It’s been a rough year. Couldn’t we all use a joyride?
I am delighted to announce the arrival of my most recent book, Joyride, from Red Moon Press.
Hailed as “a triumph” and “a beautifully written book, fizzing with marvelous imagery, energy, joie de vivre,” Joyride: A Haibun Road Trip is a lively mashup of flash fiction, memoir, free verse poetry, and haiku – an expansive take on the Japanese hybrid genre of haibun – that unfolds in offbeat episodes from the road of life.
You’ll meet a colorful cast of characters, and motoring through the collection are the automobiles – food trucks, used cars, moving vans, and others – that take us where we want to go and bring us home again.
Read advance praise for Joyride and purchase your very own copy here.
I am grateful to have another mini portfolio of my haiga published in the most recent issue of the journal Haigaonline. This issue. “Viewing Stones,” features haiga inspired by and depicting rocks, stones and earth.
All of the photographs in my haiga mini portfolio, “Ancient Days,” were shot in New Mexico, where earth is poetry in its own right. The haiga above, “waning summer,” shows a wall on a New Mexico pueblo crumbling “back to the earth.” The haiga below, “eroding hills,” depicts the skeletons of mountains that, eons ago, had been submerged in a vast inland sea, and that now stand, eroded and ghostlike, in the New Mexico desert.
My sincere thanks to Haigaonline editor Linda Papanicolaou for tirelessly catalyzing new work in the genre of haiga, and for again publishing my work in her journal.
I am extremely honored and humbled to have won First Place in the Haiku Society of America’s 2018 Haibun Awards Competition with my haibun “That Summer.”
The genre of haibun consists of the juxtaposition of prose and haiku in ways that allow the two genres to resonate uniquely with each other, creating multiple layers of meaning. Here is “A Brief History of English-Language Haibun” by Jim Kacian, founder and board chairperson of The Haiku Foundation and one of the leading exponents of English-language haiku and related genres. This essay was compiled from Kacian’s introductions, and with Kacian’s permission, by Ray Rasmussen, the present editor of the major haibun journal Haibun Today.
“That Summer” is published on the Haiku Society of America’s website. My haibun will also be published in the Haiku Society of America’s journal, Frogpond, one of the finest publications of English-language haiku and related genres. [Update, 2-29-20: “That Summer” was published on the Haiku Society of America’s website and in Frogpond.]
Sincere thanks to competition judge John Stevenson, and hearty congratulations to my fellow poets who also won awards in this contest.
Concluding the 2018 international Women’s Haiku Festival is a haiku by Northern Irish poet Marion Clarke.
ticking clock . . .
so many things to tell
my daughter
There is the ticking biological clock that, along with other factors, dictates the reproductive fate of every woman. But there is also the ceaseless march of time more generally, the grandfather clock that ticks in tandem with the heartbeat of all humankind. Both clocks are ticking away in this haiku, which points to the special kind of relationship many mothers and daughters share, while reminding us how little time we all have. So many things to tell, more than a lifetime, more than two lifetimes, can hold.
Marion Clarke is from the east coast of Northern Ireland, about which she writes,“The scenery where I live is amazing as the sea, mountains and forest are all within walking distance, so I feel I was destined to become a haiku poet! My poems are inspired by those I’ve loved and lost.”
Demons inner and outer haunt a haiku by Canadian poet Michelle Hyatt.
so much makeup
hiding her face
dark side of the moon
Is this a poem about a woman so desperate for beauty that she goes overboard trying to paint it on, or about a woman who is hiding evidence of physical violence beneath mounds of cream and powder? Each interpretation speaks to a different type of darkness – the inner darkness that cannot let her see and accept her own beauty, or the darkness of abuse. And all of these layers of darkness are set in contrast to the chalky white light of that serene goddess, the ever-watching moon.
Michelle Hyatt enjoys wandering anywhere that takes her to trees, mountains, water, and moonlit forests. It is in these places where her heart feels most at home and finds creative inspiration, which sometimes develops into tiny poems. Some of her other work can be found in Yanty’s Butterfly – Haiku Nook: An Anthology. Michelle lives in Canada.
Polish poet Marta Chociłowska paints a picture of the happy hustle and bustle of a market flower stand in a delightful haiku.
shopping list
a woman at the market
sells catkins
Imagine a bustling market with a stall where a woman, Eliza Doolittle-like, sells fresh-cut flowers and bundles of long, beautiful willow branches dotted up and down with soft, fuzzy catkins. Isn’t that just like your shopping list? Long and bulleted with comfort-food coziness? This clever haiku is bursting at the seams with the kind of upbeat hustle and bustle that makes you feel fully alive.
Marta Chocilowska, of Warsaw, Poland, is a fan of cats and poetry, co-author of Polish and foreign haiku anthologies, winner of Polish and international haiku contests, and a juror in Polish and foreign haiku contests. She has publications in many international haiku and haiga magazines. She is a founding Member of the Polish Haiku Association.
Poet David He gives voice to a young girl’s sweet song and an older woman’s early dusk in two beautiful haiku.
a green leaf
between the girl’s lips
her sweet song
I envision a little girl holding a green leaf between her lips and humming a happy tune – maybe that of a nursery song, or maybe a tune she’s making up on the spot. This poem a tight shot on a moment of complete innocence. Maybe the girl doesn’t know anyone sees her with the leaf between her lips or hears her “sweet song.” Or maybe she does know and doesn’t even think to care. The poet’s language is as simple and unburdened as the haiku moment it captures.
