Happy to see 3 of my haiga included on pages 35 and 36 of the online Romanian Journal of contemporary art, Arta! See here
Grateful thanks to Andi Dumitrache for including them.
Camera obscura
For the last hour
My old poems
In Arta
Tag Archives: published
Family History
My four-year-old grandson, sitting at the table facing me, starts moving his head and trunk in the same, writhing way I move mine. Dyskinesia, a side effect of the medication I take, comes and goes. The only way of stopping these movements is to sit back and keep silent.
As I stop talking and relax, he does too.
spring moon
how strongly it pulls
the ocean
In Puddock June 30th, 2024
new snow…
Remember the snow? The white stuff? Well, here it is in my photo from last December included in MacQueen’s Quinterly So happy to see it in this wonderful journal together with two of my haiku. Thank you to editor Clare MacQueen!
.winter wonderland
how many snowflakes
to magic
new snow...
the sound only silence
makes
Four senryu
Happy to see my four senryu make it to MacQueen’s Quinterly! Many thanks to the editor Clare MacQueen!
[Four Senryu]
January storm
my neighbor’s greenhouse
flying past
:::
Monday blues...
last week’s special offer
no longer special
:::
overcast day
the muted colors
of hope
:::
when the going gets tough
the feel of your hand
in mine
*
In The Pan Haiku Review, issue 2
Happy to see two of my haiku appear in The Pan Haiku Review, issue 2, Winter 2023, Kigo edition, p.98. Editor: Alan Summers.
just as
the snowdrops wither
cherry blossom
snowdrops...
breaking through
this sadness
Zaporizhzhia
In Frogpond 46.3, Autumn 2023
forever
Included in THF Anthology 2023
Happy to see that my poem was included in The Haiku Foundation Volunteer Anthology 2023 ‘The high lonesome.’ Thanks to jim kacian and Julie Kelsey for selecting the poem.
Sky Ponds in CHO 19.2
Happy to see my haibun “Sky Ponds-Himmelsweicher” appear in Contemporary Haibun Online 19.2
I found out about the bomb craters in the Augsburg city forest during a walk with my Parkinson’s walking group. Marvelous recovery of a wounded landscape, and people. And apt for our own situation of struggling with progressive disease.
Sky Ponds—Himmelsweiher
The Siebentischwald, on the edge of Augsburg, acts as the lung of the city. Lush green vegetation crisscrossed by water channels and dotted by silent ponds makes this forest the life force of Augsburg. It turns out it is also the repository of an interesting piece of the city’s history: the forest floor bearing the scars of thousands of bombs that were dropped on it towards the end of World War II.
On my morning walk with my Parkinson’s group, in this peaceful, green oasis, pierced by high-pitched peacock cries from the adjacent Zoo, I come across oval ponds and other depressions filled with vegetation. I am told they are Bombenkrater, the remnants of craters formed by aerial bombing.
The proximity to the munitions manufacturer Messerschmitt meant that bombs often landed in the forest. However, the massive bombing raid in February 1944 literally dug up the forest floor, leaving numerous wounds on the landscape. In recent years, a public charity transformed some of these craters into ponds brimming with life.
cool forest shade. . .
lingering by the sky ponds
heat from the past
Haiku in The Mainichi
June 29, 2023 (Mainichi Japan)
they take you for granted ... dandelions
Happy to have this haiku selected by Dhugal J. Lindsay for The Mainichi newspaper. It appeared on Japan’s Daily on the 29th of June 2023.
A Cluster of Lights
A Cluster of Lights is here!
This beautiful anthology is now out in the world! Celebrating the ten-year anniversary of the brilliant project ’52 / 250 -A Year of Flash,’ 52 writers (including yours truly), respond to their previous work with new creations.
Congratulations and many thanks to Michelle Elvy, John Wentworth Chapin, and all contributors!
