Moon and Finger 21 – Cuts and Cutting Part 1

Welcome to Moon and Finger, a feature for addressing and discussing any haiku topic under the sun, in depth, but particularly haiku poetics. The feature is hosted by Orense Nicod and Keith Evetts, and eventually, we hope, by a variety of occasional invited guests. We aim to make it varied and challenging, serious and amusing. Host today is Keith.

The Cut or kire

Join me in an exploration of cuts and cuttings.  This week I’m going to focus on the classics in the hope of establishing an unimpeachable basis for what follows in Part 2, where contemporary anglophone haiku will be the focus.

We all know that the cut or kire is a very important technique in haiku. It characteristically separates one image (or element) from one or more others, creating a gap (or shift) between them. A cut also generally indicates that there is a link, a relationship, between them. A separation creating a space for the reader to enter; a signpost that there is something to discover. In many cases entering the cut can be associated with a revelation or insight, upon contemplation and meditation. A moment of awareness, a poetic effect. That is, perhaps, integral to the essence or spirit of haiku.

In older classic haiku in Japan, the cut was accomplished with a cutting-word or kireji, of which around eighteen have been identified by scholars collecting examples, plus one or two iffy ones. In the early days of English Language haiku, the kireji was often visibly substituted by a punctuation mark such as a comma, a colon, or an em-dash.

Analysis often focuses on “the cut” as a defining feature of haiku, along with the kigo. It is certainly a powerful and characteristic technique. However, there are many ways of writing haiku, in some of which a cut is not prominent. Where a cut of some sort is present (which is in the majority of haiku published) much depends on what is included in the concept of a cut or kire beyond some clear or formal marker.

This isn’t a radical thought.

Bashō on cutting:

A few centuries ago, Bashō was already exploring and revolutionising techniques of cutting. In his most famous haiku, there is a formal cutting word, ya, after “old pond,” but also—and this is key to the verse’s reverberative effect—a further more subtle cut, perhaps a half-cut, that leaves the nature of the link between the frog and the sound of water for the reader to hold in the mind and resolve. That half-cut is a perceptual shift, of two kinds: from the frog to the water, and from the visual image into sound. In essence, it further divides what was a haiku of two parts into one of three parts, or maybe two-and-a-half. This is also in keeping with a recurrent rhythm of Japanese verse: a 5-7-5 is naturally in three phases or segments, though there may be enjambment between two of them.

Bashō ‘s frog verse, which was covered extensively in Moon and Finger 2, 3 and 4, is by no means an exception in the use of a formally marked plus an informal cut in the same verse.  In the old pond haiku, the marked cut is between “pond” and “a frog…” The informal cut is a shift in perception, a sensory shift between “in” and “the sound.”  Its presence likely explains the several translations that interpose a cut marked with an em-dash there. There’s also a case for positing a third cut, at the end of the verse. Some translators have marked that with an exclamation mark, notably when they have opted for the word “splash!” Even a fourth, at the beginning. We’ll get to that below.  The main point I’d like to make here is that the informal cut, the change in perception, the change in senses from visual to auditory, both separates the visual event and the sound, and invites the reader (or listener) in to link them.  We hold both the visual image of the frog, and the audible sound it jumps into, in the mind for contemplation.  The cut is there, but it’s a subtle cut, a half-cut.  Marking it as definitive damages its effectiveness by emphasising the separation at the expense of the fusion, the shift at the expense of the link.

Here’s another famous haiku:

蛸壺やはかなき夢を夏の月
takotsubo ya / hakanaki yume o / natsu no tsuki
octopus pot / fleeting dreams / the summer moon
—Bashō

Reichhold renders this as:
an octopus jar / the short-lived dreams / of the summer moon
Oseko as:
An octopus pot: / An ephemeral dream / Under the summer moon.

