Tanka, Haibun, Haiku, Publications and Submissions

This just in from Dick Whyte:

Hey Curtis,

My name is Dick Whyte and I am a haiku poet from Wellington, New Zealand. I have been enjoying your blog and I wanted to let you know that Laurence Stacey and I have started a new journal called 'Haiku News'. Many people have tried to start haiku zines inspired by the news, but none of them were interested in the modern art of haiku. At Haiku News we are attempting to merge the serious art of modern English haiku (and senryu/tanka) with contemporary current events in the effort to inject the political with the personal, through the poetic. Have a look: http://www.wayfarergallery.net/haikunews/

Anyway - we are taking submissions and I was wondering if you would mind making an announcement on your blog (as I noticed you often make announcements of journals open for submission). If not, that is cool, but I thought I would let you know.

Many thanks for your time.

All the best,
Dick Whyte (co-editor of Haiku News)

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From: The Sketchbook Editors, Karina Klesko and John Daleiden

Dear Sketchbook Reader,

The current issue of Sketchbook is now on line. The July / August 2009 Sketchbook contains poems, art and features from eighty-nine writers / artists from twenty countries including: Australia, Canada, Germany, Denmark, Hungry, India, Japan, Israel, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, United Kingdom, United States.

The haiku thread for the next issue is "leaves": September / October 2009 Leaves Haiku Thread.

The kukai for the next issue is "harvest moon": Announcing September / October 2009 "harvest moon" Kukai

The Sketchbook editors invite you to read the current issue. Submissions are open to the general public. The submission deadline for the next issue is October 20, 2009. We are interested in publishing eastern and western short poetry forms. We encourage writers to submit collaborative forms. Authors who have not yet published work in Sketchbook should include a short bio and jpg photo with their submission.

Send to: submissionseditor@poetrywriting.org.

We hope you enjoy the most recent issue of Sketchbook.

The Editors: Karina Klesko and John Daleiden

jd

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Kikakuza is a group of haikai (linked-verse) poets founded in 2005 in honour of Kikaku (1661~1707), Basho’s celebrated disciple. We wish to help revive the tradition of haibun, which gradually went out of favour after the Meiji Restoration. For this purpose, we started a Haibun Contest last year. In the English section, we received 90 entries from 17 different countries. Below are the guidelines for our Haibun Contest this year. You are warmly invited to participate. The contest will be judged by Nobuyuki Yuasa and Stephen Henry Gill and the results will be announced in the Kikakuza Bulletin and on its homepage, awards being sent directly to the winners.

Conditions of Entry

1 Subject: Free, but discretion must be used to avoid slander and obscenity. All works should be original and unpublished.

2 Style: No restrictions, but special attention must be paid to honour the spirit of haikai.

3 Length: Not more than 30 lines, each line not more than 80 spaces long. Some leniency will be afforded by the judges, but we cannot accept any work running beyond a single page.

4 Haiku: At least one haiku should be included. They need not necessarily be phrased in three lines.

5 Title: A title must precede the main body of haibun.

6 Format: Print on a sheet of A4 size paper and write at the bottom your name (and your pen name if you have any), together with your address, telephone number, and email address (if you have one). Your privacy will be strictly protected, and the judges will not see your names or details. If you are submitting more than one piece, each piece should be printed on a separate sheet of paper.

7 Deadline: All entries should reach the following address between 1 October and 31 January 2010. Entries received after the deadline will not be accepted.

Ms Motoko Yoshioka, Regalia 907, 7-32-44 Fujimicho, Tachikawa City, Tokyo 190-0013, Japan

8 Entry Fee: All entrants residing in Japan are kindly requested to pay 2000 yen into the following postal money order account and send a receipt (or a copy of it) together with your haibun. For this fee you may enter up to three haibun.

Postal Money Order: 00250-4-95332 Kikaku no Kai

Entrants from outside Japan are kindly requested to send 1000 yen by international postal money order or use IRC coupons. For this fee, you may submit up to three haibun entries. No entry fee will be requested from those living in countries where there is no international postal money order or coupons. You should explain your difficulty, however, in your covering letter. We cannot accept personal cheques because it is so costly to process them.