***
Mum’s story
in her grey hair…
early dusk
The vivid image of a woman’s grey hair tells only part of the woman’s story. But the “early dusk” in the poem’s third line says it all. This grey-haired woman isn’t exactly old; her hair makes her look older than she is, and – doubly tragic – this in the face of an “early dusk.” David He has been working as an advanced English teacher for 35 years in a high school. He has had twenty English-language short stories published in anthologies. His haiku have been published in Acorn, The Heron’s Nest, Presence, Rocket bottles, Frogpond, One Hundred Gourds, Shamrock, First Literary Review-East, Modern Haiku, Frozen Butterfly, and elsewhere. He has also had tanka published in Skylark, Ribbons, and Cattails.
Mama’s new pair of shoes and Daddy’s obituary star in two poems by U.S. poet Valorie Broadhurst Woerdehoff.
new stilettos
she announces
her divorce
And there she is with her new stilettos, with her new-found independence, with all the concomitant fears and regrets and scars and, unless she’s some kind of stiletto-wearing saint, resentments. The stiletto as the ultimate symbol of female autonomy, of female no-one-owns-me-ness. She’ll wear those shoes like badges of honor. She’s going to need them. I hope they’re flaming red.
***
how quickly
a skipped stone sinks
his obituary
All that life and liveliness that once glanced off the surface of the river of life – now all boiled down to the verbal arroyo of a death notice. Just the facts, just the skeleton of who he was and what he did, all rendered on such a tight deadline. And with his death, the death of a marriage, a siblinghood, a parent-child relationship. All gone in the time it takes not to breathe.
Valorie Broadhurst Woerdehoff holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Loras College in English: Writing and Theology respectively. She is originally from Northern California, but has spent the last 30+ years in Dubuque, Iowa, USA. She has served over 30 years as a higher education professional, and has written poetry since childhood. Over 250 of her poems, including numerous haiku, senryu, and rengay, along with articles have been published in magazines, juried journals, and anthologies. She studied haiku with Bill Pauly, and has taught courses on publishing and judged writing contests at the local and national level. Her writing garnered a grant from the Iowa Arts Council and awards in local and national competition, including earning her River Arts Association Writer of the Year honors.
The private self meets advancing age in two poems by dl mattila.
cocoon . . .
it’s what you don’t see
that defines me
In an age of endless social media confessions, it is important to remember that our selves were not meant to be always – or even ever – broadcast to the world. So often the cocoon is viewed only as a symbol of the butterfly that is to emerge from it. But there is essential beauty in what is inside the cocoon, not just in what is about to come out of it. It commands our respect. If only we’d stop tweeting and blogging long enough to notice.
***
advancing age
in my blind-spot
changing lanes
This sharp little poem leaves us on a cliff-hanger ending, even though Mother Nature has already spoiled the ending for us all. We don’t see age creeping up on ourselves until we try to shift our lives and run smack into it. But even though the younger driver may (really?) have the better reflexes, the older one has potentially more experience, more skill, and, as the character Evelyn Couch noted in the now classic film Fried Green Tomatoes, more insurance.
New Zealand poet Sandra Simpson packs the inner heat wave of menopause, the piquant flavor of a fourth marriage, and the beautiful death of big dreams into three lovely haiku.
heat wave –
holding the soft part of my wrist
under the tap
The term “heat wave” has a wonderful double resonance as the natural phenomenon of a period of scorching outdoor temperatures and as a metaphor for the hot flashes that often come with the equally natural process of menopause. Either way, one can imagine seeking relief from the external or internal heat by holding the sensitive flesh of the underside of the wrist beneath a trickle of cool water, a common remedy for the discomfort of hot flashes.
***
the water jug
stuffed with mint & lemon –
her fourth husband
Far richer than the purity of the first marriage, the water jug in the first line, which I read as representing the fourth marriage, is packed with stuff – natural, earthy, fragrant, and tasty stuff, but stuff nonetheless. The stuff of a life full of experience – the astringency of previous marital loss, the minty coolness of taking it all in stride. Far from plain old spring water, the water in the jug is infused with the perfume of many lifetimes.
***
blossom wind –
too late now to be
who I wanted to be
The moment when you realize you’ll never play professional baseball. Or become a great chef. Or become a parent. This wistful poem represents that moment as the part of the self that dreams our dreams – which is to say, the deepest part of the self – dying, drifting away like flower petals on a spring breeze. And that breeze – that “blossom wind” – is historically especially good at blowing women in every direction – into and out of marriages, from location to location as trailing spouses, into motherhood, out of careers. At the same time, this poem also transforms that deep and dreamy part of each of us into something it never dared to imagine it could become: the simple, perfect petal of a flower.
Sandra Simpson co-organised the 2012 Haiku Festival Aotearoa (New Zealand) and in 2018 is co-editing the Fourth NZ Haiku Anthology. Sandra is the founding editor of the online Haiku NewZ (2004), has been secretary of the Katikati Haiku Pathway Committee since 2006, and South Pacific editor for the annual Red Moon anthology since 2012. She has won several awards for her haiku and judged international competitions. Sandra published a collection of her haiku, breath, in 2012 and from the same year has had her own haiku blog, also called breath. She grows orchids as a hobby.
It’s been a rough year. Couldn’t we all use a joyride?
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