Tag Archives: The Haiku Foundation

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, Poems

icicle

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)

kukai haiga

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.

Blog, Haiku, Journals 2020, Other Writers

JuxtaSix

A Happy New Year 2021 to all my friends! A year filled with Health, Love, Creativity, Happiness, and Peace!

Meanwhile, still in 2020, JuxtaSix: The Journal of Haiku Research and Scholarship, the print issue, is available! I just received my print copy from Amazon. It is a very interesting and well-presented issue. I am happy to say it includes an article on Haiku and the Brain that I co-authored. Many thanks to the editors, and reviewers, and well-done to my fellow authors!

Blog

Haikupedia

Haikupedia opened its doors on 21 June 2020. Now in its seventh week, it has released articles on haiku in several countries, biographies, awards and contests, and other articles for study, for research, and enjoyment. All you ever wanted to know about haiku is being written by experts and gathered in one place: Haikupedia. Every week new material! It is growing and it is getting better.
And it is always open, always there. You can visit anytime you like: https://www.haikupedia.org

21 June: Biography of Issa, the Matsuyama Declaration, and Haiku in New Zealand
https://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2020/06/21/this-week-in-haikupedia-june-21-2020/

28 June: Biography of W. G. Aston and Haiku in Finland
https://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2020/06/28/this-week-in-haikupedia-june-28-2020/

5 July: The Genjuan Haibun Contest and West African Haiku
https://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2020/07/05/this-week-in-haikupedia-july-5-2020/

12 July: The Touchstone Awards over the years
https://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2020/07/12/this-week-in-haikupedia-july-12-2020/

19 July: All about England and Wales
https://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2020/07/19/this-week-in-haikupedia-july-19-2020/


26 July 2020: Southern Africa and The European Top 100 Most Creative Haiku Authors https://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2020/07/26/this-week-in-haikupedia-july-26-2020/

2 August: More to come! So much more …

Blog, Haiku

Haikupedia

It is June 21st, 2020, and The Haiku Foundation just announced the debut of Haikupedia, its encyclopedia of all things haiku! I copy below the Troutswirl blog post about the first week of Haikupedia’s existence:

Each week for the next several months we will release a few new articles in our ever-expanding encyclopedia of haiku. These we hope will give you a sense of the potential scale of this enterprise, as well as entice you to become a part of the project.

We begin this week with a long biographical article on Japanese master poet Kobayashi Issa. We present the full English text of the Matsuyama Declaration, a landmark in the establishment of “world haiku.” Our featured country this release is New Zealand, not least because of their supremely executed management of the Covid-19 pandemic. You will also find short biographies of this week’s featured writers, David G Lanoue and Sandra Simpson, as well as the several people behind the start-up of Haikupedia: Editor in Chief Charles Trumbull, Managing Editor Stella Pierides, Photo Editor Iliyana Stoyanova, Haikupedia (and Haiku Foundation) Website Manager Dave Russo, and THF Founder and President Jim Kacian.

Haikupedia is a vast and wonderful project and I am both humbled and honored to be part of it.

Blog, Haiku

Introducing … Haikupedia

For the past year and a half, I’ve been working on Haikupedia, the new project of The Haiku Foundation. This is how it was introduced by Charlie Trumbull, Haikupedia editor in chief, in the June edition of the Newsletter of the Haiku Society of America.

Introducing … HAIKUPEDIA!
We are excited to announce the launch of a new source for the enhancement of haiku scholarship and enjoyment!  HAIKUPEDIA, an online encyclopedia about all aspects of everyone’s favorite verse form, will debut on The Haiku Foundation website in a few days.