The first part is easy: the marked cutting-word ya comes after takotsubo, the octopus pot. But the translator’s difficulty is at the end of the next phrase: that little particle, o (を). It isn’t “of” and it isn’t “under,” and both solutions in translation take away something vital from the verse. The particle を is the direct object marker. But there isn’t a verb in the verse. Bashō has omitted a verb deliberately: shōryaku—an omission through abridgement. A fracture. A cliffhanger. A cut. The omission not only saves space in a tight pattern of 5-7-5. It has impact for being unexpected. It creates space, or ma, for the reader, who is invited to fill in the space. Here, leaving the action out effectively cuts the second part of the verse, the 7-5, into two parts. Together with the first 5 syllables—the octopus pot—the reader is left to hold all three thoughts and supply a connection. Is the octopus having the dream? Is the moon shining on the dream? Is it shining on the octopus pot? Is the trap ending the dream? Or all these? The を leaves the dream or dreams suspended, unresolved, fleeting as the moon during the short night (mijikayo) of summer. In Japanese poetry, the summer moon is famously brief. This is a haiku in more than two simple parts. In effect, it is cut twice within the verse, once formally with ya, once more subtly by an omission; not counting a trailing cut for reflection:

the octopus pot…
fleeting dreams…
the summer moon…

“fleeting dreams” becomes pivot-like, relating to both the octopus pot and the summer moon….and the connecting link is transience: the proximate, imminent death of the octopus that is unaware of it (“life is but a dream”), the brief and passing nature of a dream; the distant summer moon, itself short-lasting and dreamlike, as witness.

And thus, the direct object particle o (を) and the missing verb constitute a cut, a more subtle cut than the formal, exclamatory “ya.” A shift in perspective, creating space, more gentle, inviting the reader in, to discover a link. A combination of separate but related things.  I should add that some commentators read をas an interjectory particle.  It can mark a point of departure or separation.  Both readings are possible, and either case supports the view that を is acting to produce a separation, a cut.

According to his disciples, Bashō believed that cutting was important, but noted that:

—a verse could be cut without a cutting-word
—a verse could contain a cutting-word but still not be cut (see the Footnote)

Bashō saw the “cut” as a spiritual and conceptual phenomenon, whereas he saw cutting-words, the kireji, as teaching tools for beginners who have yet to feel the natural rhythm of poetry. The cut acts as a brief pause that deepens the resonance between ideas rather than just putting them alongside each other.

As Bashō’s follower Dohō elaborated, this conceptual or perceptual pause, rather than just a grammatical marker, is the essence. According to his disciple Kyorai, when discussing the classic kireji, Bashō averred: “When you use a word as a kireji, every one of the forty-eight kana characters becomes a cutting word. When you do not, not a single character is a cutting word.” Thus, following Bashō, any word or phonetic symbol can function as a cut if it creates the necessary gap or pause. But also, Bashō believed that composing should flow naturally, likening the verse’s rhythm to “gold being hit and flattened by a hammer.”  According to Kyorai: “The Master said: ”A hokku that moves smoothly from the opening five syllables to the end is a superb verse.” This strongly suggests that there is more than one way of writing haiku: one with subtle changes short of a disjunctive break or cut within it. And that Bashō held such a verse in high regard.

A cut at the end:

Here’s a flowing hokku sentence that Bashō himself cited as an example of a verse that moves smoothly:
五月雨に鶴の足短くなれり
samidare ni tsuru no ashi mijikaku nareri
—Bashō
in the May rains the crane’s legs have become short

There is no formal, or grammatical or semantic, cut within this sentence. It’s couched as a statement. However, it is instantly recognisable as a haiku. The sentence is left dangling, creating an interval for the reader to contemplate and divine the relationship.  The insight, in this case, that the water has risen.  The crane’s legs and their reflection have apparently shortened.  Bashō has supplied the scene from an unexpected perspective. In effect the verse is cut at the end, but without any marker such as ‘kana’ or ‘keri’. Another verse ahead of its time. A cut at the end can separate what is said from what is left unsaid, just as there can be a cut (or cuts) within a verse that separate(s) two or more things in images that the poet provides. Space is created for the reader to enter, reflect, and reach the insight.

Bashō was not the only one exploring cuts and questioning formal kireji. Nishiyama Sōin (founder of the Danrin school), who in some ways laid the groundwork for Bashō, wrote some verses without a cutting word. For example:

蝶の夢うつつのうちもいそがしき
chō no yume / utsutsu no uchi mo / isogashiki
the butterfly’s dream even in the midst of reality so busy

The reference is to Zhuang-Zhou, who on awakening from a dream that he was a butterfly wondered whether he was himself the butterfly’s dream.  There is no formal cutting word or kireji interrupting the flow of this verse. Instead, there’s a subtle semantic cut, if the reader chooses to apply it at “even,” between the butterfly’s dream-world and reality. And another slight shift in perception where the two states together are linked by the butterfly/Zhuang-Zhou leading a hectic life whether in dreams or not.

