The Haiku Foundation Forums

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Haikuworld:
http://www.haikuworld.org/kukai/

ON BEHALF OF GEORGE HAWKINS

Dear Haiku Friends,

This kukai began more than 16 years ago on the old Shiki Internet Salon
Workshop, the brainchild of Clark Strand.  If you keep in touch with Clark
Strand, Yu Chang, Pardee Gunter, Billie Wilson, or Rick MacDonald, please
give them a shout out!  They were all kukai secretaries. 

They nurtured it. We're grateful. 

We had three poets offer to help secretary the kukai with George.  None are able to take it on at this time.  And we admit it takes a few hours, involves a lot of email.  If anyone thinks they could be able, please contact George.  After this annual Poets' Choice ends, he will be the sole kukai secretary.

George Hawkins, kukai secretary <shikimonthlykukai@gmail.com>



Welcome to the Tenth Annual Poets' Choice Kukai!

You've already read them during the past year. What we ask you to do this
time is to look with fresh eyes at these fine haiku to judge which of them
is superior.  Please include comments; it serves to enrich the kukai
experience for us all.

This year the kukai has the honor to award prizes for the first, second, and
third place winners in Kigo and Free Format.


First Place winners of the Annual Poets' Choice 2011 will receive:

Playing a Lullaby: the Betty Drevniok Awards. This anthology compiled and edited by Mike Montreuil, published 2012 by Éditions des petits nuagesm, Ottawa, Ontario.  Haiku Canada established a competition in memory of Betty Drevniok.  There are many well-known poets who've placed in this competition and reading through the years' results offers insight into where English-language haiku came into its own and how it continues to evolve.  A book for your library but better to keep beside your favorite reading chair.

Second Place winners will receive a Postscripts Series volume from Red Moon Press.  We awarded these last year and are pleased to be able to do so again.  This year I have a copy of "upright in the washout" by William J. Higginson, "phosphorescence" by Peggy Willis Lyles, and "all of the sky" by
Paul. O. Williams.

Third Place winners will be gifted a copy of the Mississippi Mud Daubers' chapbook, "Confluence, A Haiku Collection", published by Second Reading Publications, Alton, IL.

During the past ten years, we have awarded prizes from The Heron's Nest, Acorn Press, Bottle Rockets, textile crafts by Deb Bauer and artwork donated by Ron Moss, Ion Codrescu, and Olga Hooper.  We were fortunate to have been able to present awards over the years and encourage you to visit these web sites:

Haiku Canada:  http://www.haikucanada.org/id2.html

Acorn -- http://home.earthlink.net/~missias/Acorn.html

Bottle Rockets -- http://www.geocities.com/bottlerockets_99/index.html

Red Moon Press -- http://redmoonpress.com/index.html

The Heron's Nest -- http://www.theheronsnest.com/

Ron Moss -- http://www.ronmoss.com/

Olga Hooper -- http://www.artwanted.com/artist.cfm?ArtID=42235

Ion Codrescu -- http://nc-haiku.org/galleries/codrescu/gallery2_0.htm


------------------------
VOTING GUIDELINES
------------------------
Voting is open to all participants and readers alike.

PLEASE, SEND YOUR VOTES FOR EACH KUKAI SECTION UNDER SEPARATE COVER, USING THE APPROPRIATE SUBJECT LINE AS SHOWN BELOW.

Please refer to your selection using the number assigned to each poem.

SEND EACH SET OF VOTES TO: shikimonthlykukai@gmail.com

Do Not Send votes to any mailing list.

THE DEADLINE FOR VOTING IS NOON, EST-USA (UTC-4), MONDAY, OCTOBER 15th

Results will be posted on or before October 20st

SCORING METHOD: For each kukai section, you have 6 points to use.
You may not assign more than 3 points to any one haiku.

Here's an example:

TO: shikimonthlykukai@gmail.com
[E-MAIL SUBJECT LINE] Free format kukai votes
[E-MAIL MESSAGE EXAMPLE]
#4---3 pts.
#24--1 pt.
#33--1 pt.
#40--1 pt.