Background
My name is Charlie Trumbull and I have been accumulating English-language haiku in English for almost 30 years and making my digital Haiku Database—now containing almost a half million haiku. I have also been collecting bibliographic and biographic information about haiku poets (mostly from back-cover blurbs, obituaries, and the like), haiku organizations, and general information about Japanese verse that I often had trouble locating in my library or online. As I passed 75 years old I began to realize that I had better do something with these massive collections before they get buried along with me. The idea of creating an encyclopedia of everything about haiku seemed to be a good and feasible solution. Online rather than print also seemed to be the way to go. Ergo, HAIKUPEDIA.
Now, I am not a particularly comfortable resident of the Internet, and I knew I lacked the experience and smarts to make a complex website on my own. So about two years ago I approached THF President Jim Kacian with the idea. He was enthusiastic and immediately saw how the Haikupedia project dovetails with The Haiku Foundation’s mission. We have a marvelous marriage of resources and capabilities: I have the basic idea and much of the content in my voluminous databases, Jim has the organizational resources, especially in the areas of Web design and access to persons who could help out in the commissioning, writing, and editing of Haikupedia articles. Dave Russo has taken on supervision of the website design and maintenance. 
For the Haikupedia editorial team Jim also recommended Stella Pierides, a member of the THF Board and recent editor of the Per Diem feature on the THF website. Stella is the Haikupedia Managing Editor. Our search for a Graphics Editor netted us Iliyana Stoyanova, whose experience with the United Haiku and Tanka Society, the British Haiku Society, and the Living Haiku Anthology, are proving invaluable.

Definition and basic structure
Haikupedia is a Web-based encyclopedia dedicated to all aspects of haiku worldwide. It is a project of The Haiku Foundation compiled, edited, and published by the volunteer Haikupedia editorial staff under the direction of Charles Trumbull. Haikupedia articles are written and signed by specialists. A title list is being developed for Haikupedia entries as follows:
Core Articles—Long and short essays on major topics in haiku. This category will include chapbook-length articles on fundamental topic such as “Haiku,” “Renku,” etc. Countries Also articles of appropriate length detailing the discovery and development of haiku in the principal countries, nations, and regions where it has taken hold.Biographies—sketches of haiku poets, translators, critics, etc. The number of subjects for biographical treatment runs into the tens of thousands. In the beginning for Haikupedia we have adopted a temporizing strategy favoring quantity over quality—well, at least thoroughness—and created a subcategory of ‘Short Biographies” of 50–100 words with just the basic facts. At the same time we will be commissioning regular long Biographies.Glossary—Definitions and glosses of terms used in and about haiku.Gazetteer—Information about places mentioned or otherwise important in haiku.Organizations—Information on international, national, and local haiku organizations and groups, their sponsors and organizers, members, and main activities.Events—Reports about haiku meetings and other events, dates and locations, sponsors and organizers, attendees, and main activities and presentations.Awards & Contests—A tally of all haiku-related contests worldwide with information about the sponsors, adjudicators, number of entries and countries represented, prizes, and winners for each.Publications—Information on haiku publications in print and online, including major books of haiku, translations, and criticism; anthologies, journals, websites and blogs, etc.Bibliographies—topical lists of books, articles, and online sources.

Where we’re at and where we’re going
You’re reading this message before Haikupedia is available to the public. Stella and Jim worked out a schedule for releasing the first volley of Haikupedia articles. We’re going live on Sunday, June 21 Jim will post an inaugural message, announce the Haikupedia URL on The Haiku Foundation’s Troutswirl blog a few days before the launch. Mark your calendars!

For the formal launch we plan to post these items
Kobayashi Issa by David G. Lanoue [Bibliography; 9,000 words] an essay based on Dave’s longstanding interest and many books about everybody’s favorite Japanese haiku poet. The article also includes a comprehensive annotated bibliography of work by and about Issa.Haiku in New Zealand by Sandra Simpson [Country; 8,000 words], a detailed history of haiku and report on the status of the haiku enterprise in New Zealand/Aotearoa. The bibliographic sections list the important work of or about Kiwi haiku.Matsuyama Declaration [Document; 4,700 words], the text of the landmark 1999 statement by a group of leading Japanese haiku poets and scholars essentially acknowledging that haiku is no longer exclusively Japanese and presenting standards for “world haiku.”Mini-Biographies of Haikupedia principals [unsigned abstracts of longer Biographies that will come later; 50–100 words each] (Haikupedia dignitaries Charles Trumbull, Stella Pierides, Iliyana Stoyanova, Dave Russo, and Jim Kacian) and the authors of the posted major articles (Lanoue and Simpson).
In the following weeks, every Sunday, two or three major articles and a handful of short Biographies will be posted, each release billboarded on Troutswirl. We’ll stick to this schedule through the end of October, then take a breather and decide how to go forward.