A break in rhythm, an unexpected pause:

Here’s one of my favourite verses by Bashō, a verse of immense power and mystery, brimming with yūgen, that closes a passage in his travel journal “Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton.”  Not only is there a sophisticated cut; it also has nineteen morae in a 7-7-5. It contains a pair of end-rhymes and an internal chiming rhyme too. A great hokku/haiku for challenging assumptions.

晦日月なし千歳の杉を抱く嵐
misoka tsuki nashi / chitose no sugi o / daku arashi

last night of the month, no moon
a thousand-year-old cedar
in the clutch of the storm

“daku” has been rendered variously as “embraced” (Barnhill) and “hugging” (Reichhold). I cordially suggest that this is not a tree-hugging haiku. This is a clash of elemental forces. A struggle for life. Survival. The storm is magnificent. A living thing, the aged cedar, is magnificent. You can sense it bending, foliage wildly billowing, resisting, battling, in the grip of the storm. Is this its last night? Has its hour come? The outcome — unresolved.

Looking at the effective cut in this verse, there is a pause, a shift in perspective between the absent moon and the foreground cedar, and between this night and a thousand years. There is a cut with nashi (the -shi or し as the terminal ending of a classical adjective, which closes a clause).  No moon.  This pause is accompanied by ji-amari (字余り), the excess of morae in the first part of the verse. This deliberate breaking of the expected rhythm leads to, and points to, the semantic pause or cut. In the section headed “Hachou (Broken Rhythm)” of a seminal paper by Richard Gilbert and Judy Yoneoka (From 5-7-5 to 8-8-8: An Investigation of Japanese Haiku Metrics and Implications for English Haiku), ji-amari (excess morae) and its counterpart jitarazu (too few morae) are connected with the intuitive pauses a Japanese reader makes in reading a verse. A subtle caesura. The overrun in this fragment creates tension with the expected rhythm for a Japanese reader. Here, the delay has dramatic effect. A technique that can be used on its own.

Slippery cuts:

Turning to Buson, he too experimented with the subtleties of informal ‘cutting.’
網を洩れ 綱を洩れつつ 水の月
ami o more tsuna o moretsutsu mizu no tsuki
—Buson
always eluding the net, escaping the mesh, the moon in the water (water’s moon)

There is an alternative version by him:
網をもれ 網をもれつゝ水の月
ami o more ami o moretsutsu mizu no tsuki

This version repeats “net” twice (“always eluding the net, eluding the net, the moon in the water”)

It’s worth restating the obvious, that to a Japanese ear accustomed to, and expecting, 5-7-5 morae, this haiku like most others of the time is already in three segments by rhythm: the origin of our three lines, three line breaks (including the line break at the end), in anglophone haiku. There’s no formal cutting-word. There are two slight pauses where I’ve put commas. By de-emphasising cuts, the verse has a slippery continuity, entirely in keeping with the scene that is not completed until the end. Later poets have used this technique, for example Santoka in his well known 分け入つても分け入つても青い山 (still pushing on, still pushing on, bluegreen mountains). In a different metrical setting, a free-verse haiku as compared with a 5-7-5, this technique still works.  There’s no cutting-word.  Rather than breaks, the pauses create momentum until the closing noun “mountains.”

Noun cuts:

Buson uses a technique well established in Japanese literature to create a structural pause that constitutes a cut at the end of the verse: the “noun-cut”. The poem above ends with 月 (tsuki /moon) in the literal “water’s moon.” In Japanese, where normal sentence structure follows the order subject-object-verb, ending a sentence with a strong noun or noun phrase rather than a conjugated verb is called taigen-dome (体言止め). In poetics, the noun by itself can act as a form of “cut.”  Going back to Bashō ‘s celebrated frog, the verse ends on the ‘thing itself’ — the water-sound. His octopus pot haiku ends with the moon. Going forward to Santoka’s seasonless haiku, it ends with the mountains.

The linguist Yamada Yoshio (1873-1958) makes a distinction between juttai (“predicative” utterance) and kantai (“evocative” utterance) in discussing noun-final expression. An utterance need not always complete a proposition; it can function as an act of calling attention, noticing, or presenting it (note, part of the essence of a cut). Japanese scholars cite examples such as “look, snow” as grammatically incomplete, but communicatively complete. The noun is not merely naming an object; it embodies a moment of perception or recognition. The moment of awareness. In those terms, a noun ending can serve as a cut. Applied to poetics, taigen-dome can shift away from a statement (“stuff is happening”) toward presentation (“there, stuff.”). This distinction can be exploited in haiku. Again, by an implied omission, space or ‘ma’ is created—this time, at the end of a verse—for yojō (余情) — the generation of surplus feeling or meaning; a space where the reader enters for reflection, completes the thought, and gains the insight or moment of awareness.

