Book of the Week: On a Barn Ridgetile: A Collection of Haiku by Colin Blundell

On Haikupedia, we learn that Colin is a retired teacher who edited Blithe Spirit, the journal of The British Haiku Society for 14 years. He has supported many beginner haiku poets and published members’ work in handmade paperbacks under his Hub Editions imprint.

In the introduction to On a Barn Ridgetile Colin writes, “the way of haiku is not the habitual way; we have to step out of habit, the habit of thinking, the habit of imagining we can somehow tease out ‘meaning’—step right out of the habit of thinking that ‘meaning’ is what we’re about at all.”

Colin’s website, Another Hundred Haiku, contains his poetry, artwork and haiku philosophy. Books by Colin in the THF Digital Library include: Afternoon Stillness, Wet Nude Statues, Something Beyond the Stars, My Dog Reads Haiku, Eating Buttered Toast, The Desert Highway, Beguilement, Back in the Country, Owl and Room One.

the one man band
asks if anybody else
might fancy a go

admiring each other:
the girl on the Underground
and her reflection

across grey cloud
a lone bat
in the dusk

where wars are started:
the playing fields in Eton
—deserted goal-mouths

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

Do you have a chapbook published in 2015 or earlier that 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 THF Digital Librarian Dan Campbell and are used with permission.