A caveat
Perceptive readers will quickly notice that Haikupedia is currently set up to serve only an English-speaking audience: all articles are in English and nolens volens our focus hews pretty closely to North American topics. We hope this will not be so for long. We plan to expand our coverage of non-American topics. Moreover, we want to “double” some of the key articles by posting a translation of, say, “Haiku in Croatia” in Croatian side-by-side with the English version. Alternatively, we may commission essays to be written in, say, Japanese and have them translated into English. Wouldn’t it be fabulous to have, side-by-side, a Japanese and an English article on, say, Richard Wright or renga!

Join us!
The Haikupedia concept is virtually limitless — and far grander than a half-dozen editors and two dozen authors can possibly realize. We welcome [read: “desperately need”] volunteers. Can you write us an article in one or more of the categories mentioned above? Would you like to help out by taking charge of a “cluster” of related articles? Would you have the skills to help with administrative tasks, data entry or other website work? Contact me at trumbullc\at\comcast.net or Jim at jim.kacian\at\thehaikufoundation.org and let’s talk.
Charlie Trumbull,Editor, Haikupedia
Blog, Haiku, Journals 2020, News, Publications, videos

‘Noir’ on HaikuLife

Happy International Haiku Poetry Day 2020!
And what a day it was! The Haiku Foundation announced the Touchstone Awards, hosted HaikuLife, the haiku Film Festival, and administered the collaborative poem “EarthRise” on the theme “Nurse.” And everyone had fun!

I contributed a video haibun, “Noir,” to HaikuLife as well as five poems..

My haibun triptych “Noir,” published in MacQueen’s Quinterly, made into Video haibun “Noir,” in collaboration with Rob Ward, was presented as part of HaikuLife on IHPD! Many thanks to Rob Ward, after-effects artist and animator, for bringing the stills to life, and Alex Menzies for permission to use his haunting piece Gretchen from his composition Faust for this video.

Noir

http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/items/show/5991

Enjoy!

Blog, Haiku

New Resonance Community video

Check out this video: “How I found my voice: A new Resonance Community Reading” from the Haiku North America Conference 2019. From Jim Kacian and Julie Warthers’s presentation on this Community of poets, including members reading out their work. Julie read out haiku by members not able to attend.

Here

My own poem was read out, too:

atlas
the weight
of my dreams

The video was featured as part of this year’s Fundraiser running from Thanksgiving to St. Nicholas’s Day.

Blog, Haiku, Other Writers

Clover and Cows

clover,

clover in flower
the Holsteins come
with four stomachs

This week’s poem by Dan Schwerin (Modern Haiku 49:2, Summer 2018), discussed at The Haiku Foundation feature Re:Virals, attracted delightful responses that illuminated the poem from different and serendipitously complementary angles.

The week’s winner, Garry Eaton, provided an interesting and robust commentary seeing the poem’s environmental concerns, alluding to 19th century farming changes by

… highlighting the mindless, mower-like and digester-like efficiency of cows as in massive numbers they convert landscapes into milk and excrement in an endless search for more green.

The other commentators too, in their own way, provided fascinating inroads to the ku.

One paragraph from Julie Warther’s commentary caught my eye:

We each have our empty places looking to be filled. We hold common yearnings for love, acceptance, safety, sustenance and purpose. The natural world and those in it have much to offer. Do we come ready to receive? Do we return hungry for more? Do we have the capacity (four stomachs worth?) to take in the goodness, beauty and bounty surrounding us?

