on Drifting Sands— A journal of Haibun and Tanka Prose, Issue 13 (edited by Adelaide B. Shaw) is now online in both Web and PDF versions. https://drifting-sands-haibun.org/…/for-what-we-are…
The whole issue of wonderful haibun is available here:Web: https://drifting-sands-haibun.org/ Enjoy!
Many thanks to Charlotte Digregorio for featuring my haiku on her Daily Haiku blog!
another winter
the space between longing
and longing
in Tinywords, 31 May 2021. Issue 21.1
Happy to see 2 of my stories from Feeding the Doves (Dream Island and Written) included (pp. 61-62) in issue 6 of the Romanian Journal Revista Kibo Titan! Grateful thanks to Clelia Ifrim and Dani Dumitrache!
Collateral Damage
After four or five years, the miracle pill—the “gold standard” of Parkinson’s treatment—loses its sparkle. The drug wears off several times a day, allowing symptoms to reappear or worsen. Unless you increase the dosage, you’ll be staring into the abyss: muscle stiffness, imbalance, weakness, lethargy… And if you increase it?
dyskinesia. . .
how tall grass
sways
In Contemporary Haibun Online 17.1
My heartfelt thanks to editor Clare MacQueen for publishing this haibun
in issue 7 of MacQueen’s Quinterly. It had originally appeared in the
Wales Haiku Journal.
It’s at its loudest in the early morning hours. Before light dissolves darkness, before the neighbour leaves for work, before the birds start singing, his laboured breathing comes over the baby monitor whispering, gurgling, rattling, spluttering….
I lie awake listening to the crack of thunder, the roaring waterfall, the sounds of the sea emitted from his chest. A car starting, the exhaust backfiring, the train leaving station. The boat reversing in the harbour. Light rain. A soft meow. His breathing renders a whole world. In this soundscape, I make out the stories he told me when years ago he put me to bed.
Soon, light dispels the apparitions, and his breath comes over the monitor soft, steady, regular, lulling me to sleep.
music of the spheres
how we became
human
home alone . . . mother’s lipstick on her lips nude lipstick the teacher’s wry smile under her mask big sister’s lipstick . . . first date following his gaze to her mouth… lip reading lip liner learning to say no *** https://prunejuice.wordpress.com/2021/03/01/issue-33-senryu-kyoka/ In Prune Juice 33 (scroll down)
A Happy New Year 2021 to all my friends! A year filled with Health, Love, Creativity, Happiness, and Peace!
Meanwhile, still in 2020, JuxtaSix: The Journal of Haiku Research and Scholarship, the print issue, is available! I just received my print copy from Amazon. It is a very interesting and well-presented issue. I am happy to say it includes an article on Haiku and the Brain that I co-authored. Many thanks to the editors, and reviewers, and well-done to my fellow authors!
the weight
of our arguments
falling snow
Happy to see my poem included In the inaugural issue of the wonderful Blo͞o Outlier Journal!
Thank you, Alan Summers!
Delighted to see my work included in the new journal “tsuri-dōrō – a small journal of haiku and senryū.” The Inaugural Issue is just out! Have a read and submit!
Zoom meeting
a bird flies into
the window
What a wonderful project! The brainchild of Krzysztof Kokot, the International Picture Postcard Project “Haiku Connects Us” brings together poets and poetry from around the world. Beautiful pictures, coupled with haiku…what a treat! So pleased to see my contribution included here!Thank you, Krzysztof!
Earlier this year, I was very pleased to see that The Signature Haiku Anthology: Including Senryu and Tanka, edited by Robert Epstein, included one of my poems.
Robert Epstein describes a signature poem as “a unique and authentic expression of one’s haiku spirit or sensibility,” a poem by which the poet would wish to be remembered.
Now Gregory Pico, noting in one of his posts that “Some writers selected their most awarded and anthologized poem, while others chose a poem that best captured their poetic style, or portrayed a place or event of deep personal importance,” selected a few of these poems to feature on his website. Mine was included! Thank you so much, Gregory Pico!
whether I am here or not returning tide
Happy to see my haiku “hard frost” included in the “Sample haiku & senryu of Modern Haiku,” 51.1 Winter – Spring 2020!
.
hard frost
the hunter walks beside
the blood trail
.
You can find it here
Thrilled to have won first place in MacQueen’s Quinterly Ekphrastic Challenge “The Magician”!
A heartfelt thank you to Clare MacQueen for selecting my haibun “So that we remember” and congratulations to all participants in the contest!
Read “So that we remember” here: http://www.macqueensquinterly.com/MacQ3/Pierides-Remember.aspx
For the background to the contest and full results see here: http://www.macqueensquinterly.com/Contests/Magician-Results.aspx
Stella Pierides 