Book of the Week – The Comfort of Crows by Hifsa Ashraf and Alan Summers
“The Comfort of Crows arrives like a perfect thirty days of November. I find this spare and wind-driven set of poems, in truth, a source of great comfort.” — John Stevenson, Managing Editor, The Heron’s Nest
“The extraordinary beauty of Hifsa and Alan’s collaborative poetry captures a mystical darkness, where mosaic rain is gently woven into velvet raven shadows. Their poetic path is elegantly crafted and brings together the classic haiku tradition with contemporary aesthetics.” — Anna Maris, Member of the Swedish Haiku Society
“Crows are intelligent, wild birds who will form strong relationships with humans. I admire everything about them. The poems are thought-provoking and elegant, and embrace the different facets of life: illness, loss, death, and the courage and strength to carry on.” — Kris Tsujikawa, Crow Journalist
The Comfort of Crows was first published in 2019 by Velvet Dusk Publishing.
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Below are a few selected poems from the book:
mosaic rain:
the cul de sac
of shadow
(after Sylvia Plath)
—
blackendraining
—
all fingers and thumbs
the river bends & turns us
into other songs
—
raven shadow all I have to surrender
—
an owl’s moon
watering the black
between stars
—
falling leaves my way out of disillusionment
You can read the entire book in the THF Digital Library. Please share your favorite poem from the book with us.
Do you have a full or chapbook length book published in 2019 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 the THF Digital Librarian Kenneth Pearson and are used with permission.
Comments (4)
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Both Hifsa and myself worked on this for around 18 months, creating earlier collections, versions, artwork etc… until it evolved into this
Even Chrissi Villa of Velvet Dusk Publishing could not tell whose haiku was whose! :-)
Alan
It was a great honour for me to start my haiku journey by writing a collaborative book with Alan Summers. Interestingly, the idea of writing this book came from the book cover that I had designed for a haiga. It took us more than a year to finally share the final version of this book. We may work on another version of this book based on cultural symbolism. :) Thanks for featuring it.
Wow!! Beautiful collaboration!! Thank you Alan and Hilfsa for sharing your work with the world, and thank you, John, for featuring it :)
Michelle Beyers
Thanks Michelle!
Kenneth Pearson very kindly, as a surprise, featured myself and Hifsa on this page feature.
Chrissi Villa was behind us getting The Comfort of Crows published as a chapbook.
The collection came about through Hifsa’s amazing artworks around the crow, and my haiku:
dark news
the comfort
of crows
Alan Summers
First publication Credit: tinywords 15.1 (March 2015)
https://tinywords.com/2015/03/31/18021/