In English poetics, this “evocative” utterance rather than a “predicative” one is sometimes treated as a device for creating vividness by compression.

When considering other ways to cut a verse at the end, other parts of speech in English can also serve, such as a verb that expresses continuity, inviting the reader to do the continuing. Or a conjunction with nothing conjoined with it (recall the translations into English of Issa’s “this world is a dewdrop world and yet…”)

Developments:

After Bashō, different forms of cutting both marked and subtle, and continuous sentences or sentence fragments cut at the end with a kireji, or simply left with the implied invitation for the reader to enter and complete, were among the freedoms enjoyed and exploited liberally by haiku poets.

こぼれてはただの水なり紅の露
koborete wa / tada no mizu nari / beni no tsuyu
—Chiyo-ni
lit: when spilled merely water is the rouge-flower dew
or:
the dew of the rouge-flower
when it is spilled
is simply water
— tr. Blyth

…no classical formal kireji, but a change in perspective as we proceed, between the dew spilled on the ground and the dew in the flower, and ending on the strong final noun ‘tsuyu‘ (dew). This invites the reader to complete the meaning and arrive at the insight: the magic of the dew in the flower, the colours of both intensified, is lost when the dew is spilled, the flower remaining the ordinary safflower, the dew reverting to water. The moment of awareness, the insight, occurs at the end of the verse. Commented in Haiku of the Day,  May 9th, 2026

君なくて誠に多太の木立哉
kimi nakute makoto ni tada no kodachi kana
— Issa
without you truly the grove at Tada(‘s just a grove)

…cut at the end with ‘kana,’ an exclamation of awareness.  It also contains a play on sounds/words between the temple at Tada, the place, and the use of the word ‘tada’ as ‘merely’: another subtle form of cutting. For after all, what we call a cut is any way of separating two (or more) things. They can be separated by double meaning, for a reader to enter, contemplate, and draw out the relationship.  Commented in Haiku of the Day,  May 8th, 2026

蟻殺すわれを三人の子に見られぬ
ari korosu ware o sannin no ko ni mirarenu
—Kato Shuson
lit: ant-killing-me by three children have been seen

killing an ant I have been seen by my three children

The kireji in this verse is at the end, ぬ (nu), a classical perfective auxiliary verb, a completed action, “have been.” Grammatically this is a single continuous sentence (of the ichibutsujitate type—tailored to one thing or theme). However, there are also separations of other kinds. The verse sounds irregular: it’s 5+14 morae. There is a slight semantic and prosodic cut after the first five morae, “ant-killing me”. There is also an important shift in perspective from the poet actively killing an ant, to his becoming the object of his children’s scrutiny, with the introduction of the passive “have been seen.” The overrun in length, ji-amari, leads up to and reinforces the perfective ending cutting-word. The perfective nature of ぬ (-nu) is a hard closure. That the children have seen their father do this is irrevocable. The reader is left hanging, to contemplate the tension this creates. Such a small thing, to kill an ant. A far bigger thing, for one’s children, presumed innocent until now, to witness their father doing it.

The poem’s important ‘cut’ is not the formal one at the end, but rather the shift from killer to witnessed. The shift from active to passive structure brings this about. Shuson is concerned with inner moral feelings connected with an action and its consequences, as contrasted with the juxtaposition of two concrete images. A precursor to the “image plus personal thought” haiku that have become prevalent in much of the modern anglophone genre.

激論つくし街ゆきオートバイと化す
gekiron tsukushi machi yuki ōtobai to kasu
heated-argument being exhausted street going motorbike into change

after a heated argument
I go out to the street
and become a motorcycle
—Kaneko Tōta tr Ueda

If you’re trying to apply a rigid view of classical cuts, there are none in this seasonless haiku. Here there is no kireji even at the end, which makes it an interesting contrast with the Shūson. Grammatically it’s a chain of three consecutive linked verbs. Exhausted or used up is in the continuous form, and going (though the streets) is likewise in the continuous form. Yet there are clear semantic separations or shifts in each phase: after the argument, going into or through the street(s); and going through the streets, becoming a motorcycle. Again, the sound pattern is not the habitual 5-7-5, but 7-4-8 morae, breaking up ingrained expectations.

