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Personification: A Taboo In English Language Haiku?
by Robert D. Wilson
http://simplyhaiku.theartofhaiku.com/autumn2010/personification.htm

Continued...



In essence, the two terms, personification.and anthropology are one and the same and often used interchangeably. Interestingly, the word anthropomorphism comes from the Greek, meaning "human form," and it was the ancient Greeks who first made the use of anthropomorphism (personification) in literation and oration a social taboo. The philosopher Xenophanes objected to Homer's poetry because it treated Zeus and the other gods as if they were people. Xenophanes thought it arrogant and irreverent to think that the gods should look like us? If horses could draw pictures, he suggested mockingly, they would no doubt make their gods look like horses.

Much of Occidental philosophy is derived from Greco-Roman influences: politics, poetry, literature, art, architecture, and Judeo-Christian theology. Few realize that Judeo-Christian beliefs were influenced also by oral transmissions from traders and travelers, let alone the Coptic beliefs from Egypt and the metaphysical Gnosticism of Irael's Essenes.

I am reminded of the thinking of highly influential Occidental psychologists and behaviorists like B.F. Skinner who thought of animals as lower forms of life without personality or reason. This kind of thinking has also influenced Occidental theology (re: The Scopes Monkey Trial).

The dichotomy of the following statement by Blyth regarding the British poet, William Wordsworth, is just that, a dichotomy. He says Wordsworth believed the main purpose of a man's ability to think was to distinguish between what is and isn't alive (as if the West and the East shared the same perceptions regarding poetry).

Wrote Blyth, "Haiku is at its best when Wordsworthian, that is, Wordsworth at his most simple, a sort of thought in sense"

Personification: A Taboo In English Language Haiku?
by Robert D. Wilson
http://simplyhaiku.theartofhaiku.com/autumn2010/personification.htm

Continued...



Blyth, and other Western haiku scholars in the 1950's and a few decades before, wrote insightful informative books about haiku but at the same time made some mistakes in their assessments that linger today that have become doctrine to some highly visible Occidental poets who publish journals, e-zines, author books of poetry, and hold leadership posts in well  publicized poetry societies. They do not speak for or represent the majority of Western poets (public and private schools have the most influence), but their voices are authoritative.

Unfortunately, many with authoritative voices have different interpretations regarding the English expression of Japanese short form poetry. These disagreements weaken the credibility of English language Japanese poetic expression.

Thus, the basis for this paper: the use of anthropomorphism in Japanese haiku and related genres and whether or not they can be a part of Occidental English language haiku.

David Landis Barnhill, in the chapter he contributed to the book Matsuo Basho's Creative  Spaces, entitled The Creative in Basho's  View of Nature and Art (©2006, Palgrave Macmillan), tells us that:

"The role of Shinto and folk religion in Basho's religious-philosophical mindset is poorly understood by many. Basho was influenced by Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Shinto, and folk religion (animism). We should not impose our western tendency to metaphysical specificity or logical consistency on the complexity of Basho's experience or the multi-faceted expressiveness of his language."

Merrian Webster's dictionary defines personification as:

The "attribution of personal qualities; especially: representation of a thing or abstraction as a person or by the human form."

Personify: "To conceive of or represent as a person or as having human qualities or powers."

Anthropomorphism:  "An interpretation of what is not human or personal in terms of human or personal characteristics."

Personification: A Taboo In English Language Haiku?
by Robert D. Wilson
http://simplyhaiku.theartofhaiku.com/autumn2010/personification.htm

Continued...



Haiku is a minimalist poem aiming at the raw, simple truth as interpreted by the reader via his own frame of reference and cultural memory. Minimalism is a catalyst necessitating that every word, every pause, and the unspoken are important to a haiku's meaning. The poet must say in a few words what an Occidental poet says in several words, hinting, not telling all; drawing the reader into a haiku's essence; and not necessarily a photograph of the moment, since not all haiku are a poet's now.

Too many today say haiku is an "aha" moment, a metaphysical now, an illumination, based upon personal experience that can't allude to the past tense nor be fictional even if used as a parabolic lesson, a merging of nature and the poet, a common belief held by Imagist poets including Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and e. e. cummings.

