Book of the Week: Big Sky — The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2006

From: Big Sky: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2006

foreword

Two trends are worth noting as The Red Moon Anthology begins its second decade of offering the best haiku published in English from around the world. They are notable in that neither was apparent when the series was first conceived in 1996.
The first is the quality of English-language haiku being written in non-English countries. Some of these poems are, of course, translations, but many are original in English. This speaks to the rise of English as the truly international language of haiku, a position it seems unlikely to relinquish in the immediate future. Poets from 16 countries are represented in this series, and another dozen countries were represented in nomination. While the dominance of any language in the world market place of poetry will create some problems, it is also true that certain advantages accrue, and English-language haiku seems the immediate beneficiary of today’s situation.
The second is the vast improvement of the haiku now to be found on the web. Early websites which published and taught haiku were uneven at best, and it was with reluctance that we might direct interested students to them. Today there is a plethora of quality sites, a situation borne out by the many poems included in this volume which originated online. This majority is, too, a first for this series, and a circumstance likely to become more, rather than less, the case in the future.

Jim Kacian
Editor-in-Chief

bank withdrawal —
an empty candy dish
on the counter

-Dave Bacharach ✧ United States

 

library book
with underlined passages
i agree

-Teruko Omoto ✧ Japan

 

moonless night
reading your letter
by heart

-Valeria Simonova-Cecon ✧ Russia

 

You can read the entire book in the THF Digital Library.

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Haiku featured in the Book of the Week Archive are selected by THF Digital Librarian Garry Eaton, and are used with permission