Book-of-the-Week

Book of the Week: Crossing the Field

gourlay_crossingthefieldcoverCaroline Gourlay has made her immediate environment the subject of her work throughout her haiku career, but never more elegantly or personally than in this early handsome volume (The Redlake Press, 1995). The almost casual illustrations by Anthony Manwaring are particularly apt.

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

Do you have a chapbook published 2009 or earlier you would like featured as a Book of the Week? Contact us for details.

Haiku featured in the Book of the Week Archive are selected by Jim Kacian, following a concept first explored by Tom Clausen, and are used with permission.


Without a full stop
you run. Childhood, a country
without paragraphs . . .


Shadows cross the field
leaving this corner till last
—the sun in the pool.


Her words fast-forward—
leave with the ten thirty-two
—his platform empty.


Fishing the brown stream.
Long summer days
                         drop
                           their line
into the stillness.


Daylight fading—
a curlew’s cry
lengthens the hill.


Leaving the room
he notices the bowl of roses
still
waiting in the mirror.

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. I’ve had the pleasure of purchasing the book as soon as it first came out, and working with Caroline Gourlay as a fellow officer of the British Haiku Society.

    I can highly recommend this book, and it’s an extra delight that we can have a house copy to leave safely at home, while we take the eBook version on our travels.

    warm regards,

    Alan

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