The link at the publisher’s site is here: https://pureslush.com/…/anthologie…/a-cluster-of-lights/
• paperback – https://bit.ly/PB-CLUSTER
• ePub – https://bit.ly/ePubCluster
• Kindle – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C56JGVJ9/
For a ‘taste of a Cluster of Lights’, click below:
“lillies” in Haiku of the Day (Per Diem)
Negative Ions
Negative Ions, my haiku sequence, and contribution to International Haiku Poetry Day (IHPD) on The Haiku Foundation YouTube channel:
In REFLECT, at Creek Creative Studios
I am happy to be included in the REFLECT and Intriguerium 3 exhibition at Creek Creative Studios, Faversham, England, curated by Robert Lamoon. Two of my tiny haibun, as two objects, are to be found in tiny boxes made by the curator!
One of the haibun, Who is, was inspired by a story I read in the news: the calcified remains of an unborn fetus were found accidentally during a scan for a totally unrelated health problem. The fetus had rested inside its mother’s body for over thirty years…
Who is
Lithopedion. The calcified remains. Bonded. Forever. The grief of the unborn, the consolation of eternity.
stone baby the weight of forever
Are you in the area? The exhibition is on till the 16th of April!
From the Book of Life
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
RING-A-RING-O’ ROSES
Shelling a nuclear plant is never a good idea.
Zaporizhzhia—
now you see us
now you don’t
.
In The Other Bunny, March 6, 2023
Apathy
APATHY
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
Interview, Parkinson’s Life
Thrilled and honored to have been given the opportunity to speak about haiku and Parkinson’s Disease in an interview for Parkinson’s Life, the magazine of Parkinson’s Europe. See here
Grateful also to Northern California Haiku Society’s Dave Russo for his post on my interview and latest work. See here
The 3 micro-haibun in MacQueen’s Quinterly
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
3 micro-haibun in MacQueen’s Quinterly
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”
*
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.
In “open sky: SAMVAAD”
Honored to see my haiku featured in “open sky: SAMVAAD,” of Trivenihaikai India! Many thanks to feature hosts Sanjuktaa Asopa and Vandana Parashar for selecting it. It is from 2014, shared third-place winner in the Kusamakura haiku competition.
wild stream my thoughts etc.
The hosts invite comments here. The third line seems to be….unusual!
In Robert Epstein’s “The Haiku Way to Healing”
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
the mist and I (decisions)
The November challenge at Parkinsons.Art involves rewriting a given poem in our own preferred form.
Here is the tanka I wrote in response:
the mist and I cold, lingering, and silent… under the park bench a handwritten missive, advice from a brave heart
Parkinson’s Toolbox: The Case for Haiku
The eighth issue of Juxtapositions: Research and Scholarship in Haiku is out. JuxtaEIGHT is a themed issue on “haiku and wellness,” with several articles, interviews, and resources addressing this theme. And it includes two contributions by yours truly: the article “Parkinson’s Toolbox: The Case for Haiku” is now available to download (pp 37-61), as well as a description of Haikupedia from the Resources section of Juxtapositions: Check them out here https://thehaikufoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/juxtaeight.pdf
I copy below the Abstract of the Parkinson’s article:
Parkinson’s Disease (PD)—the fastest growing neurodegenerative condition worldwide—affects a wide range of motor and nonmotor functions. At present, there is no cure. Only symptomatic treatment is available, aiming to improve quality of life and slow progression. The aim of this paper is to recommend haiku as a therapeutic tool helping with symptoms and, potentially, rate of progression. To this end, following a brief description of PD, and its symptoms grouped under two areas of loss resulting in life diminishment, I touch upon the general role of art and literature in augmenting pharmacological treatment of the disease, before focusing on some of the qualities of haiku (in the process of writing as well as the created poem) that collectively make haiku a containing vessel that can hold and transform the distress associated with the disease into a more bearable experience.
truth chamber
Mariupol
swollen river
My haiku in Charlotte Digregorio’s Daily Haiku blog. Many thanks to the editor for re-printing the poem (Modern Haiku, 45:2, 2014).
Body language
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
duvet
Pleased to see that my “duvet” found a home in Blithe Spirit, vol 32, no 1!