Writes Michael Dylan Welch, in his online Captain Haiku column:

"It's a poem  (haiku) recording a moment of heightened awareness of nature or human nature. It should come across like a moment of realization, producing an 'aha!' moment in the reader in the same way that it gave you that moment of realization when you, as the writer, experience the haiku moment in the first place."

Professor Haruo Shirane, one of the world's leading authorities on haiku disagrees with Captain Haiku's assessment:

"One of the widespread beliefs in North America is that haiku should be based upon one's own direct experience, that it must derive from one's own observations, particularly of nature. But it is important to remember that this is basically a modern view of haiku, the result, in part, of nineteenth century European realism, which had an impact on modern Japanese haiku and then was re-imported back to the West as something very Japanese. Basho, who wrote in the seventeenth century, would have not made such a distinction between direct personal experience and the imaginary, nor would he have placed higher value on fact over fiction."

Beyond the Haiku Moment,
Modern Haiku, XXXI:1, Winter Spring 2000, 48.

The writer of the introduction in the Peter Pauper Press book, Japanese Haiku, notes:

" . . . the haiku is not expected to always be a complete or even clear statement. The reader is supposed to add to the words his own associations and imagery, and thus become a creator of his own pleasure in the poem."

This is the beauty of haiku. It is the reader who completes the poem. No one can interpret a haiku for you as each reader has his or her own way of understanding and viewing life. Here is where the "Zen" some adhere to haiku comes in.

Taught D.T. Suzuki in The Manual of Zen Buddhism, excerpted from the 2nd edition of The Complete Works of D.T. Suzuki (available online at:

http://www.terebess.hu/english/suzuki.html:

"By 'what is seen of the Mind-only' is meant this visible world including that which is generally known as mind. Our ordinary experience takes this world for something that has its 'self-nature', i.e. existing by itself. But a higher intuition tells us that this is not so, that it is an illusion, and that what really exists is Mind, which being absolute knows no second. All that we see and hear and think of as objects of the vijnanas are what rise and disappear in and of the Mind-only."

THE IS AND ISN'T: myths, truth, and the in between . . .

Wrote Blyth:

" . . . even where an English haiku lacks a season word, when they are too long, or have too many adjectives, or tend to morality or emotionality or philosophy, they have something in common with the Japanese haiku. This common element is sense in thought, thought in sense, the thought that is not mere thought, but the thought subsumed in sensation; the sensation is not simply sensation, but the sensation involved in real thinking, that is poetical thinking. When they are divided or divisible, when the word and the object, the man and the thing are separated are in any way separated or separable, no poetry, and especially that of haiku in any language, is possible."

Looks like Frost had been studying Blyth.

In Blyth's statement, he expounds a belief that many in the West blindly believed when his writings were published and are still believed today, that English haiku doesn't necessarily need a season word or have to conform to the metric structure indigenous to the genre, thus weaving into Western poetic thought the concept that English and Japanese haiku don't have to follow the same rules but follow a Zen-like free fall pattern of thought, which was culturally hip though not thoroughly comprehended in the circles Kerouac, Ginsberg, Snyder, Corso (the Beat Generation), Imagist poets, and those who were part of that generational - cultural mindset . . . a mindset that is and isn't, each poet painting illusions on paper that differing from one another and only loosely complimenting the other, given the complexity of human thought, cultural memory, lifestyle, education, and physical chemistry, that, at times, strays due to mental illness, alcoholism, and illegal drug use.

They were and are, dead or alive, sailors sailing through what each perceives or has perceived, as Heaven's River (The Milky Way), laughing, smiling, sharing this and that, each one a rule breaker, a free spirit, and oddly, with many skeletons in their closets, each bone a scale from a dragon's tail, taunting them with what was, could be . . . and too few who commit or have committed themselves seriously to Japanese short form poetry which requires study, and a non-psychedelic understanding of Asian aesthetics (to understand the essence of the form) that will never become the flavor of the moment.