In the commentaries, desire, pleasure and insatiable hunger come together through the poem’s image of cows with multiple stomachs, mowing down environmental resources. Perfect metaphors for humans for whom – on individual and societal levels – the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and who will employ all means necessary to consume, to obtain the next piece of land, the next oil field… The effects on nature, climate, resources are all around us to see. As Warther asks, do we have the capacity to process and digest what we receive, to ‘stomach’ it, to experience ful/fillment? To contain our desires? To create a sustainable environment, where the milk we receive is both sufficient and good enough to nourish us?

In Schwerin’s poem, c/love/r is in flower. It is not the first time, and it won’t be the last. In the optimist’s reading, the ‘clover in flower’ in this rural idyll has survived previous years, and it sounds that, with care, it is going to survive the next ones.

Refreshing to see clover — considered an invasive weed in the context of gardening — standing for ‘milk’ in its use as animal fodder, and the cows — whose milk is usually associated with nourishment — standing for ruthless, destructive urges. But that’s another poem, and another story.

You can find the full re:Virals post here.

If, like me, you enjoy thinking about these matters, make sure you receive The Haiku Foundation posts. Re:Virals, managed by Danny Blackwell, appears Fridays.

Blog, Haiku

The Haiku Foundation Fundraiser: Check it out!

The Haiku Foundation,Fundraiser, Once a year, The Haiku Foundation asks for our help to meet the financial challenges it faces to continue its work. It does so during the period from Thanksgiving through St. Nicholas Day, the time set aside by many to think about our blessings and give thanks. Each day between the 23rd of November and the 6th of December, a blog post on the Foundation site highlights one of its many features, presents a video, offers a sale item from the Gift Shop, and more!

Do visit the blog every day, find out what the Foundation offers, what the people involved with it do, celebrate the offerings, and help in whatever way you can to support the Foundation continue to promote the cause of haiku.

Day 1

Blog, Haiku, Journals 2017, Other Writers

EarthRise Rolling Collaborative Haiku 2017

The EarthRise Rolling Collaborative Haiku 2017, the world’s longest poem, on the theme of Reconciliation, is now collated and ready to treasure! You can find it in The Haiku Foundation site by clicking here
Many, many wonderful haiku.

I copy below my own contributions to the poem:
melting snow…
a pressing need
to confess
.
and who would hear
the sound of the sea…
reed ears
.
Passion Week—
letting the wild garlic
grow
.
daily grind
a stork pair picking
worms
.
revving up the engine
despite the rain
because of it
.
First appeared in Haibun Today Volume 11, Number 1, March 2017
.
refugee child–
folding and unfolding
his paper boat
.
First prize, Sharpening the Green Pencil, 2017
.
juggling
a pen and a feeding spoon –
the baby’s laughter
.
First appeared in Inner Voices, International Women’s Festival, 2017

.

 

Blog, Haiku, Journals 2017, Other Writers

Fight on! (in re:Virals 80)

What does it mean to wake up facing a fist pressing hard against your window?
How does one cope with such a threat, day in, day out?

The morning presses
its hot fist against the window:
the fight starts.

— Bart Mesotten, Haikoe-boek (self-published, 1986; translation by Max Verhart)

Pleased to share that my take on Bart Mesotten’s excellent poem is featured in this week’s re:Virals, The Haiku Foundation’s haiku commentary feature.
Take a look here 

And try your hand at writing a commentary on the poem I chose (as this week’s winner) to be discussed next: LeRoy Gorman’s “the good soldier.”

