Ramesh Anand - Three Questions

Ramesh Anand is a Senior R&D Engineer and a haiku poet based in Johor, Malaysia. His life experiences, as Haiku moments, have been published and forthcoming in World’s premier print journals and e-journals. He lives happily with his better half, Divya, and their best little half, Tanmayi. His complete publications can be accessed through his blog: http://ramesh-inflame.blogspot.com

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1) Why do you write haiku?

I write haiku to nourish my senses. I believe that it programs my subconscious mind to be absolutely focussed and positive in all the works I do. Now I am more efficient in my career, more affectionate with my family, more calm and peaceful, viewing nature and human objectively than before starting to write haiku. Importantly, I am living my life, moment by moment. Malaysia's abundance of nature is also playing a lively role in my haiku writing.

2) What other poetic forms do you enjoy?

Presently, I write only haiku. I have interest to write tanka, in future. I love reading tanka works of Pamela A. Babusci and Kala Ramesh.

3) Of the many wonderful haiku you've written, what do you consider to be your top three? (Please provide original publication credits)



spring’s end
my infant fingers
the fallen petal

Lyrical Passion Poetry E-Zine, 2011



winter deepens
... lungi shivering on
the beggar's face

Simply Haiku, Summer 2011, Vol. 9 No. 2



Autumn dawn --
mother serves white rice
on an almond leaf

Asahi Haikuist Network, 7th October 2011


I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr. Robert D. Wilson, Mrs Lorin Ford and Mr. Anatoly Kudryavitsky whom identified my talent in haiku, when I first submitted my works to them early this year, which has helped me to publish my works further.

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If you've been enjoying this series and have not contributed, please consider sharing your response - whether it be for haibun, haiku or tanka - to the three little questions that Ramesh answered. You must be a published poet to participate

Thursday updates

Melissa Allen sent this:

It is my honor to announce the launch of Multiverses, a new online journal dedicated to publishing modern English haiku and related forms of Japanese poetry, as well as to make an initial call for submissions for our first issue (due out in Spring of 2012). From our editorial statement:

"Each moment of our lives is a haiku waiting to happen. The unique way in which we experience these moments creates an authentic and personal reality known only to ourselves—our own little universe, so to speak. Yet we are all part of the same sum. By sharing our individual experiences and observations, we gain perspective and insight into the world of others, therefore becoming better attuned and more intimate with our own. It is with this idea in mind that Multiverses happened into existence."

We are so excited and pleased to have an incredible team of editors, including:

Paul Smith, Tanka Editor
Melissa Allen, Haibun Editor
Alexis Rotella, Haiga Editor
Johannes S. H. Bjerg, Features Editor

Please feel free to share this post and spread the word about our launch. For more information about Multiverses, including details on submitting your work (deadline for our inaugural issue is February 15!), please visit www.multiversesjournal.com. We're all looking forward to reading your work!

John Hawk
Founder, Haiku Editor
Multiverses (www.multiversesjournal.com)

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Alexis Rotella sent this:

Attention Haiga Artists:

As haiga editor of the new journal Multiverses founded by poet John Hawk, I am asking you to illustrate this lovely haiku by Cristina-Monica Moldoveanu for Multiverses Journal:

first snow -
the child steps outside
in his velvet slippers

Any approach is acceptable and I look forward to seeing what your creative juices will bring to the occasion. Submit to MultiversesJournal@gmail.com

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Cathy Drinkwater Better sent this:

Aglow at Noon: Selected Haiku and Tanka, by Edith Bartholomeusz. Black Cat Press, Eldersburg, MD, USA. Illustrated by Cathy Drinkwater Better. Softcover; size, 5-½ in. x 5 in. (similar to quarto size), 122 pp; ISBN 978-0-9834197-1-6. $12.00, postage paid. Published November 2011. Available, signed, from the author; email frededith10@gmail.com; or write to 2713 W. Ashurst Drive, Phoenix, AZ 85045 USA.

This is the second compilation of haiku and tanka by widely published poet Edith Bartholomeusz. Includes are both previously published and new work as well as illustrations for a number of the poems by poet and haiga artist Cathy Drinkwater Better. A prologue by the poet offers an insight into her creative process.

“In Aglow at Noon, Edith Bartholomeusz has crafted a pastoral elegy of unusual form and power, dignity and grace, using the spare simplicities of haiku and tanka,” noted Michael McClintock, past president of the Tanka Society of America (2004–2010). “Each poem is but a transitory moment in a longer procession through time. In the whole of the vision that unfolds, we may sense the mysteries of life and death, as within the ordinary processes of nature we experience consolation and renewed conviction. Bartholomeusz's restraint is monumental, her destination profound,” he concluded.