Wrote Jack Kerouac, who some claim fathered the Hippie Generation via the publishing of his book On The Road, probably under the influence of alcohol, a tormented drunk, who sought release from almost all forms of responsibility through drug use, alcoholic consumption, wandering through the halls of this world experimenting with this and that without a definite except when he was dying from alcoholism and was, at the time, a strict political conservative:

"The American Haiku is not exactly the Japanese Haiku. The Japanese Haiku is strictly disciplined to seventeen syllables but since the language structure is different I don't think American Haikus (short three-line poems intended to be completely packed with Void of Whole) should worry about syllables because American speech is something again... bursting to pop. Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi's Pastorella."

Kerouac is talking here from his hat and according to the biographies written about his life, hadn't taken the time to study haiku in any depth except for his brief tutelage under the poet Gary Snyder (a genuine scholar and Buddhist), and via the reading of Blyth's books on haiku, and Harold Henderson's book An Introduction to Haiku while visiting Snyder in his home upon his return from Buddhist monastic studies in Japan. Keruoac was a transient, unwilling to stay anywhere for too long.

One doesn't become overnight, or in a few short, unstable years, an expert on haiku, especially when it comes to comparing the linguistically and metric schemata of a poetic genre as given to the world originally by the Japanese with the intricacies of English language poetics and how the American version can differ from the Japanese conceptualization, then telling us the American conceptualization is hip and ready to "pop."

States Susumu Takiguchi:

"Initial exploration of HAIKU by non-Japanese was like gunmo taizo wo naderu (a lot of blind men feeling a great elephant) whereby one says that the elephant is a tree trunk and another says that it is a giant fan, and so on. The loud voices saying that HAIKU was Zen, or HAIKU was not poetry, or HAIKU was Here and Now, or HAIKU was the product of the HAIKU moment, or HAIKU was nature poetry, or HAIKU was a verse in present tense, or HAIKU was devoid of ego, or HAIKU was an extremely serious and sacred business, or HAIKU reached some mysterious and profound truths captured in a few words, or HAIKU was not anthropomorphism, and all other hundreds of things rang out across the world and muffled any other voices saying things to the contrary." (World Haiku Review, 2008)

No one is one. No one is apart. All live in the collective mindset of what was, is, and will be, as interpreted individually by human beings, some who think they are superior to Blyth's "objects" and some, those with animistic views, who do not feel superior to what is and isn't around them, and are not threatened by what they don't understand like some do who belong to specific spiritual sects, scientific ideologies, and educational institution: the same mindset that laughed at the idea that the world was round.

Blyth was a serious scholar who gave much to the understanding of haiku, and without him, haiku may not have become as popular as it has become in the West. He had great insight when it came to haiku but was limited to the knowledge accessible during his day.

I wonder what people will think of the writings of modern scholars like Makoto Ueda, Donald Keene, and Steve D. Carter fifty years from now, when even more is known, and more manuscripts are translated and made available to Western scholars including insight into the secret coding integrated into many Japan poems centuries ago (and today?) by competitive poetic societies in the Japanese Imperial Court when haiku made its debut, causing a stir, as it became the poetic voice of the people instead of a pastime limited to society's elite.

Personification: A Taboo In English Language Haiku?
by Robert D. Wilson
http://simplyhaiku.theartofhaiku.com/autumn2010/personification.htm

Continued...



Counters Professor Haruo Shirane, Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature at Columbia University, from an interview entitled "The Shirane Tapes" (Blithe Spirit, Vol 11:4, December 2001):

"I'm not saying that the Zen inspired model is not haiku, because that would be a misunderstanding. It's fine, but it's not necessarily the essence . . . I guess my own motive was that I saw these American scholars looking at Japanese culture that way. That was a serious misunderstanding. This was something that had been imported and was then being re-imposed on Japan. To me, that was unbearable."

Dated and poorly researched articles and statements regarding English Haiku are still being used, especially in regards to the use or non-use of personification and anthropomorphism in English language haiku, which for some is a subject area necessitating serious perusal.