TO: shikimonthlykukai@gmauil.com
[E-MAIL SUBJECT LINE] Kigo kukai votes
[E-MAIL MESSAGE EXAMPLE]
#10--2 pts.
#18--2 pts.
#36--2 pts.

Please cast your votes on the merits of each haiku.

-------------------------------------------------
POETS' CHOICE 2012 KIGO POEMS
-------------------------------------------------
1.
lingering cold
the long ride home
from the cemetery


2.
ice cream
again, we debate
our choices


3.
year-end pledge
yesterday's tracks
fill with new snow


4.
foreclosure —
the roses blossom
after they move


5.
deep breaths —
the old eucalyptus
loosens its bark


6.
ice cream
on the patio—
strawberry moon


7.
haiku group
the discussion stops
for a robin


8.
lingering cold
my daughter's handprint
on the window


9.
between
eucalyptus leaves
koala eyes


10.
night vigil --
the garden's yellow roses
afloat in the dark


11.
first taste
of ice cream
- her eyes


12.
kite flying
the desire
to let go


13.
January 1st
this list written
in pencil


14.
falling snow
even our voices
are softer


15.
resolution
refrigerator magnets
making it stick


16.
Drought —
between the farmer's eyebrows
deepening lines


17.
lingering cold...
the sleeping cat breathes
into his tail


18.
origami rose . . .
his fingers gently
unfolding me


19.
winter dawn—
the scent of eucalyptus
filling the silence


20.
roses ...
my grandmother tells me
about her first love


21.
dry season
stones rise
in the stream bed


22.
cigarette ash
other resolutions
he didn't keep


23.
rain all night
the scent of eucalyptus
in my dreams


24.
unpacking grandma's
patchwork quilt
rose scented dusk


25.
spring thaw a river of geese


26.
drought
the redness of the bougainvillea
deepness


27.
spring fever
a murmuring brook
begins to babble


28.
war talk—
the two roosters eye
each other






And now for the free format entries:

-------------------------------------------------
POETS' CHOICE 2012 FREE FORMAT POEMS
-------------------------------------------------
1.
faded wallpaper —
those dreams
we shared


2.
day moon...
i continue last night's
conversation


3.
bath-time
father scrubs away
my sins


4.
full moon --
cumulus clouds slowly
form a wolf


5.
fishing ...
the mackerel
sky


6.
and you
so far away
day moon


7.
prairie sunrise...
wagon wheels
part the bluestem


8.
a warm bed
all that remains
of my dream


9.
cloudless night --
only the frozen moon
in the birdbath


10.
day moon the dreams that linger


11.
morning--
stretching
with the cat


12.
kids all grown
a cloud
is a cloud


13.
refugee huts
ravens rest inside
the shadows


14.
coffee house
the morning regulars
all have names


15.
morning thoughts
a patch of blue
in the puddle


16.
first bath
the mother crying
with her child


17.
tired of half truths--
the blurred edges of a
haloed moon


18.
undecided
whether to leave or linger—
day moon


19.
dark clouds
the shape of things
to come


20.
snow in the city
the homeless man
deep in a doorway


21.
morning paper
reaching into the fog
for news


22.
day moon
the tethered weight
of father's watch


23.
shooting stars...
the fizz of champagne
on my tongue


24.
windswept clouds
the water in the birdbath
changes shape


25.
dream flight...
the sudden loss
of my feathers


26.
Northern Lights the bar empties


27.
dog house --
I show the dog
what it's for


28.
fireworks
my guard dog cowers
beneath the bed


29.
all the blues
I ever knew --
mountain lake




-------------------------------------------------
Thank you to the poets who have participated in the kukai during the year.
Remember also that EACH of the above poems has already been declared a
winner; congratulations once again!

Please send your votes to shikimonthlykukai@gmail.com by noon (EST)(UTC-4)
MONDAY, October 15th.