Stanford M. Forrester, editor of bottle rockets: a collection of short verse, stated, “Edith Bartholomeusz is a traveled and seasoned poet. This is evident in Aglow at Noon which, simply stated, is a beautiful book. Highly recommended.”

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Jessie Carty's new book of poems entitled An Amateur Marriage is available here. She writes:

Thank you so much to everyone who has already ordered my upcoming chapbook "An Amateur Marriage" from Finishing Line Press.

Some people have mentioned a reluctance to order online and/or to order without a guarantee of an autograph so I wanted to offer you guys one more chance to order from me directly!

I'm attaching an order form that you can email back to me or that you can print and mail back to me.

If you are emailing then pay me directly the $14 via paypal to this email address and send this form back so I know where to send the book when it is released in March as well as whether or not to sign it!

If you want to mail me a check (make it out to me) I'll put in a big order to Finishing Line and ship you the book myself in March.

I know not everyone wants to pre-order but your support really helps determine how many will be printed!!!

Hope everyone has a terrific holiday season :) I'll be taking pre-orders through 12-31-11 and Finishing Line will close out pre-orders on 1-4-12.

Best!!

-Jessie Carty

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Happy Holidays from Turtle Light Press!

Thank you for your support!

We just wanted to take a few moments to wish each of you a Happy Holiday and enjoyable New Year!

We have two incredible book projects this coming year: a new edition of one of this country's premier haiku poets, Nick Virgilio, who wrote about nature, life in Camden, N.J., and the loss of his brother Larry in the Vietnam war. It will be edited by haiku poet Raffael de Gruttola and is due out in the spring.

The second project is a limited edition of Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai's work, entitled "The Amichai Windows," which will feature 18 poems in separate paper and glass editions. We are hoping to have a kickoff exhibition of the book at a leading museum or university library.

In February, we will announce the winner of our 2012 haiku chapbook competition. We received entries from New Zealand, Ireland, Denmark, Germany, Ethiopia, Canada, the U.S. and other countries, so stay tuned for a winner's announcement.

As a small token of our gratitude, we have placed all of our boxed note cards on sale at 30 percent off. Usually, a box of cards retails for $16 -- now, they're $10 each plus free shipping. The sale runs through January 1.

Again, thanks so much to each of you for your continued support and encouragement of our work -- not to mention your business!

Sincerely,

Rick Black
Turtle Light Press

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From: The Sketchbook Editors: Karina Klesko and John Daleiden

Dear Curtis Dunlap,

Please post this invitation to a New Year's Haiku and Haiga Festival.

We invite haijin to participate in the Sketchbook New Year’s Festival Haiku: Please review this link for full details:
http://poetrywriting.org/Sketchbook6-5SepOct2011/0_Contents_Sketchbook_6-5_SepOct_2011_Announcement_New_Year_s_Haiku_Festival.htm
Haiku and / or Haiga may be sent at anytime after December 1, 2011. The Haiku and Haiga will be displayed after Midnight on December 30, 2011 at this link: Sketchbook New Year’s Haiku and Haiga Festival

http://poetrywriting.org/Sketchbook6-6NovDec2011/0_Contents_Sketchbook_6-6_NovDec_2011_New_Year_s_2011_Haiku_Festival.htm

Poetrywriting.org/Karina Klesko/Director
http://poetrywriting.org: Sketchbook
Karina Klesko, Senior Editor
John Daleiden, Editor/Webmaster
kk / jd

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Scott Owens sent this:

The January 10 Poetry Hickory should kick off the year in memorable fashion.  Tamra (Tammy) Wilson will be back, reading fiction from her new book of short stories, Dining with Robert Redford.  And John Lane, author of 14 (or more) books including poetry, creative nonfiction, personal narrative, nature writing, and critical studies, will be reading from either (or both) his award winning new and selected poems collection called Abandoned Quarry or his new personal narrative, My Paddle to the Sea: Eleven Days on the Rivers of the Carolinas. Lane is co-founder of Hub City Press and Director of Wofford College's Goodall Environmental Studies Center.

As always, we'll begin at 4:00 with Writers' Night Out for anyone interested in meeting and talking with local writers of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction; we'll have Open Mic at 5:30 (still two slots open -- Doug McHargue has one); and the featured writers will begin at 6:00.