George Frost, the author of Teaching Through Poetry: Writing and the Drafting Process, published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1988, in Haiku Lesson #7, The Knowledge of English Haiku, on his website "In The Moonlight A  Worm," writes:

"We try to avoid projecting human viewpoints into natural things. So as not to humanise (and so patronize) the things of Nature, the English haiku poet is wary of personification and anthropomorphism, even though their use is tolerated in ancient and even modern Japanese poetry."

Tolerated? Based on what information and resources? Animism is deeply ingrained in the cultural memory of the Japanese. We versus a weak reluctant they?

Continues, Frost,

"Haiku is the poetry of meaningful touch, taste, sound, sight, and smell; it is humanized nature, naturalized humanity, and as such may be called poetry in its essence . . . when the word and the object are divided or divisible, when the man and the thing are in any way separated or separable, no poetry, and especially that of haiku in any language, is possible."

The Haiku Society of America (HSA) defines haiku as a:

"short poem that uses imaginistic language to convey the essence of nature or the season intuitively linked to the human condition."

In the notes below HSA's definition, the assertion is made:

"Most haiku have no titles, and metaphors and similes are commonly avoided. Haiku do sometimes have brief prefatory notes, usually specifying the setting or similar facts; metaphors and similes in the simple sense of these terms do sometimes occur, but not frequently. A discussion of what might be called "deep metaphor" or symbolism in haiku is beyond the range of a definition."

This, of course, would include the usage of personalization when saying haiku is an imaginistic short poem "intuitively linked to the human condition."

Wrote poet, Anita Virgil, in an unpublished manuscript, who was a member of the HSA's original definitions committee, about the HSA's official definition of haiku:

"Although haiku often includes images of nature, it strives to convey the significance of the poet's experience, his thoughts and feelings, in accordance with the object or event . . ."

"The deep sense of the transient nature of all existence present in haiku is," according to Virgil, "rooted in its close associations with the religion of Buddhism and the Japanese concept [abstract aesthetic} of Yugen . . ."  [depth and mystery]

Stated Lorraine Ellis Harr, in one version of her famous Guidelines for Dragonfly: East/West Haiku Quarterly (Harr was the editor of Dragonfly from 1972 to 1984):

"Haiku isn't figurative language. It typically avoids figurative devices like similes, metaphors, and personification. These artificial devices attempt to humanize life. Try instead to naturalize man. Symbols, however, do exist in nature. Cherry blossoms, with their multitude of fragile petals lasting only three days, represent of themselves the brevity and beauty of life. Let an object speak for itself instead of superimposing a value on it."

Will each reader of a haiku making use of Symbolism using anthropomorphic terminology see it as such, since each reader's job is to interpret a haiku according to his or her cultural memory and life conceptualization?

Is Harr privy to the beliefs and inner workings of the haiku poet's mind during its composition, and positive without doubt that poet is using symbolism and isn't an animist or a person with a metaphysical visage who views the world contrary to accepted Western norms?

Due to its metamorphic, transient nature . . . one thing becomes another, which in turn forms another and another, always changing, although, as recent research has proven, haiku equally enjoys a close association with the animism passed down through the centuries by Japan's original indigenous inhabitants, the Ainu, the anthropomorphic beliefs of the Shinto religion, Daoism, and the philosophy of Confucianism.

Not buying into this kind of reasoning, Bruce Moss wrote in his book Haiku Moment, An Anthology of Contemporary North American Haiku (Boston: Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc., 1993), xii:

"The movement from a special attention toward non-human nature to some kind of union with that nature is a central facet of Japanese culture and is derived from Taoism, Buddhism, and Shintoism. This movement from attention to union at the heart of the haiku tradition is for the most part alien to Western culture."

"This point was recently addressed," wrote Moss in his book, "by Sono Uchida, President of the Haiku International Association."

"Haiku has also developed as a poem which expresses deep feelings for nature, including human beings. This follows the traditional Japanese idea that man is part of the natural world, and should live in harmony with it. This differs considerably from the Western way of thinking, in which man is regarded as being independent of, and perhaps superior to, the rest of nature."

