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National Poetry Month: Margaret Dornaus

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Well, April, the cruelest month, is upon us! Thank God we have poetry to help us survive it. Poetry, Poetry, Poetry, Poetry!

The Haiku Foundation, the Poetry Foundation, Poets.org, brim with wonderful poetry to feed the soul – and the senses! Visit them and forget about April; or at least enjoy it! There is also Per Diem, the Daily haiku offered by The Haiku Foundation on their home page (bottom right-hand corner); Couplets, the multi-author poetry blog, coordinated by Joanne Merriam of Upper Rubber Boot Books, the Facebook pages of NaHaiWriMo,  and numerous other projects, workshops, readings, and poetry-related events.

On this first day of Poetry Month, I am very happy to host Margaret Dornaus, ‘writer, a teacher, wife, traveler . . . as well as a haiku-doodler.’  Margaret says about herself, ‘I live in a beautiful woodland setting, surrounded by native oak forests, that inspires me to record haiku snapshots of luna moths and our resident roadrunner, and even an occasional black bear as it hightails it across the top of my road, my mongrel dog barking at its heels as I watch with wonder’.

In her post hosted here, Margaret  kindly states, ‘I’m thrilled to exchange places with Stella for the day in observance of National Poetry Month and to have her wonderful work featured on my blog, Haiku-doodle (http://www.haikudoodle.wordpress.com).

Margaret herself chose to offer three poems (see below).  This is how she reflects on her offering:

‘After we decided to share three of our poems on each other’s site, I contemplated whether I should contribute haiku or tanka.  I    began writing both about a year and a half ago, and, although I was already familiar with haiku, I knew nothing about tanka until I accidentally stumbled upon a call for submissions to Pamela A. Babusci’s journal Moonbathing.  When I started studying this ancient lyrical form and reading the work of other tanka poets, I knew I’d found a home . . . .  And so I’ve chosen three tanka to feature here today.’

 

you remind me

how it felt that night we met . . .

our universe

filled with possibilities

and the soft hum of tree frogs

 .

Simply Haiku, vol. 9, no. 1, Spring 2011

.

years from now

I promise to remember

how you looked that night

alone on the verandah

holding moonlight in your hands

.

First place, Tanka Society of America

2011 International Tanka Contest 

.

in darkness

we forget our anger . . .

suddenly

the sound of wild geese

piercing the starless night

.

Ribbons: Tanka Society of America Journal,

vol. 7, no. 1, Spring 2011

.

This blog post exchange is part of the Couplets project, a multi-author poetry blog tour coordinated by Joanne Merriam of Upper Rubber Boot Books “to help promote poetry and poets for National Poetry Month“.

Blog, Haiku, NaHaiWriMo, Poems

Something about April

April is not only the cruelest month. It is also National Poetry Month – for some of the world, anyway. Let’s not split hairs. We all want to celebrate poetry, so let’s do it. Poets, writers, publishers, readers, poetry lovers are planning get-togethers for poetry-related events: fests, readings, workshops, write-ins, stay-in-bed for poetry, day-dreaming…this kind of thing.

This is what I will be doing: I’ll be celebrating at ‘Couplets,’ a multi-author blog tour for April, to help promote poetry and poets for National Poetry Month. Co-ordinated by Joanne Merriam of Upper Rubber Boot Books  it is going to be a fe(a)st.  I am taking part and will be posting, besides my daily haiku, poetry-laden posts during the month. Come over to my web home and we’ll eat poetry words together!

Meanwhile, here are a few links to keep us going till then:

The Haiku Foundation: They say: “April 17, National Haiku Poetry Day, is a celebration of the genre of haiku, a kind of poetry whose origins date back a millennium in Japan; and more specifically, of English-language haiku, which has now been written for more than a century”. But you don’t have to wait till the 17th! You can explore this wonderful site, founded by Jim Kacian, and enjoy the best haiku and haiku poets in the world.

While visiting THF, check out their Per Diem: Daily Haiku series. In March they post my selection of haiku of the senses: haiku by some of the best poets highlighting the interconnectedness of sensory experience (Per Diem can be found on the front homepage of the Foundation, at the bottom right-hand corner). In April they post  “Poems from Aotearoa, New Zealand haiku, featuring flora and fauna specific to those favored isles, and human activities, such as Anzac Day (April 25).” Editor: Sandra Simpson.

The Facebook page of National Haiku Poetry Month, or NaHaiWriMo, moderated by Michael Dylan Welch, has been running since February 2011. Although their haiku ‘month’ is February, they ‘haiku’ the whole year round. You can read or indeed “write at least one haiku a day, inspired by daily writing prompts”. The community is friendly and warm, encouraging…join them and surprise yourself! I have!

Poets.org has a page listing events and poetry resources here

Feel free to add/share any other events you may know of.

 

Blog, Blog items Poetry, Poems

Happy World Poetry Day!

Every year on the 21st of March UNESCO  celebrates World Poetry Day. A decision to proclaim 21 March as World Poetry Day was adopted during the UNESCO’s 30th session held in Paris in 1999.

For UNESCO, “the main objective of this action is to support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to offer endangered languages the opportunity to be heard within their communities. Moreover, this Day is meant to support poetry, return to the oral tradition of poetry recitals, promote teaching poetry, restore a dialogue between poetry and the other arts such as theatre, dance, music, painting and so on, support small publishers and create an attractive image of poetry in the media so that the art of poetry will no longer be considered an outdated form of art…” Link here

So, Happy World Poetry Day everyone!

Blog, Haiku, News

Shortlisted tanka news

Delighted and honoured that my tanka was shortlisted for the Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, Vol 4.

The anthology series founded by tanka poet and editor, M. Kei, announced the short list for the fourth annual volume (2011) in March 2012. The nine editors headed by M. Kei (USA), Patricia Prime (NZ), Magdalena Dale (RO), Amelia Fielden (AUS), Claire Everett (UK), Owen Bullock (NZ), David Terelinck (AUS), Janick Belleau (CAN), and David Rice (USA), embarked on the amazing feat of reading all tanka published in English during 2011 with the goal of selecting the best individual tanka, kyoka, waka, gogyohka, gogyoshi, tanka sequences, tanka prose, and responsive tanka for inclusion in the annual anthology. The team read approximately eighteen thousand poems to choose about three hundred for inclusion in this, the fourth and final volume in the Take Five series. Well done to the editors and to the poets among us who got selected! I for one am thrilled and hugely encouraged!

The announcement can be read here