Blog, Haiku, Other Writers

re:Virals 49

A haiku is worth a thousand words: paraphrasing this well-known English idiom, I wish to point to this week’s re:Virals, the weekly haiku commentary over at The Haiku Foundation.
Robert Mainone’s poem

my haplogroup
shows the sponge gene —
distant lightning

(Modern Haiku 40.3, 2009)

was featured on re:Virals 49 and commented upon by a number of poets, yours truly included. So interesting to see how much is packed in this haiku! Take a look here

Blog, Haiku

‘Arrivals’

Video 6 Comments

In my presentation ‘Arrivals‘, a HaikuLife format reading of some of my recent poems, I weave responses to the refugee arrival crisis in the Arrivals video trainsMediterranean, and the conflicting reception refugees received so far, with the more general human challenge of ‘arriving’ anywhere…

The film, edited by Rob Ward, After Effects artist and animator, was presented during HaikuLife 2016, part of International Haiku Poetry Day, an initiative of The Haiku Foundation, held 17 April 2016.

Blog, Haiku, Other Writers

What a Day! International Haiku Poetry Day 2016

April 17, International Haiku Poetry Day, IHPD for short, is the day of celebration of all things haiku.  The Haiku Foundation encourages public events on local, national and global levels, including readings, exhibitions, excursions, collaborative projects and competitions. Since 2015, the event is listed in the World Kigo Database,  a great source of advice and information. (see Kigo Calendar).

pottery,jug, While waiting for next April 17 to come round, don’t miss the opportunity to watch the wonderful haiku films that were presented at this year’s HaikuLife, the Foundation’s Film Festival 2016.   And scroll through the longest haiku collaborative poem, EarthRise Rolling Haiku Collaboration 2016. This year, in acknowledgement of the United Nations Year of Pulses, the theme of the project was Foodcrop Haiku.

Here are my own offerings to EarthRise:

earthquake
the seed in the child’s
open palm
.
picking over lentils—
quiet
of the evening hour
.
mice-nibbled sack—
edging closer to
the real
.
at the back
of the late night bus
whiff of wild garlic
.
all seeds accounted for dawn chorus

.

 

Blog, Haiku, Journals 2016, Other Writers

The Haiku Foundation re:Virals 31 and my Commentary

This week, a terrific haiku by Melissa Allen was up for discussion at The Haiku Foundation  re:Virals. Interesting commentaries looking at the poem from different perspectives. You can read the whole post with the poem and all the commentaries  here. I am pleased to say mine was this week’s winner. I copy it below:
.
Melissa’s poem:

radiation leak moonlight on the fuel rods

          — Melissa Allen, Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (2013)

And my take:

In current usage, the word leak refers to a variety of situations: from leaking a document and bringing into the light a secret, to taking a leak, to a wasteful dripping of water, to seepage of radiation. This poem, with its radiation leak, immediately opens up a danger zone. Step in at your peril into an image that gives rise to paralyzing fears, to the dead zones of Chernobyl, Fukushima; to the forbidden zones. Anything could happen here.

From a leak to a fireball, from the atom to the apocalyptic mushroom cloud, you could be walking into a minefield of the results of unbridled ambition and unscrupulous greed, a Faustian deal . . . Whether the leak is from a technological or scientific project, where man sees himself tirelessly bent on expanding knowledge and power over nature, finding solutions to the human problems of illness, poverty, and environmental degradation; whether hubris or dedication to the common good, here is a consequence: the spewing of poisonous material, the fall into a dark, man-made Hell.

But now the poet brings moonlight on the scene. Like a benevolent, all-seeing Eye of God, moonlight bathes the fuel rods in light we associate with understanding, with cool logic, in forgiveness. I am reminded of the Greek poet Yiannis Ritsos’ Moonlight Sonata, where moonlight hides smaller-scale follies such as showing white hair as golden, at the same time relentlessly intensifying shadows. In Allen’s poem too, moonlight is both kind and cooling, as well as relentless and permanent, not allowing the fuel rods to hide in the shadows. An image burned into the mind.

Note that the fuel rods are not spent. The young man in Ritsos’ poem too, is present all through the poem, at the end leaving full of energy, bursting into laughter as he walks away. Life continues in its boundless energy, in its perpetual flow, beyond leaks, beyond the night, beyond our human follies, beyond life itself.