The use of anthropomorphism (personification) in English language haiku, some claim, is to describe something human and should not be taken literally. A question to consider:

Who in the West came to this conclusion; and from what culture, since most nations in the West are multi-cultural?

Personification: A Taboo In English Language Haiku?
by Robert D. Wilson
http://simplyhaiku.theartofhaiku.com/autumn2010/personification.htm

Continued...

Occidental poets, especially those in the United States, were early on influenced by R.H. Blyth, Harold Henderson, Kenneth Yasuda, Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, and other contemporary 20th century poets. The majority of these poets believed haiku to be the bi-product of Zen Buddhism, with the exception of Harold Henderson, who focused on the suggestive clarity of well composed haiku, especially when it came to the use of a cutting word, which does two things: encourages ma (what publisher, educator, and poet, Denis Garrison calls "dreaming room") and divides the haiku in half allowing the reader to put together two contrasting sections of a haiku (opposites) to form a whole that creates deeper meaning that is symbiotic in meaning.

The understanding of haiku and like genres were primarily limited at this juncture in time to the translations and research in English penned in a series of books by a handful of Occidental scholars that naively developed rules that conformed to the studied illusions of these authors coupled with their own individual illusions of viewing life, people, and poetic meter.

Available were only a few anthologies of Japanese haiku translated into the English language, one set published by Peter Pauper Press in New York in 1955. There were other resources, but not enough written in English to give educators and readers as thorough a knowledge of haiku as we have available today.

Few original manuscripts written by Basho, Issa, Chiyo-ni, Buson, and other poets and teachers of their era in a form of Japanese that is different than the Japanese language as it is spoken and understood today had been translated into English or made available for translation, as many of these manuscripts were the property of private families who were unwilling to share with foreigners what their heirs had bequeathed them or with rival poetic schools.

Let's examine some of the teachings regarding the writing and definition of haiku by Occidental educators and poets during the first half of the 20th century when haiku began to be noticed in any real depth. Some are valid and some are not.

Examples:

Kenneth Yasuda said haiku

"eschews metaphor, simile, or personification."

Wrote R.H. Blyth in A History of Haiku, Chapter One:

"Haiku being poetry of sensation, ideally speaking, what happens is this. We [Western writers of English language haiku] receive, or create, a sensation, a mere sensation, almost entirely physical and mechanical. It then becomes humanized, and at that stage is called Zen. To these are added emotions, and then thoughts, and more emotions and more thoughts, so that we get dai-ni-nen. Haiku is dai-ichi nen but is not mere description, just photography, and to divide the haiku in half allowing the reader to put together two contrasting sections of a haiku (opposites) in order to form an entity of it's own."

Wrote James W. Hackett, a close friend of Blyth, and one of the founders of the haiku tradition in English, in his Introduction to That Art Thou: A Spiritual Way of Haiku, a manuscript in progress as of March 2005:

"As applied to haiku poetry, 'That Art Thou' (or 'spiritual interpretation') refers to a sense of identity intuited between poet and subject. Basho was influenced by this ancient spiritual principle and urged its use in creating haiku poetry. Zen interpenetration is, in a very real sense, the consummation of the haiku experience . . ."

Personification: A Taboo In English Language Haiku?
by Robert D. Wilson
http://simplyhaiku.theartofhaiku.com/autumn2010/personification.htm

The human spirit is not dead. It lives on in secret . . . It has come to believe that compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

Albert Einstein

Heike crabs -
long ago they moon-gazed here
on boats

Koybayashi Issa
Translated by David D. Lanoue

Who is it in Japan that first said man is superior to animals? Who's the haiku poet who first shed his cultural memory, what his ancestors taught his family throughout time, and let the rice field snails eat what the tree spirits planted in his reflection?

Was it the Chinese who colonized and introduced civilization to the indigenous people inhabiting the archipelago today called Japan, who convinced those who later became poets to write down for posterity that what had been taught to them via Animism and later in the Shinto doctrine, wrong in seeing life in both the animate and inanimate, proclaiming themselves god-like and superior to everything that didn't mirror the illusions they painted of themselves?