George Hawkins, the Shiki Kukai Team


----- End forwarded message -----

The Rooster Moans Poetry Cooperative provides MFA-caliber online poetry workshops. We promote, foster and inspire the reading and writing of poetry by (a) facilitating a cross-cultural network of information-sharing on the art of poetry, (b) providing an asynchronous education setting in which our teaching artists and student artists exchange ideas and information at the convenience of their own schedules, from their own homes, reducing their impact on the environment, (c) encouraging peer-to-peer feedback amongst members, and (d) helping develop the voices of underserved poets by offering several workshops each year that are free.


Haiku and Tanka: Amazement & Intensity
http://www.poetrycoop.com/poetry-workshops/haiku-and-tanka-amazement-intensity

What makes a haiku? With ongoing debate amongst poets and scholars, especially those working in English, there's more to haiku (amazement of the ordinary) than you might imagine for such a short form poem.  In this course we'll look at the roots of haiku in Japan and its founding fathers and mothers, negotiate the simplicity of subject and language that marks haiku, and find equivalence in writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver.

Using excerpts and handouts from the highly respected classic The Haiku Handbook, we'll find Japanese haiku in translation, and follow the evolution of English language haiku through its modern journey.  For gendai-style haiku we will use text from my forthcoming book Does Fish-God Know and contemporary Western and Japanese writers.

As writers, our exercises and work will have us exploring English at its most pared down, fanning out into the two currently recognised variations on haiku: shasei ("sketching from nature" literally real experience from direct observation); gendai ("contemporary" social realism, or imagined/fantastic); as well as a third closely related sister form to haiku: senryu (the human experience relating to fallibility).

Finally, we'll turn our attention to tanka (lyric intensity), a short five line poem with over 1,300 years of history behind it, and still popular today. Tanka are well-grounded in concrete images yet infused with lyricism, with an intimacy from direct expression of emotions tempered with implication, suggestion, and nuance.

Teaching artist Alan Summers resides in Bradford on Avon and is a Japan Times award-winning writer with a Masters Degree in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University. He has studied and written haiku and other Japanese form poetry for twenty years. Alan has won awards, been published internationally and translated into 15 languages. He helped his American team win Japan Times Best Renga of 2002. He's a co-editor of five haiku anthologies: Parade of Life: Poems inspired by Japanese Prints; The Poetic Image - Haiku and Photography; Fifty-Seven Damn Good Haiku, Press Here; Four Virtual Haiku Poets; and c.2.2. Themes of Loss of Identity and/or Name. He has been General Secretary of the British Haiku Society and a Foundation Member of the Australian Haiku Society. Alan is currently editor with gendai haiku magazine Bones, and is working on The Kigo Lab, a project to use the potential of Western haiku seasons for eco-critical writing. He has a haiku pamphlet collection called The In-Between Season (2012), and a gendai haiku book called Does Fish-God Know, due out in autumn 2012. More at: http://area17.blogspot.com

My experience of haiku in the 1990s was that there was a plethora of clichés.

This came to pass (cliché) when one writer would create a fresh haiku and it would be copied sometimes a hundred fold.

Another reason for clichés occuring was our laziness in using shortcuts with keywords such

•  still
•  shadow
•  old
•  herons, and stillness of herons in particular
•  cherry blossom
•  Basho/frog pond verse allusions

The Late Peter Williams, born in Watford, England, brought out some marvellous and humourous verses gently poking fun at the innumerable number of clichéd oft-repeated themes or keywords/modifiers that abounded.

These particular haiku were published in 2001 as a mix of fond homage to the clichés back in the 1990s.

They appeared in Blithe Spirit, Journal of The British Haiku Society: But it wasn't just a British disease.

I look forward to people brave enough to recognise and post their own clichéd haiku.



The lovely Peter Williams, now deceased, published these wonderful and subtle spoofs and satirical verses, taking the gentle mickey out of fads, clichés and trends in Western haiku over the years. ;-)


too tired to get up–
my shadow goes and makes
a cup of tea


midnight pond
a frog jumps over
the moon


cherry blossom–
time to polish
my shoes


branch above the river
the heron
moves about a lot


Peter Williams
Blithe Spirit Vol. II No.3 (2001)



n.b.