Featured writers will have copies of their books for sale, and each purchase from the featured writers (or of the Best of Poetry Hickory anthology) earns you a free book from series sponsor Main Street Rag.  And of course, Taste Full Beans will have coffee, tea, cookies, brownies, sandwiches, salads, and much else for sale as well.

The flier for the reading is attached.  Please help spread the word by posting it online and in the non-virtual world.

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Susan Nelson Myers and Charlotte Digregorio shared this Curbside Haiku link:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/curbside-haiku-sample.pdf

Donna Fleischer - Haibun Three Questions

Donna Fleischer, has authored three poetry chapbooks, Twinkle, Twinkle, a selection of haiku (Longhouse Publishers, 2010), indra’s net , a selection of haibun (bottle rockets press, 2003) and Intimate Boundaries, a collection of early open form poems (self-published, 1991).

Her poetry appears in literary periodicals in Japan, England, and the U. S., anthologies, and online at Back Room Live!, CT Environmental Headlines, Salamander Cove, and tinywords. She daily curates the blog word pond –http://donnafleischer.wordpress.com/ – with postings of and on poetry, music, visual arts, news stories and permaculture. She is assistant editor of the journal bottle rockets and bottle rockets press anthologies.

Useful Knowledge Press (New Haven, CT) will publish a limited edition of Donna’s haiku with wood block engravings by Allan Greenier in February 2012, entitled HAIKU.

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1) Why do you write haibun?

I learned about the form from Bruce Ross’s excellent book, Journey to the Interior: American Versions of Haibun. My next and immediate step was to experience the world’s first haibun, Narrow Road to the Interior, by Bashō. Well, I never looked back. The haibun form has become my principal companion on this journey in poetry. As with the haiku form, there are a healthy variety of interpretations on what constitutes a haibun. The French Surrealist writer and artist, André Breton, spoke of the point sublime, a writing site where unlike things meet one another, create instantaneous juxtapositions, which best of all engender some sort of pleasure, only then to careen out of focus and logic. For me, the haibun form is just such a site. I delight in where it takes me into discovery of interrelationships, sensual and abstract. It is an expansive, protean, hearty form that allows for the imagination to furrow the poetic field and be as experimental as one needs to be. For those interested in reading further, there’s a short essay I wrote, The American Haibun, online at Issa’s Untidy Hut – http://bit.ly/j7aYcG .

2) What other poetic forms do you enjoy?

Haiku, renku, and shorter open organic forms

3) Of the many wonderful haibun you’ve written, what do you consider to be your top three?


bird without wing

all week long the bird was obedient to its caged routine; fed promptly at regularly measured intervals, even naps taken perfunctorily with cosmic discipline and good birdism. in this manner the bird did deliver song – an efficient ecstasy.

on weekends the bird was allowed to escape its cage. in moments of disturbed flurry – a dollhouse flight

tiny bell
by the mirror
rings again

Frogpond and indra’s net (bottle rockets press, 2003)

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The Red Photogram

The unplanned for trip began as I stepped back from Ellen Carey’s red photogram; “The shape of grief is circular,” the book reviewer wrote of Forest Gander’s new novel; and I wonder that my avidity for procrastination takes the shape of walking in circles. I stand still before the red photogram for which I have no words, of relevance. But those red swirls, they are there, every day, and they make me smile

Especially there in the late winter bone-cleaving days when I begin to feel out my circle walks, looking out of windows, returning to a place only to leave. My own Greek chorus. First movements, away from a mother. Stepping back from a mirror, startled by the absence of something. Remembering and forgetting, until it becomes me. The it of absence already staged in the blood.

Burroughs called it “the soft typewriter of the womb” the place where we begin to make first words. Buffering ourselves from her overloud heartbeats, I suppose. The better words, says Rimbaud, are in the silence of color

shadows of geese
flickering ’cross tree trunks
quiet spring morning

So there it is, Art, the ultimate road trip, with rickshaw and naked feet and kasa strung under the chin while floats a pillow of consciousness on last night’s dream. A painter friend’s words in an e-mail, “ — the need to reject the written word/numbers (ego) from our thought process ... When it comes to art — I don't know anymore,” he says.

Fleeting perceptions, apperceptions. Glory of the everyday of ordinary things that stay as we pass by them ... Those classical Chinese poets, Wang Wei, Li Po, Han Shan, minimalist in style and so completely embodied in their endless leaving and returning. The circle.