 

Blog, Haiku, videos

Haiku Journey for HaikuLife 2015

At the beginning of this year, I wrote about my visit to Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, to view their collection of paintings by  Alfred Wallis. At that time, I was inspired to put together a presentation for the HaikuLife FilmFest, organised by The Haiku Foundation. The presentation, Haiku Journey, was shown on International Haiku Poetry Day, April 17, 2015, together with a good number of other films. It is now archived on the site here.

Poetry and arrangement: Stella Pierides; film editing: Rob Ward

Images: by kind permission of Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge

Enjoy!

Blog, Haiku, Other Writers

International Haiku Poetry Day 2015

2 Comments

In 2015, The Haiku Foundation celebrates haiku on a global scale, encompassing the work and achievements of haiku poets from around the world. From this year on, International Haiku Poetry Day (IHPD), replacing the THF’s National Haiku Poetry Day, becomes the biggest celebration of haiku poetry word wide. On April 17 each year, haiku poets, haiku poetry fans, and organisations will be getting together under the auspices of the THF in order to honour the depth, reach, creativity, and joy of the genre we have come to love.

For this year, the Foundation has organised a series of events, from local haiku readings and celebrations, over HaikuLife, a FilmFest showcasing work submitted by individuals and organisations, to EarthRise, a rolling collaborative poem.

On April 17th, 2015, from 12:01 A.M. at the International Date Line, a wave of haiku contributions begins and rolls throughout the day, with poets offering their haiku at dawn their local time. The finished collaboration, on the theme of Light, will be permanently archived on the THF site.

I am very much looking forward to the day, and the many exciting contributions from poets around the globe. I will be setting my alarm, and posting my own haiku to the inaugural EarthRise.

I am also delighted that the FilmFest, HaikuLife, features a short film of my haiku together with paintings by Alfred Wallis (from the excellent Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, collection). I created this film with the (much appreciated) support of Rob Ward, After-Effects Artist and Animator. Besides my presentation, there are at least 12 other contributions by haiku poets and organisations, amounting to almost 90 minutes of film.

I hope you will be able to join in the fun on IHPD.

For times, url, and other information about HaikuLife and EarthRise, as well as the local (to the US) readings, please visit the Troutswirl blog at The Haiku Foundation site.

Update April17, 2015

Happy International Haiku Poetry Day, folks! Contribute your poems to EarthRise, watch the HaikuLife films, go to the readings, enjoy the day!

My short film, Haiku Journey, is shown today — together with a number of other films — and will be permanently archived on the Haiku Foundation site. Please see here

For an introduction to the Foundation HaikuLife project, and the list of all projects shown, please click

Blog, Haiku, Journals 2014, News

‘winter wind’ on Per Diem: Daily Haiku!

Delighted to see my poem “winter wind” featured in today’s (5th November 2014) THF ‎Per Diem: Daily Haiku.

In case you missed it, after all it is only displayed for a day, here it is:

winter wind
feathers and fishbones shift
inside the eyrie

This poem was a runner-up in the Snapshot Press Haiku Calendar Competition 2012 and first appeared in The Haiku Calendar 2013 (Snapshot Press, 2012).

A big thank you to the month’s editor, Sonam Chhoki, for including it in her collection “Writing the Difficult Thing.” Sonam Chhoki’s collection runs all through November, with lots of poems about difficult things to write… Each day, a new poem here. Enjoy!

Blog, Blog Action Day 2014

Blog Action Day 2014

On October 16th, 2014, a global discussion is being held on the topic of inequality. Organized by Blog Action Day, this year’s theme brings together bloggers from over 100 countries to contribute on a matter that becomes increasingly urgent.