I was delighted when the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival included a haiku competition run by competent knowledgeable organisers and judges including Michael Dylan Welch and Carole MacCrury, so the blossom verses appeared fresh and original and never tired.
http://www.vcbf.ca/haiku/haiku-invitational-2012

I am also the very proud owner of Robin Gill's  Cherry Blossom Epiphany – the poetry and philosophy of a flowering tree – ISBN#  0-9742618-6-6 (pbk);  13 digit    978-0-9742618-6-7   740 pp
http://paraverse.org/newbooks.htm

Highly recommended: Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, and Robin Gill's Paraverse publications.




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bones - a journal for new haiku

home page: http://www.bonesjournal.com/
submission guidelines: http://bonesjournal.com/submission.html
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bonesjournal/info
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bonesjournal

Free pre-issue PDF of new haiku on the homepage:
http://www.bonesjournal.com





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Call for submissions of short verse for C.2.2. an anthology by Yet To Be Named Free Press.

C.2.2. Editors: Brendan Slater and Alan Summers

"Between loss of identity and loss of name, it's surprising, how when you are referred to by a number, you hurt." Prisoner KM5451

Yet To Be Named Free Press is putting together an anthology entitled C.2.2. on the following themes:


• loss of identity and/or name
• mental health issues
• social issues
• physical health issues
• unsentimental love


Send us your darkest and/or most honest work to be considered for the anthology, alongside a pen name (pseudonym).

We are looking for poems between 1 to 8 lines in length. Poets may submit up to 5 haiku, tanka, short haibun, free-verse along with a pen name.*

Deadline: 30th November 2012.

We are looking for modern experimental work only.

Submissions Email:
Please submit your work to: subs@yettobenamedfreepress.org

The anthology will contain around 200 poems and will be published in early 2013.


*Only pen names will be included in the anthology but individual poems may be posted on personal blogs or other social media with the poet's real name.

FFI please go to these weblinks:

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/call-for-poetry-for-new-short-verse.html

http://www.yettobenamedfreepress.org/


--------- e n d ----------

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Now out with haiku from myself, Karen Hoy, Cor van den Heuvel, Jim Kacian, Peggy Willis Lyles, Colin Stewart Jones, Roberta Beary and many more...

The Humours of Haiku
http://www.ironpress.co.uk/books/humours.html

For credit card payments:
http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/the-humours-of-haiku/

Please do consider buying direct from Iron Press or Impress Books to support this magnificient press that has supported haiku so much over the decades.

Alan

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The Temple Bell Stops: Contemporary Poems of Grief, Loss and Change (Modern English Tanka Press 2012) Ed. Robert Epstein

I was honoured to be invited to have my haiku included in this anthology, here is one of my haiku.


the rain
almost a friend
this funeral

Alan Summers



This haiku has connected with so many people and I feel privileged that it has been published and anthologised so many times.


Other publications, and original publication include:
Azami #28 (Japan 1995); Snapshots 4 (1998); First Australian online Anthology (October 1999): Blithe Spirit article On minimalism and other things  DJ Peel Vol 9 No.3 (1999); tempslibre (2001 & 2010); Cornell University, Mann Library, U.S.A. "Daily Haiku" (Oct 2001); The Omnibus Anthology, haiku and senryu  (Hub Editions Hub Haiku series 2001); Hidden (British Haiku Society Anthology 2002); The New Haiku (Snapshot Press, 2002); First Australian Haiku Anthology (2003); Seven Magazine feature: "Three lines of simple beauty"  (2006); Blogging Along Tobacco Road: Alan Summers - Three Questions (2010); Travelogue on World Haiku Festival 2002 , Part 2  (Akita International Haiku Network 2010); THFhaiku app for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch (2011); The In-Between Season (With Words Pamphlet Series 2012)

Award credits:
Highly Commended, Haiku Collection Competition, (Snapshot Press 1998)
Joint 9th Best of Issue, Snapshot Five (1999)


From the publishers:

Young or old, healthy or sick, wealthy or poor, sooner or later all of us face losses in our lives. Whether these losses are big or small, they affect us and leave their mark. At the center of grief over the death of a loved one, job loss, financial hardship, divorce, miscarriage, and changes due to aging is a hardy seed of renewal.

