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
*
*
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.
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
fire extinguisher after the long drive my burning feet
.
soon to retire he fills his calendar with seed starting charts
If you are wondering what happened to the greenhouse…here it is! With its shade net hat, as it is very hot here, reaching 93 Fahrenheit or more.
Still work to be done to the surrounding area, but the greenhouse works already. We’ve sown various seeds in eggshells and egg boxes, planted rosemary cuttings, tomato and cucumber plants…Well worth the time and effort …
.
.
Pleased to see that my “duvet” found a home in Blithe Spirit, vol 32, no 1!
Happy to have won third prize in The Haiku Foundation February 2022 Kukai
theme: icicle
icicle . . . how long will he take to forgive me
— Stella Pierides (51 points – 4; 3; 2; 5; 3)
Remarks below are by Dee Evetts, THF Monthly Kukai Commentator. He is an internationally known haiku poet and author of “The Conscious Eye” series on contemporary themes in Frogpond in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
I find that a great deal is implied here. It is winter. There has been a falling out, and apparently a felt culpability on the part of the writer. Possibly the weather (or another circumstance) has forced the couple or pair to be together when they might otherwise have chosen to put some distance between themselves –– at least for part of the day. There is a prevailing silence, and at best, monosyllabic and toneless exchanges when strictly necessary. This is one of those “suit yourself” kind of domestic stand-offs. It is true that I am embroidering –– even weaving my own version of the poem. Another reader will come up with a different story. What counts is that the poet has given us room to speculate, while at the same time giving us the very concrete image of the (how gradually?) thawing icicle.
the last page missing
from the library book—
late autumn evening
Frogpond sampler 41.2 Spring/Summer 2018, and p. 27
.
Happy to have this included in Blithe Spirit
in Tinywords, 31 May 2021. Issue 21.1
home alone . . . mother’s lipstick on her lips nude lipstick the teacher’s wry smile under her mask big sister’s lipstick . . . first date following his gaze to her mouth… lip reading lip liner learning to say no *** https://prunejuice.wordpress.com/2021/03/01/issue-33-senryu-kyoka/ In Prune Juice 33 (scroll down)
insomnia
hoar frost
in my fridge
In “on the nail” haiku 2021
Dale Wisely says:
Delighted to announce a surprise, special issue of RIGHT HAND POINTING: Haiku 2021! (A nice set-up for our new print journal of haiku/senryu, first frost, coming this May). Thanks to our pal Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco for curating the issue.
Read it here
Enjoy!
it must be
something I said…
cherry blossom
lockdown blues…
waiting for the red lipstick
to arrive
.
Inspired by @MariaPierides’s Lipstick project
not taking calls…
my mobile phone’s
new felted case
stepping into
the same puddle twice . . .
new pair of boots
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)
promontory
the birdwatchers’
chicken sandwich
31/100 #The100DayProject #100daysnewthings
animal shelter
the robot dog keeps lifting
its leg
29/100 #The100DayProject #100daysnewthings
Delighted to have two poems featured on Jennifer Hambrick’s blog Inner Voices, for a second year hosting the International Women’s Haiku Festival 2018! This is how Jennifer introduces them in her blog:
Two laser-sharp senryu by poet Stella Pierides explore women’s age dynamics and the eternal question of women’s dress and sexuality.
dressed to kill
she asks
if I’m retired
Jennifer says:
Well. Why not just ask about her final wishes? The picture is this senryu is crystal clear: a younger woman, in full heat of professional and/or personal ambition and wearing the clothes to prove it, asks the poetic speaker, whom I read to be an older woman, if she’s retired – read: no longer competition, no longer someone to be concerned with. To be charitable, maybe it’s just an observation: the older woman looks older, looks perhaps comfortable in her own skin, and the younger woman just doesn’t get a) that retired doesn’t equal out to pasture, and b) that remarking, even obliquely, on someone’s age is at best insensitive. And what if the poetic speaker actually is retired? Picasso said it best: “It takes a very long time to become young.”
and:
knee-length skirt
the extent
of her rebellion
.
Jennifer writes:
This little senryu is situated perfectly between the rock and the hard place that, eventually, every woman encounters. Look sexy, be sexy, the world instructs. But not too sexy. In this poem, rebellion against the social expectations that a girl or woman be prim and proper results in a shorter skirt. But rebellion against social expectations doesn’t necessarily eliminate the expectations. There is potentially a price to pay – the demise of one’s reputation – for breaking the rules, hence the “extent of her rebellion” is defined by the knees. It could be fear from social pressure that keeps everything north of the knees covered, or it could just be the poem subject’s authentic assessment of her own comfort.
Many thanks to Jennifer Hambrick for including my poems!
I am very much looking forward to reading and enjoying the rest of the month’s contributions with Jennifer’s insightful commentaries.
Delighted to have two of my haiku: “juggling” and “hermit crab,” appear on Jennifer Hambrick‘s Inner Voices as part of the International Women’s Haiku Festival. And I love Jennifer’s commentary! Check it out here
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Photo from the piece: Vanessa Pike-Russell/Creative Commons/Flickr
Christmas Day
the Home visitors
bearing gifts
.
steam room—
letting go of
my bones
.
In Blithe Spirit, Journal of The British Haiku Society, vol. 27, n.1, Feb. 2017
front row
the soprano’s perfect
teeth
.
In ‘Beginning’ the British Haiku Society Anthology 2016
evening news—
forgetting
to swallow
.
In Failed Haiku, issue 1.11, p.152
Nights at the Opera
Don Giovanni…
learning from
my ghosts
.
opera buffa—
long after the laughter
the tears
.
opera seria
the prima donna throws
a tantrum
.
asphodels…
and the stars were shining
unseen
.
and what if
all the world’s a stage—
Pleiades
.
Failed Haiku: A Journal of English Senryu, issue 1.11, p.152
wind-blown street—
crossing the road
for no reason
.
Failed Haiku, issue 1.11, p.152
Stella Pierides 