Was it Anglo-English speaking poets from across the ocean who introduced laws regarding what in Japanese haiku should be followed with their conceptualization of haiku and what had to be jettisoned, telling Westerners that Japanese cultural aesthetics and their own were in many ways incompatible, necessitating changes that have changed what we read, understand, and write regarding English haiku to the point where it is beginning to look like a different genre than what was first introduced to Westerners when Japan opened up its shores to foreigners in 1858?

Anthropormophism - Some Thoughts by Jane Reichhold

    Jane Reichhold's answers to my question:

    Rosa Clement:Many times I have heard from reviewers and publishers that anthropomorphism and personification are not good in haiku. However, Basho, Issa, Buson and others wrote haiku using anthropomorphism...

    Jane Reichhold:

    Dear Rosa,

    You have put your finger on a very sore spot in haiku-writing rules. And you are right to question the rule concerning personification.

    FOR THE USE OF PERSONIFICATION:

    1. The personification of inanimate things is a basic part of our language. We so easily speak of the head, feet or legs of the beds, tables and chairs; rivers run, and we even allow that 'time flies.' Thus, it becomes very hard to determine when the author has broken the rule by personifying something which shouldn't be.

    2. Personification of things does make a positive connection the author and the thing which seems to be an actual haiku technique.

    3. The old masters occasionally did it.

    4. Modern authors do it.

    5. It often adds a lyrical or deeper aspect to a poem.

    6. Haiku written due to the influence of tanka (or even cut off of and out of a tanka) - especially those written by the Japanese - may have personification in them because it is an acceptable technique of tanka and many of the old masters based their haiku on tanka examples.

    AGAINST THE USE OF PERSONIFICATION:

    1. English language haiku rules have been handed down to use requiring that we avoid personification. This could have come about from the idea that haiku were not poetry and should not use poetical techniques (such as metaphor and simile). When the pioneers were introducing haiku to English writers they were reacting against the prevailing poetry fashions and wished to present haiku as something very new and different - non-poetry poetry. Therefore, Spiess and others made rules hoping that if they were followed our haiku would be more like the Japanese examples and much less like the poetry being written in English at the current time. Not using personification does separate the haiku from lyrical poetry - which many people see as a definite plus.

    2. Part of the charm of haiku is the pure is-ness of things. In order to create a personification, the intellect and imagination must be engaged by both the author and the reader. This moves the haiku off the basic element of the simplicity and clarity of is-ness. In figuring out the personification one must use fantasy - a facility one usually tries to avoid using in haiku. The cool, calm, rational aspect of haiku is then lost.

    3. Haiku seek to flow gently in the calm creek of reality. The jerk of the jolt of creativity can, for some people, yank them out of the contemplative mode.

    4. Creating a personification can be seen as 'showing off' - something egoless authors never do.

    As I see it, when we question these English rules which someone made up, we open up incredible possibilities for our haiku. It is very well known that non-Japanese haiku ARE different from those written in Japanese, and given our questioning natures, our inventiveness, our urge to make everything anew, it is practically a given that in our hands haiku will end up very different from the ones written in Japan in either the 1600s or yesterday. Again, I think each writer has to decide which of the many rules to follow or not. And our degree of tolerance for understanding and accepting when another author has different rules is one of the lessons we need to practice as our world grows smaller.

    Blessed be!

    Jane

http://www.sumauma.net/haicai/haiku-anthro.html

Perhaps Martin Berner may be able to help your German friend.


German Haiku Society

Member of "Federation of International Poetry Associations"
- associated member of UNESCO
Member of "Haiku International Association" Tokio
Member of  Humboldt-Society for Science, Art and Education
Member of Society for Contemporary Poetry Leipzig

President: Martin Berner
phone: 069 / 479092
fax: 069 / 47885811
E-Mail: haikugesellschaft@arcor.de

Perhaps your friend might enjoy these essays in German:
http://kulturserver-nds.de/home/haiku-dhg/dhg_seite_fr_english.htm

warm regards,

Alan

Quote from: Stewart Baker on June 07, 2013, 12:34:18 PM
Does anybody know if Crysanthemum has moved websites, or if it's closed down?  I'm unable to open up either their English or German version.  (Or, for that matter, the host's personal site...)