As the poets in this collection attest, grief, sorrow and acceptance serve as a bridge between the past and future—a thread of love and courage that restores wholeness and continuity. Pause with the poets here in the present moment who happen upon a door that only looks closed but opens again and again to the Eternal Now—where departed loved ones and new possibilities await us.

Haiku helps to contain our grief and gently returns it to Nature, wherein true healing takes place. As such, haiku (and its related forms) can be considered the poetry of full catastrophe living, which points the way forward to the recovery of ordinary awe.


The Temple Bell Stops: Contemporary Poems of Grief, Loss and Change (Modern English Tanka Press 2012) Ed. Robert Epstein

Product Details
ISBN 9781935398301
Publisher Modern English Tanka Press
Pages 256
Binding Perfect-bound Paperback
Interior Ink Black & white
Weight 0.44 kg
Dimensions (centimetres) 15.24 wide x 22.86 tall

Price: £12.39


Weblink:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/robert-epstein-editor/the-temple-bell-stops-contemporary-poems-of-grief-loss-and-change/paperback/product-20281444.html

2012 Vancouver cherry Blossom Festival:
http://www.vcbf.ca/haiku/2012-winning-haiku

Congratulations to Rebecca Drouilhet, Chen-ou Liu, Marion Clarke, Philip Allen, Marilyn Appl Walker, and to many others who visit the Haiku Foundation that gained commendations in this competition.

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In Bed With Kerouac

Authored by Brendan Slater
Introduction by Michael McClintock

Modern haiku, tanka, haibun and haiga for the 21st century.


Publication Date: Aug 20 2012

ISBN/EAN13:  1478344660 / 9781478344667
Page Count: 82
Binding Type: US Trade Paper
Trim Size: 5" x 8"
Language: English
Related Categories:  Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

http://www.yettobenamedfreepress.org/


From the most romantic of poems to tanka where you need a Sharps box; to haiku that touch you deeply in the most intimate moments of immediacy.  In Bed With Kerouac is modern haiku, tanka, haibun and tanka prose, and other verse for the realities and edgy romances of this fledgling don't know where to go yet 21st Century.

Alan Summers, With Words

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Four Virtual Haiku Poets



Yet To Be Named Free Press: www.yettobenamedfreepress.org

Authored by Scott Terrill, Brendan Slater, Colin Stewart Jones, Michael Goglia

Edited by Alan Summers, Brendan Slater

Four Virtual Haiku Poets contains modern haiku tackling themes such as loss, aspiration, drugs, sexual abuse, fugitiveness, sex, poverty and the inner conflicts of humanity.


Four Virtual Haiku Poets
Yet To Be Named Free Press
Publication Date: Aug 14 2012
ISBN/EAN13: 1478307544 / 9781478307549

The book will shortly be available at Amazon.


Excerpt:

Cage Fighting

An Introduction to Four Virtual Haiku Poets by Alan Summers

"Gritty, experimental, human and readable for a mainstream audience."
Brendan Slater

The poem, in all its forms, perhaps, to paraphrase Ian Sansom - frequent contributor and critic for The Guardian and the London Review of Books - remains a most elusive thing.  One minute you think you have it pinned down, and the next it's moved, both geographically, and in its mode of transport.  If you thought you knew everything about haiku poetry, here's an exploration into other styles and approaches.

What of short verse, and in particular, haiku and other aspects of haikai literature in the fledgling 21st century?

This book covers three geographic locations, that of Britain, America and Australia, and poetry that's an excitement of language yet still contained in tight cages called haiku.  That's what we are invited here to see, "the where and how of poets" contained in tight enclosures. I want the reader in me to have these four poets excite me in their approach to poetry, to language, to words, and to their audience, while all the while using the constrained framework of haiku.

These poems offer up possibilities for the many aspects of existence that we embrace or fail to embrace, or should not embrace.  These may be poems living on, or off the edge, perhaps always living too dangerously close to the flame, but we need only read them, and back off, and then become relieved we are not in their universe of existence, and then revisit them with the shock of strong black coffee, or a splash of cold water.

