on the trail . . . one hundred ways of saying I do
#The100DayProject is a global art project encouraging everyone to participate in 100 days of making. It starts on April 2nd, 2019.
“The great surrender is the process; showing up day after day is the goal. For the 100–Day Project, it’s not about fetishizing finished products—it’s about the process.”
Briefly:1—sign up for the newsletter. 2—find and follow the facilitator on Instagram . 3—choose a theme: you commit to be engaging with it every day and posting on Instagram the result. 4—announce your project on Instagram. Tag your announcement with #The100DayProject so that all of your posts will cluster together, and you can find easily the other participants’ posts.
2019 will be my second year. Last year, for my theme I chose: #100daysnewthings. Each day, I searched for, and found, something new to me. ‘It’ may have been an interesting quotation, a piece of information, a discovery or re-discovery, a haiku or other poem, something I hadn’t noticed before…
It proved to be a challenge but also a
blessing. The practice expanded my curiosity, widened my horizons. And not long
after the project finished, I discovered felt making! Half of this year’s
theme: #haikufeltings. A felting with a haiku every day for 100 days!
It is not going to be easy, and it may
take me longer, but I am ready for the challenge. I know it will benefit my
creative practice, it will feed my muse . . .
Heaving streets, bulging with holiday shoppers. Shop windows in garish colours blink their version of hell. As soon as I get the present I came for, I head for home.
Running for the bus, I bump into someone, or he bumps into me. The double-decker reeks of wet clothes. A young woman, clutching her baby close to her chest, is arguing with the bus driver who refuses to let her on without a ticket.
We stay put for a good thirty minutes, until a passenger, with a shaking hand, taps his debit card on the card reader and pays the fare for her.
the baby babbles . . . raindrops on the bus window
and without props
It hasn’t rained for weeks. The two workmen in my back garden, digging the foundations for a cat enclosure, sound industrious. There is a young apple tree standing right in the middle of it, and I have instructed them to shorten its branches so that it can be contained within the structure. I imagine my two cats spending happy hours climbing it, perching on its branches. But when I look outside, I see the tree is missing. I am told it was taking too much space and they decided to remove it for me, at no extra cost.
short shrift the town crier’s hoarse voice
against freezing
I own five hot water bottles. As you might have guessed, I feel the cold more than others. When I place these hot, felt-wrapped receptacles on my coldest parts, I experience the bliss others must take for granted.
clang of a spade I imagine the workmen striking gold
The shelves in the beauty aisle are piled high with hand creams. Tubes, jars, bottles, tins of brands I never knew existed. So many! I stand here for a while, wondering whether this abundance could be attributed to the forthcoming Brexit. After all, all sorts of strange events in the last couple of years have been attributed to it. I imagine that both remainers and leavers would need a cream to soothe their hands after clapping for one or the other speaker; after rubbing their eyes in disbelief on reading the daily news or covering their ears for hours in the gesture perfectly captured by Munch’s “The Scream.” Could this be it?
The ossuary, a white-washed, rectangular building, is dark and cool. A musty smell envelops me as I enter. I am searching for the metal box containing my mother’s bones.
I’ve been told she is confined to one on the shelves that run the length of the room. I start searching methodically. Each box has a small hand-written label with the deceased’s name on its front. Several labels are blank. One has a dried daisy flower stuck on it with Sellotape; another, a star in cross stitch; yet another, a tiny motorcycle sticker. Photographs of the dead looking youthful are taped to several boxes, or placed next to them, complicating identification of the containers’ occupants.
Disheartened, I leave the grim building to walk in the dappled shade of the graveyard. The hum of the city mixes with birdsong. So many years since I was in Athens. I stop to read the names of the deceased on headstones, marvel at the stone angels, at the oil lamps. Soon my head is swimming. A woman burning sweet-smelling incense over a grave turns to look at me. I quickly look away, but then, returning her gaze, I nod and she smiles.
The main course is boiled beef with green beans, mushrooms, and sautee potatoes. A typical dish in this part of the world. What is atypical is the sauce that accompanies it. Unlike the horseradish recipes that make your nostrils flare, this delicate sauce introduces a surprisingly mature interpretation that sings to rather than stings the palate. My neighbour has chosen condiments that balance the flavours to perfection. I can feel the character of the well-tempered sauce on my tongue. No excess. No diversions. Clear limits. Boundaries.
noticing the rose after the rain starts – petrichor
Stella’s shasei (sketch from life) haiku is tightly structured with an emotional undercurrent: “another” in L1 shows the narrator’s attitude to the passing of time while the symbolically rich image of the “knotted branch” in the shredder in Ls 2&3 makes this haiku visually and emotionally effective.
No need to be afraid! This is only Emile wearing his Halloween mask!
Written in honour of Halloween, All Hallows’ Eve…
All Hallows’ Eve the anatomy class finishes early . Posted in My Haiku Pond Community’s “Halloween Quickie Haiku Challenge” Received Hon. mention. Thank you, Michael Smeer!
Delighted and honoured to read Vanessa Proctor’s generous and thoughtful review of my book, published in Frogpond 41.3, Fall 2018, p. 139), the journal of the Haiku Society of America! Please read PDF by clicking the link below……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………sp-frogpond-rev………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Available from Red Moon Press and Amazon
This September I took part in the Haiku for Change Event organised by Michael Smeer of the Facebook community My Haiku Pond, in conjunction with 100 Thousand Poets for Change (Global) 2018. Poets were asked to write one haiku (or senryu, haiga, or photo-haiku) on change: climate, environment, earth.
Entries were included in the Haiku for Change Event ebook Anthology, a pdf posted on the 100 Thousand Poets for Change blog, and archived by Stanford University as part of their program to document the 100 Thousand Poets for Change movement and community.
Here is my offering:
rising seas
a clutch of turtle eggs
in the park sandpit
This is the second year I participated in the Australian Grand Final Kukai, organised and hosted by haiku poet Rob Scott. I enjoyed the event itself, learning about the footy teams, the preparations and festivities leading up to Grand Final Day, and then following the game on internet radio in the early morning hours. Writing poems during the game was not easy, but as they say, strike the iron while it’s hot! And I tried! The best thing? Being part of the group of poets watching the match and responding with poems. I enjoyed their contributions immensely!
What heartbreak though. The Magpies ahead most of the match, the Eagles sweeping ahead in the end to win the final.
tachycardia
and swollen vocal cords…
Grand Final fever
*
grand final eve —
eagle and magpie fans feast on
chicken wings
*
magpies and eagles —
the stuff that dreams
are made of
*
live on air
the stadium roars
and roars
*
on the airwaves
the ebb and flow
of hope
*
half time —
believing in my spirit
animal
*
grand final
after all the hard work
… rain
Thrilled to have my poem featured on Per Diem: Daily Haiku, The Haiku Foundation site. The poem will be up all day today the 23rd of September 2018 here
Many thanks to editor Rob Scott for selecting it!
This poem was written for the AFL Grand Final Kukai 2017 and included in The Tigers’ Almanac 2017, p. 187 (Malarky Publications)
Literature, Art, Culture, Society, and lots of Haiku
