Book-of-the-Week

Book of the Week: Parts of the moon

oconnorJohn O’Connor, who died unexpectedly in 2015, was one of New Zealand’s strongest poetic voices, in long verse as well as haiku. Parts of the moon (Post-pressed, 2007) is his personal selection of 20 years of haiku publication, characterized by an aptitude for compression, a trenchant humor, and a keen interest in typographical experimentation (hard to reproduce here, so you’ll need to look at the whole book).

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

Do you have a chapbook published 2010 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 THF president THF president Jim Kacian, and are used with permission.


in
the empty billboard frame
the whole mountain

parking lot —
   a security light
      flicks on

light
blue
light

This Post Has One Comment

  1. Wonderful opportunity for more people to read John O’Connor’s work, thank you!
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    It was so sad to lose him. His impact on the haiku scene, and luckily for those of us in the area of “Australasia” , as I was living in Australia through much of the 1990s, was a vital addition. We were lucky that New Zealand haiku and writers did so much at the time to benefit us all.
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    Here are a couple of my tributes to John, using material from his own work:
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    parts of the moon
    I meet another man
    who owns it
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    from the title of John’s 2007 collection Parts of the Moon
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    Alan Summers
    Publication Credit: Tribute to John O’connor 1949-2015
    Poetry Society NZ Haiku News / Haiku Happenings

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    stars fail to break
    as long as the sand
    & moonlight
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    the last two lines are from John’s poem Mother & Child (Tiny Gaps, NZPS, 2003)
    .
    Alan Summers
    Publication Credit: Tribute to John O’connor 1949-2015
    Poetry Society NZ Haiku News / Haiku Happenings
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    .
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    warmest regards,
    Alan

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