How do we enter into conversation with these poets, or is a poem an argument? What are the basic intentions on offer that are indispensable to compose these poems?

--END OF EXCERPT--

We will leave that up to its readers, and how they engage with the original and different format of the book as a whole.

Alan Summers, Co-Editor
Four Virtual Haiku Poets

Edit Reason: to include book cover

Roadrunner ran this marvellous quote:

"I live in a culture that prides itself on how efficiently it kills people. Poetry is despised. It is frowned on like a disease. It's easy to see why. Militancy involves rigor. Narrowness. Rigidity. Poetry is the opposite of that. It is a form of meandering. Of submergence and aberration. It feeds on anomaly. So that the forms it assumes vary wildly. So much so that the whole question of form becomes a problem bordering on hallucination. And is, ultimately, seditious. It usurps certainty. So that killing people with drones is a patent impossibility."

    John Olson / "Questions of Form"

To which I commented:

I partly agree with the lifted comment, except drones will continue to be used, but will never differentiate between civilians and miltiary targets, either buildings or individuals. Children continue to be killed by drones but denied blah de blah de blah.

A poet would make a better killer, as s/he would only pick out the worst elements, lines, delete redundent or dangerous adverbs, adjects, and select only the right nouns of a poem, while leaving the civilians alone who make the poetry come alive.

John Olson also said/start with:
"Form is a pharmacy of theory. Nothing is tangible. Meaning that void itself has palpable form. Or that nothing at all has palpable form. And really, what difference does it make?

The marriage of form and content is a chimera. Horses glow in the jaw and occur as tangible living entities in the imagination of the poet whose brain is a boiling cauldron of form seeking form."

Overlooking the typo of haikus [sic] he couldn't better describe why haiku (plural/genre) can never be pinned down, even by a heat-seeking missile, or smartbomb, because the form isn't the form.

I shall be quoting from Mr Olson for my courses I'm leading where students become perplexed, as to where the form in haiku went, while they weren't looking.

Alan, With Words

We had poets banned from the White House by the former First Lady, wife to George Bush Jnr, former President.  How are/were poets a threat to the invasion of Iraq exactly?

Blogs:
http://dialogic.blogspot.co.uk/2004/03/white-house-has-disinvited-poets-by.html
http://ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=376

It never ceases to amaze me about the Janus effect on poetry.  One outlook is poets and poetry are basically irrelevant as they don't bring in cash in the buckets, and so not to be taken seriously, the other outlook is they are a threat to war peace?

And all the while we engage with our own disciplines and demons, both personal and with the craft of poetry.

What is form, and what is the form of haiku?

We've had form breakers from Basho through to Ozaki and Santoka and more recent, on the Japanese side, and we've both intentional and unintentional form breakers on the non-Japanese side.

But what is form?  Is it merely a template, the same Barbara Cartland the pink romance novelist had, where she could churn out thousands of novels all pretty much identical, and all sold well?

Who are the real form-breakers, and who are the real pioneers who assume the form?

As this is haiku we should really ask for answers on the back of a postcard, or more in keeping, answers on the back of a postage stamp.  Of course we already have a few million postage stamps with waka on the back, perhaps there's an answer there?

Perhaps there's no answer, only the sound of one hand slapping the pine tree.

Alan

The In-Between Season is a new pamphlet featuring a few of my haiku.  It will be launched at An Evening of Haiku, and thereafter be available at readings, talks, and workshops.

Alan Summers
http://area17.blogspot.com

New exhibition opens up at Quest Gallery where I've been holding a five week course in haiku:
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/through-glass-darkly-haiku-at-quest.html

We are having our fourth session next Wednesday, as well as An Evening of Haiku with Tom Lowenstein and myself. 