You could see this as a scene in three parts, bound into a continuous sequence of events. There are two separations: the continuative form links the actions/events across them. The first is a temporal separation, rendered by Ueda as “after.” The second part, going out into the street(s), is linked to the exhaustion of the heated argument. The second separation is a remarkable leap from the real world into the world of the imagination. What has up to this point been a real, normal experience turns into a startling and imaginative metaphor, but one that is delightfully perceptive and links back to the opening: the unspent fury remaining after the debate is played out becomes a snarling motorbike with a hot exhaust-pipe. So, two separations, in effect, that then become three at the end of this complex and continuous statement that culminates in change, which leaves the reader to contemplate and link together the relationships in these phases.

Having established that there can be a separation in time, the rendering into English by Ueda, which begins with “after,” might be seen in our language as a temporal cut at the beginning…

Zengo no kire (before-and-after cuts):

Before wrapping up this Part 1, the theory of Japanese haiku poet and critic Hasegawa Kai should be mentioned. He considers that every haiku has a silent cut at the beginning of the verse, and another at the end. These cuts clip the verse from reality. They provide a perceptual frame within which the haiku operates. This is important to Hasegawa Kai, who foregrounds the imagination or psychological effect of a verse, and regards haiku based solely on objective reality (of the descriptive variety in particular) as inferior —hence the desirability of ‘clipping’ out from it a bounded perceptual event, a psychological space created by the poem’s entry and exit. It’s a notion that has some attractions.  I prefer to see it as “clipping” rather than “cutting” in order to reduce scope for confusion.  For to adopt these “clips” as kire means first, that “a cut” cannot be a distinguishing feature of a haiku, since any short poem thus framed with a beginning and an end can be seen as cut at least twice. Hasegawa Kai still needs a third, internal cut of some sort. Second, the situation is confused as regards ichibutsujitate. That is, a flowing, single sentence or single object haiku without a clear internal cut, the implied cut being at the end alone to invite the reader to enter, construct and reach awareness or insight. Perhaps the analysis suffers from over-complexity?

You can watch the two videos in which Hasegawa Kai deals with cuts and cutting from links on the gendaihaiku.com webpages here.

To summarise:

Bashō, his contemporaries and successors developed and extended the raw and powerful technique of cutting into a whole range of subtle devices to separate, arrange and combine images and ideas, in order to generate surplus meaning and space for insight.  The formal cut with a kireji, which Bashō labelled as ‘for beginners,’ remained in use, but only as one means among several of effecting a cut.  Centuries later, the early anglophone haiku community found itself wrestling with how to transplant classic haiku with kireji into English, a language deemed to be without cutting-words. Their solution was to represent kireji by punctuation marks such as the em-dash, the exclamation mark, the colon, the comma and the period. These gradually fell into disuse in turn, the technique evolving via either an em-dash or an ellipsis, to a clear semantic cut followed by a linebreak alone.  This is still the most common and basic form published.

It took some time for modern anglophone haiku to arrive at more sophisticated views of cuts and cutting, with some ingenious methods of breaking, separating, pausing or shifting within a verse. Next time, I’ll look at some more recent variations in contemporary English Language haiku. For now, the essential function of cutting is:

—to separate two or more different but related things from each other
—to create space for the reader to enter
—to signal that there is something to discover: a relationship or link between the things separated

Any means of effecting these things can constitute a cut, whether it is within the text of a haiku, or at the end with an implied opening for the reader to enter, contemplate and complete the verse. It may be clearly marked, or created by an omission or abridgement; or by a shift in perception or in perspective, or by a break in rhythm—a natural (or an unexpected) pause. In modern disjunctive haiku, it may also be created through the “collision” of unexpectedly juxtaposed images, creating a gap in comprehension that the reader tries to bridge.

Such are the multifarious and ingenious ways in which haiku poets have explored and deployed various techniques of cutting, that “the cut” has lost some of its effectiveness as a clear and defining element of a haiku. For almost any verse may be seen as cut in some manner. Yet cutting, traditional or in its modern guises, remains a deservedly dominant technique: a selection of tools in many forms for creating space wherever in the verse they occur, for the recipient’s mind to enter.  To become aware.