Inequality, sunflower,daisies,

Wars, civil and religious violence, scarcity of materials and ecological concerns, the spread of disease, are increasingly diverting our attention from the inequalities that abound, and increase in our societies. Yet, to a large degree, inequality is the result of all those processes individually and cumulatively. Wars, for instance, are about real or perceived biases in resource distribution, in turn often resulting in huge increases in inequality. Just think of the thousands of refugees looking for safety in the Mediterranean, and the response they get when (and if) they make it to the European shores. (see here

night chill…
all the refugees asleep
behind bars

It is ubiquitous, but so are the processes that ameliorate and even help reverse it: awareness and reflection, empathy, generosity; pooling of resources and co-operation; language, art, literature; institutions, policies, humanitarian approaches at national and international levels are just a few that come to mind.

Greenwich,London,Tall Ships Festival,Inequality is an urgent and vital topic for discussion, and you may have noticed, I am taking part this year with a series of posts.* Are you? If you are not sure what to write about, Blog Action Day on FB has a number of tips for bloggers. If you don’t have a blog, you may use your FB account or other social media. See also the Blog Action Day 2014 site.

If you are looking for literary inspiration on themes of poverty, homelessness, begging, and poetic resonances to these issues reflecting perspective and culture, see The Kindness of Strangers, a six-part series by Swedish poet Anna Maris on The Haiku Foundation site (you’ll need to scroll down the blog entries for the earlier posts).

Bye for now! See you on the 16th,  online.

#Blogaction14, #Inequality, #Oct16

…

* Anselm Kiefer at the RA and Museum Walter

Malevich at Tate Modern

Phyllida Barlow at Tate Britain

Kader Attia, Whitechapel Gallery

Frank Auerbach at Tate Britain

Blog Action Day 2014

aros, Blog, Haiku, NaHaiWriMo

NaHaiWriMo 4th Year!

February is National Haiku Poetry Month – wherever you might be on the planet. The shortest month of the year for the challenge that may become the longest-lasting commitment you will ever make!
But let’s start small. First write one haiku a day for the whole month. Join a community of poets around the world who endeavor to write at least one haiku a day. And see how it goes… I did, four years ago, when it all started.
The NaHaiWriMo Facebook community encouraged me, nurtured my writing; and this quiet, positive, non-critical presence of people helped me grow. This steady, unfailing presence provided a background for my daily attempts: poetic ventures, haiku versions to work on, check with others.
Other members let me know if they’d read my poem, if they ‘liked’ it, if a different version would work; if they shared my experience or predicament, my point of view, or appreciated my difference. Not often, but cumulatively, in doses that my ego could take…
It worked! I’ve made the commitment to haiku and its special way of seeing and conveying experiences.
Try it yourself. You may like it and start writing haiku each day of every month, all year round. It may help open up time, expand moments the way only haiku can.
To see how it works, take a look here
For how to go about finding out how to write these poems, there is help from the founder and co-ordinator of this project, Michael Dylan Welch here  and in more articles posted on this site
You will find the NaHaiWriMo Community here

And for inspiring, prize-winning as well as thematic collections of haiku by poets the world over, you will do well to visit the The Haiku Foundation site here

There’s also a daily poem treat, the Per Diem: Daily Haiku ready for you to pick up here

Blog, Haiku, News, Other Writers

The THF’s new offerings

What an exciting month December has been! And it is only the 4th of the month!

The Haiku Foundation’s Per Diem: Daily Haiku, a feature I project manage, is scaling new heights this month. Michael McClintock, in his collection “31 Ways of Looking at a Mountain” is taking us for a mountain hike. Each day a new view here

BeFunky_pomegranate.jpgThe Haiku Foundation Fundraising campaign is continuing up to the 6th of December with a number of releases of new material and features. On the 3rd, the new social media account on Pinterest was rolled out. I am pleased to have played a part in this one.

Then there is a new haiga by Jim Kacian, a new digital library interface… there is an endless stream of enthusiasm and creativity coming out of the The Haiku Foundation. And the fundraiser releases continue for three more days!

Are you missing out? Register for blog post notifications via email (see the THF contact page), follow the THF on Twitter: https://twitter.com/haikufound

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/haikufound/boards/‚ and like it on

FaceBook:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Haiku-Foundation/346457215437?ref=ts  

And above all, have fun with haiku!