Blog, Haiku, Other Writers

Surrealism and Haiku?

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Over at the The Haiku Foundation blog, Troutswirl, Gene Myers asked “What do surrealists and haiku poets have in common?” A number of haiku poets contributed very interesting and varied responses. Spurned into action myself, I responded with the following comment:

Hochablass, Lech dam, Augsburg
Hochablass, Lech dam, Augsburg

“Thank you for sharing this, Gene. I have been thinking about connections between the arts and haiku poetry and so find it interesting to read people’s thoughts here.Re. your question: I understand (most) surrealists to have tried to bypass conscious mind and to make contact with the unconscious through dreams, word association, automatic writing, hypnosis, mind-altering substances… This aim to go beyond and beneath the conscious/reasoning mind and pull out a fresh, writhing, alive experience may be one of the things that surrealists and haiku poets share (though not all the means!).

Regarding two-part haiku, I like to see the juxtaposition of the two elements as displaying side by side, literally, unconsciously associated content. In a successful juxtaposition, a sense of strangeness, an uncanny feeling is being set up. Isn’t this central to the attraction for both reader and writer: looking at the seemingly disparate elements/parts of the poem, experiencing the tensions generated and their resolution in a moment of recognition in which the unseen / unconscious connections emerge?

In this sense, surrealists (at least those of the more constructive strand) and haiku poets may be said to use juxtaposition of the seemingly disparate as a means to reach underneath and beyond the well-trodden tracks of our conscious landscape; to (to use your words) ‘jar’ and encourage filling in the gaps/holes between the elements through reconnecting with deeper/hidden levels of the mind. Of course, this is only one of several commonalities; there’s also choice of words, images, form of presentation, and so on.

Happily, we have this month’s Per Diem, Kirsten Cliff’s collection “Dream Speak,” to help us explore this matter further.”

Noticed the last sentence? Why not keep me company, visit the THF Per Diem site, and pull out of the Per Diem box the daily poem; fresh, and only for a day, the daily poem can be found by clicking here. 

 

Blog, Feeding the Doves, News

“Feeding the Doves” is now a Goodreads Giveaway!

Dear Friends,

I’ve listed my book “Feeding the Doves” in Goodreads Book Giveaways! There are 12 free copies (print) available to win. Giveaway dates for entering: Aug 25-Sep 25, 2013.

This is how it works:
1: The easy way: See the Goodreads badge on the right side of this Homepage, click to enter!
2: The slightly less convenient way: Find the book in Goodreads (here) and click the enter to win button there.

Either way, Goodreads will do the rest! After the 25th of September they will notify me the list of winners and I will post the books to them!

Good luck to all who enter!

aros, Haiku, NaHaiWriMo

‘Hoedingen’ #12 August 2013

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Hoedingen

Hoedingen.jpg is a small resort on the shores of Lake Bodensee (also known as Lake Constance). Hoedingen, a northern part of the district and town of Ueberlingen, is a quiet, beautiful place, where you can hear the sound of the wind, the grapes expand and fill with mouthwatering juice, the sound of the grass growing…

 

 

 

 

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Hoedingen
between skies and water
cicada songs
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cberlingen
http://www.hoedingen.de/

Blog, blog items, Books, Feeding the Doves, News

Feeding the Doves: 31 Short and Very Short Stories, and Haibun

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Feeding the Doves  Now available to order from amazon.co.uk, amazon.de and Kindle

FeedingtheDoves.jpg

“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

***

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.

***

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

Fruit Dove Press

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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Blog, Blog items Poetry, Other Writers

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.

Paths 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.

Blog, blog items, featured, Feeding the Doves, News

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.”]

Blog, Journals 2013, News

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.

aros, Blog, Haiku, NaHaiWriMo

‘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.”

aros, Blog, Haiku

‘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!”)

Literature, Art, and Life through the Lens of Haiku

Stella Pierides

Literature, Art, and Life through the Lens of Haiku

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