Tag Archives: published

52/250, Blog, Publications, Short stories

A Cluster of Lights

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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:

• https://bit.ly/Clustertaste

Blog, Haiku

In REFLECT, at Creek Creative Studios

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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!

REFLECT
Blog, Journals

Apathy

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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

Blog, Haiku

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

“The aim of the haiku poet is to capture the essence of a moment”

Grateful also to Northern California Haiku Society’s Dave Russo for his post on my interview and latest work. See here

Blog, Haiku, Journals, Short stories

The 3 micro-haibun in MacQueen’s Quinterly

The three micro-haibun from the series-in-progress The Censored Poems

Bone Broth

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

*

Off Time

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

*

Wabi-sabi

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
Blog, Haiku, Journals, Other Writers

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

healing

Blog, Haiku

Parkinson’s Toolbox: The Case for Haiku

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Juxtapositions

 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.

Blog, Haiku, Journals

Body language

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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

Blog, Haiku, Journals, Poems

For What We are About to Receive

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!

Blog, Haiku, Short stories

Beyond Me in CHO 17.1

Beyond Me
There is a point at which thought unravels, where cosmic dust swims on waves our brains are not equipped to comprehend. This is the reason we learn to speak of concrete things caught by the senses – the fragrance of flowers, light and shadow, bird song, the weight of snow. Holding tight to the literal, we learn to survive.

Betelgeuse. . .
on my third cup
of strong coffee

In Contemporary Haibun Online