Alan

Haiku at the Royal Crescent Hotel
with guest speakers

celebrated author and poet
Tom Lowenstein

Japan Times award winning writer
Alan Summers

8 pm Wednesday 27 June
Sheridan Room, Royal Crescent
Bath

For information and to book
contact Sarah Jenkins
Projects Coordinator at Quest Gallery
sarah@questgallery.co.uk
01225 444142

Quest Gallery:
http://www.questgallery.co.uk/

Royal Crescent Hotel:
http://www.royalcrescent.co.uk/

History:
http://www.royalcrescent.co.uk/default3332.html?Page=history

Estate and Gardens:
http://www.royalcrescent.co.uk/default7cfd.html?Page=gardens

The Royal Crescent in Bath:
http://www.bath-heritage.co.uk/royal_crescent.html

Although this is more of an event for people new to poetry, and renga in particular, we'll welcome renga/renku practitioners as well. :-)

In fact a few people familiar with renga are coming along.

Renga Days page and information:
http://www.facebook.com/events/202397609875688/

all my best,

Alan

p.s.

I'm running quite a few haikai literature related courses and events in the South West of England U.K., plus a new workshop where knowledge of haibun can be utilised too.

FFI: alan@withwords.org.uk

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/quest-contemporary-art-gallery-haiku.html

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/renga-days-with-alan-summers-and-jann.html

From Stephen Gill:

SUNDAY, MARCH 11, 16:30 (G.M.T.), repeated SATURDAY, MARCH 17, 23:30 (G.M.T.)
B.B.C. RADIO 4, `THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DISASTER ZONE'

Listen live here:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/bbc_radio_fourfm
or listen during the week at your own convenient time on the i-player here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/radio.

Go to the A-Z strip and see if the programme is there under N for `Narrow' (or type
`Narrow Road' in the search box at top right). The 28-minute feature should be
available on that site for listening for at least one week; maybe more.

The programme is about a recent visit to Tochigi, Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures
in the north of Japan, tracing part of haiku poet Basho's Oku no Hosomichi route as
much as possible, but presenting a contemporary, hopefully somewhat poetic, account
of the present situation there.

The BBC describe the programme thus... http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01d26qk .

If you wish to donate money to a group that will use it well, might I suggest It's
Not Just Mud: http://itsnotjustmud.com/cant-volunteer-donate/ 
with whom Julian and I squeezed in a day of work.

You can see some photos of the trip on my Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.244391975643866.58666.100002191964463&type=3
.

All seasoned haiku writers are welcome too, so if you reside in the South of England, or only slightly further afield, come along.

FFI my Area 17 blog weblink:
http://area17.blogspot.com/2012/02/purely-haiku-residential-course-at.html

regards,

Alan

If you are getting eBook readers for Christmas, check out 140 and Counting.

I have a couple of tanka in this excellent ebook which also includes haiku, senryu and other Twitter published literature.


140 and Counting
http://www.upperrubberboot.com/140-and-counting/

ISBN 978-1-937794-05-7 (epub) available for iPad, Nook, etc. from Goodreads. See website above for details.

Kindle versions:

US:
http://www.amazon.com/140-And-Counting-ebook/dp/B006KLYF8G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324468534&sr=8-1

UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/140-And-Counting-ebook/dp/B006KLYF8G/ref=sr_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324467915&sr=1-15

Plucky underdog online journal Seven by Twenty is an online magazine using Twitter as its publishing platform, for readers at home and on mobile devices, which started publishing weekdaily in July 2009. Seven by Twenty specializes in literary and speculative writing that fits in a tweet – they mostly publish haiku and related forms (like scifaiku and senryu), and cinquains and American sentences, and very, very, very short stories.

140 And Counting is a collection of the best twitter literature from the first two years of the journal's history, on relationships, nature, work, animals, seasons, science fiction and fantasy, and mortality: 141 clever little allotments of literature by 119 authors in 1 exquisite ebook!

Seven by Twenty is an online magazine using Twitter as its publishing platform. Here is a collection of the best twitter literature from the first two years of the journal's history, on relationships, nature and the night, work, animals, seasons, science fiction and fantasy, and mortality, by 119 authors from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Qatar, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Other good writers include: Jim Kacian; Alison Williams; John Stevenson; Carol Raisfeld; Charles Trumbull; Deborah P. Kolodji; Helen Buckingham; Joanne Merriam; Liam Wilkinson; Miriam Sagan; Peter Newton; Richard Stevenson and many more!

all my best,

Alan