— Keith Evetts

————-

Footnotes

On the question of a haiku that contains a cutting word within the text yet is not truly cut, I haven’t a handy classic example in my files.  I count the haiku with a cutting-word at the end as cut, the reader contemplating and reaching the same moment of awareness at that point as did the poet.  Somewhat ironically, a search revealed that the critic Yamamoto Kenkichi (“Eighteen Chapters on Haikai”) has argued that the kireji ‘ya’ in Bashō’s famous old pond does not really ‘cut’ in that the verse simply continues accumulating meaning on a single theme.  That is, I think, to regard ‘old pond’ as just a location in which the action proceeds to takes place, instead of seeing any comparison between the old pond and the jumping frog with which it is juxtaposed across the ‘cut.’ Hasegawa Kai, however, considers that the ‘ya’ marks the boundary between the real world and the world of the mind.  I suggest that on the diagnostics that a cut effects a separation (of some sort) between related things, opening space for the reader to enter, and signalling that there is some relationship between them for the reader to divine, there are two cuts in this verse.  One, the ‘ya,’ a formal kireji, leads us to compare the old pond and its properties (unchanging, level, tranquil, silent) with those of the frog (living, active, disruptive).  The other, the marked shift in perception and senses between the frog’s jump not simply into the water but into the sound of water, leads us to contemplate the relationship between the visual and the auditory, the living presence then the absence, as the frog disappears from one domain to another.  I suspect that the issues which this complex haiku creates for a translator is behind the variations in English that have a cut marked by punctuation between ‘old pond’ and the frog, and another marked between the frog’s jump and the sound, and sometimes another emphasising the sound itself with an exclamation.

old pond!
a frog jumps in—
splash!
(…and so forth…)

I’ll come back to this question of when a verse with a cut is nevertheless not truly cut, when considering contemporary anglophone verses in Part 2.

Where no translator is given, the renderings are mine after due consultation and deliberation.  I am most grateful to Shoko Kanenari for proof-reading most of it.  Always happy to have reasoned corrections.

At the end of each post you will find a short anonymous poll related to the topic of the week (3 or 5 questions).

It asks not what you know about haiku but what you experience reading and writing it — whether an argument lands, whether a poem does what the essay claims it does, whether your practice matches the orthodoxies you’ve been taught. There are no correct answers. A no or a not yet is as valuable as a yes, and more valuable than a performance of agreement.

Periodic issues titled Chorus will return to what the polls have gathered — not to tally verdicts but to examine what the pattern of responses reveals. Where readers converge is interesting. Where they diverge is often more so. The more poets who participate the richer the picture.

TAKE THIS WEEK’S POLL ON CUTTING

Discussion is welcomed in the Comments thread at the very end of this post. Meanwhile, if you would like to propose a topic you wish to see addressed, or better still, if you have an outline proposal for an article that you would be prepared to write—if accepted—please submit it to us via the submission form immediately below this text:

Why Moon and Finger? Zen, Chan, and Indian Buddhist texts cite the metaphor of a Finger pointing at the Moon with a caution: do not mistake the finger for the moon itself. Clinging to words or doctrines (the finger) obscures the awakened mind or truth (the moon). Thus, the analyses, views, and critiques of haiku in this feature are but the Finger. Haiku is the Moon itself, to be viewed by all. Views expressed here are those of the individual authors alone, except where otherwise attributed. They are very much open to discussion in the comments thread below. We all learn.

Introducing the hosts:

Orense Nicod is a French poet working across forms, with a particular focus on haiku. Born in Paris, she spent ten years of her childhood in South Africa before returning to France and writes in both French and English.

Her work has appeared in journals including Frogpond, Cattails, and The Asahi Haikuist Network. She has twice won first prize in the Haiku Society of America Rengay Awards, in collaboration with Joan Fingon (2021) and Anton R-kelian (2025).

A former teacher, she is raising her two children and her poetic expectations while co-hosting Moon and Finger with Keith Evetts on The Haiku Foundation.

Keith Evetts lives in Thames Ditton, Surrey. Life Fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.  Aside from scientific papers, diplomatic telegrams, and local history articles, he’s written poetry of various kinds for sixty years, much of it sub rosa. Latterly host and managing editor of the Foundation’s re:Virals commentary feature since December 2021, one of the ten editors of the annual Red Moon Anthology, and an administrator of Facebook’s largest haiku group.   Married with five grown children, cottage garden, grey parrot, and a sense of humour. His short haiku bio is here.

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