I was going to show the site to a German friend of mine the other day, and couldn't.

Hi Billie,

No need to apologise at all.  I knew someone was collating for India etc... and it would only be logical for North America to be high on the list.

kindest regards,

Alan

Quote from: Billie Wilson on June 05, 2013, 11:59:21 AM
Alan, as best I can understand, Dr. Ross is collecting haiku from poets worldwide.  I believe my mention of only the North American portion of the anthology inadvertently confused the issue and I apologize.

Thank you Billie for the news for North American members of the THF.   I also know that Australia, New Zealand, Israel, SA, the Caribbean, and India have had call outs.

Is there to be a European section?   I've heard nothing from Bruce Ross, but European haiku is alive and healthy and it would be great if some work from this area of the world could be featured.

Hopefully for those of us from Europe there may be a call out.

warmest regards,

Alan

Quote from: Billie Wilson on February 21, 2013, 07:06:25 PM
Bruce Ross is soliciting haiku for a North American section of a contemporary world haiku anthology. Please send 3 of your best haiku written between 2000 and 2013.

Include in the body of your email your name, city and state or province, your 3 haiku, and an English translation if written in another language. If published, include the name of the journal.

Send to: dr_bruce_ross@hotmail.com (two underscores) with a subject line "A Vast Sky" or mail to Bruce Ross, PMB 127, 499 Broadway, Bangor, ME 04401, USA. Those chosen will be notified.

Deadline: August 1, 2013.

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Changes to Submissions page
Posted on June 1, 2013   

Hi guys, remember when I asked you to bear with me?  Bruce and I have decided that four issues might be too many for us to handle, so we have decided to go with three issues a year, published in March, July and November.

Also, you no longer have to send separate emails for senyru/kyoka, haiga and haibun, but should send them all in one email.  I thought the separate emails would make it easier for me to organize, turns out that wasn't so.

Thanks for your patience.  The July issue is on schedule and looking good!

webpage: http://prunejuice.wordpress.com/2013/06/01/changes-to-submissions-page/


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The Bamboo Hut
On-line journal of contemporary english language tanka
http://thebamboohut.weebly.com/


The Bamboo Hut is a new on-line journal featuring contemporary english language tanka which will be published three times a year.Please refer to the "Submissions" page for details of how and when to submit and publication dates: http://thebamboohut.weebly.com/submissions.html



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The Gean Tree Press and Notes from the Gean have now gravitated here with many more features alongside the respected journal itself: http://www.geantreepress.com/Home_Page.html

.

just had two accepted, very pleased.  One was a three-line haiku that, before, very nearly got into a well-established haiku magazine, that has a board of editors voting on every haiku. The other accepted haiku is a one-line (experimental) haiku.

There's still a little space to be accepted by two remarkable up and coming haiku poets, and editors.

kindest regards,

Alan

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Writers & Lovers Cafe!

We are looking for short poetry and prose:
http://www.writers-and-lovers.com/writers-and-lovers-cafe.html

Submission Guidelines

All genres accepted. We particularly like haiku, senryu, tanka, and all types of short, Japan-derived or imagist poems. We enjoy hybrid genres, especially haibun and tanka prose. As for straight fiction, we enjoy flash, or skinny fiction, and the 55-word novels. We love visual work of all types. We consider personal and academic essays.

We accept both e-mail and snail-mail submissions. Paste your work directly into the email. Please send all email submissions to the following address:

editor@writers-and-lovers.com                                                                           


If submitting the traditional way, please address your manila envelope to:


Writers & Lovers Studio
Holiday Centre
11F, No.489, Tian-fu Rd.
Hsinchu 30058
TAIWAN


Please send 5 poems. Fiction better be under 100 words, or we consider it "wordy." Essays should be under 1,000 words, but query if you think we have reason to consider your longer work.

Please include a brief bio.

We acquire First Rights, or one-time rights. Copyright reverts back to author/artist after publication. 


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