9 Questions: All questions should be sent by post to the address above or by email to the following address: nyuasa88s@regalia.nir.jp

10 Sample haibun can be read at the following sites:

http://hailhaiku.wordpress.com/category/haibun/ (or click ‘longer haibun’ from top page)

http://www.sosui.wordpress.com (both in English and Japanese)

http://contemporaryhaibunonline.com

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TWENTIETH INTERNATIONAL TANKA SPLENDOR AWARD 2009

Sponsored by AHA Books

For this special anniversary contest, there will be a print version of Tanka Splendor 2009 available in paperback.

1. Thirty-one tanka and three tanka sequences will be awarded publication in Tanka Splendor 2009 and for each winning entry the author will receive a perfect-bound, 75 page paperback book containing all the winning poems.

2. Deadline: Midnight September 30, 2009.

3. Each author may submit either a group of up to three (3) unpublished tanka or one tanka sequence of any length. All material must be original and not under consideration elsewhere.

4. There is no entry fee.

5. Individual tanka should be in English, written in five lines containing 31 or fewer syllables, preferably without titles.

6. The tanka sequence should consist of a title with three or more tanka, each of which contains 31 or less syllables written in five lines.

7. Send your entry by email to: Jane@AHApoetry.com. All entries will be confirmed.

8. The judging will be done only by the persons with a valid e-mail address who have entered the contest. Each contestant will receive an e-mail with an address on the web showing the anonymous poems for judging. The contestants are invited to declare their choices for the best single tanka and best sequence. After tabulating these votes the 31 single tanka and three sequences which receive the most votes will be published as Tanka Splendor 2009 as an AHA Books Online and a special anniversary version book will be printed of all the winning poems.

9. Rights return to authors upon publication.

Thank you for passing this along to other tanka poets!

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Book Launch Announcement: Huge Blue by Patrick M. Pilarski

Leaf Press is thrilled to announce publication of Huge Blue, Patrick M. Pilarski’s first full-length collection of poetry.

"Patrick Pilarski’s spare poems shape a pointillist map of the west, placing dot by dot exactly on the large canvas of place and emotion. His poems locate‘the quiet point a hook can never reach’ with lyric exactness and flashes of sly fun." - Alice Major

A collection of contemporary haiku, tanka, haibun, tanka prose, senryu, and quatrains, Huge Blue is a poetic tour guide to Canada’s stunning western landscapes. Huge Blue bridges contrasting physical landscapes with recurring characters and images—crows, moments, light and sky. These lead the reader through each different environment, presenting snapshots of rich diversity while at the same time connecting to a unified progression of time and place. Using precise and direct language, the poems in Huge Blue form junction points between humanity and wilderness under a vaulting expanse of sky. Poems in the book are divided into three sections: Prairie, Mountain, and Coast.

Patrick M. Pilarski is the co-editor of DailyHaiku, an Edmonton-based international journal of English-language haiku, and poetry editor for its new sister publication DailyHaiga. Patrick’s work has appeared in journals and anthologies across North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan, and he is the author of one chapbook of experimental haiku and haibun: Five Weeks. http://www.pilarski.ca

To purchase a copy, please contact the publisher: Leaf Press, Box 416, Lantzville, BC, Canada, V0R 2H0, orders@leafpress.ca, or order online using PayPal at http://www.leafpress.ca

For more information about readings, the book, or the author, please contact Ursula Vaira at ursulavaira@leafpress.ca, 250.390.3028. Patrick M. Pilarski can be contacted directly via http://www.pilarski.ca/ or desk@dailyhaiku.org.

Huge Blue
by Patrick M. Pilarski
September 2009
ISBN 978-1-926655-02-4
4.25 x 5 inches; perfect bound; scarlet fly sheets
104 pages; $16.95 CAN

A digital copy of this release, plus media kit and photos, is available online: http://www.leafpress.ca/Htmlmail/Patrick_Pilarski.htm