The first time there is Loss it’s already too late — Loss circulating in endless loops. You look and wait, look and wait, for your love, your lost one, to return. The sound of your own blood in your ears when you are most alone. The sound of the earth all opened up and speaking, and the mourner, who listens; the underworld starlit darkness of the body emerging on the horizon of birth

fixing
Li Po’s gate
November wind

If only one could look inside this dark room of the body. See the quiet, orderly procession of blood. Contained. Purple. A royal life of its own. Hear the soft, murmuring canals bloom. Just stand in the sunlight and close your eyes. Those red swirls, they’ll make you smile.

[A photogram is a shadow image created when an object or objects are directly placed and moved on light sensitive paper while exposed to a light source. Using one of photography’s earliest processes, artist photographer, Ellen Carey, creates both subtle and bold abstractions with her conceptual approach to color and light in work that is striking in its immediacy and highly original and innovative in its use of color, scale, and Polaroid materials.]

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Darwin's Urn

Trapped inside the daily noise of man’s machinery an atonal fugue without music of the spheres cyclical and blesséd, even when all machines are on off an irritating drone pervades this room without apology, this power grid. Human beings plug into it with their paycheck prongs. Vacuum pump fluctuates, fans oscillate, chase proceeds along X and Y axes on worm bores of forged steel. My heart, suspires. . . down around the corroded canyon of an old cast-iron drainage pipe surrounded by spilled photochemicals and rusting razor blades, who will believe it, a cricket sings. Aerosol spray can of ant and termite killer sadly within reach, I hurl it into the trash, smile calmly at the prescience of our possible common doom. The bug's little choir lifts me throughout the twelve hour shift in between volume spikes that drown out its tune when the wee peripatetic heartbeat resumes. Yet such miniature beauty making, I fear, will merely draw enough attention to be crushed or poisoned. Could cricket be enjoying its peculiar new digs? I flinch to wonder how we can escape, together, with Sartre and Disney breathing down my neck. Just the few steps through a door and onto sweet simple grasses outside...

right effort

cricket knows

does not stop its song

for long

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If you are enjoying this series and have not contributed, please consider sharing your response - whether it be for haibun, haiku or tanka - to the three questions that Donna answered. You must be a published poet to participate.

Sunday updates

A new issue of Notes from the Gean (with a great new look) is online:

Dear Readers,

Notes from the Gean, volume 3, Issue 3 is now online.

You can view our new and exciting page turning “flip” format by clicking on the following link.

http://www.notesfromthegean.com/currentissue.html

There are full instructions on how to navigate the flip format on the Yudu, Carbon Neutral page.

Thank you and enjoy!

Colin Stewart Jones
Editor-in-Chief
Notes from the Gean

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Penny Harter sent this:


Hi family and friends,

My haibun, "Moon-Seeking Soup" from my chapbook Recycling Starlight, appears on Jama Rattigan's blog, Jama's Alphabet Soup, posted today, December 10th, to accompany the December 2011 full moon.

http://jamarattigan.com/2011/12/09/friday-feast-moon-seeking-soup-by-penny-harter/.

I am blessed and honored, both by Jama's comments and by the responses of her readers, to whom I've replied both individually and in a post at the end (so far) of the comments.  And I encourage you all to try making the soup---it's really good.

You should also add parsnips and peeled / diced apple for sweetening. If you read through my responses to readers' responses, and then mine at the end (so far) of those, I mention that I left those ingredients out of the recipe in the poem.

Hope you are enjoying the holiday season so far, and as I said in my comment on Jama's blog, we all need to look for light as we approach the Solstice. I hope "Moon-Seeking Soup" helps you find the light in all you do, even the simple act of soup-making.

Love,
Penny

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WHC NEWS
11 December 2011

Re: New Issue of World Haiku Review is now online: December 2011 Issue

The World Haiku Club is pleased to announce that the December 2011 Issue of World Haiku Review is now online. Click on: http://sites.google.com/site/worldhaikureview2/home

Rohini Gupta, our Technical Editor, is continuing her noble and arduous task of retrieving and rescuing poems, articles, treatises, reports, contributions etc. of the past World Haiku Review issues 2001 - 2007, which got tragically lost in mysterious circumstances. Her first effort is focused on saving, recovering and rescuing only. She will then gradually sort them out and give them shape. If you happen to come across any of these invaluable items of the past WHR issues, by all means please let us know.

The following poets, please take a look at this new issue to find your poems among the best 10s:
aju mukhopadhyay, Susan Constable, Carmel Lively Westerman, Patricia Prime, Priscila H. Lignori, Marie Shimane, Peggy Heinrich, Anita Virgil, André Surridge, Cynthia Rowe, Marje A. Dyck, Marilyn Potter, Kai Falkman, Bruce R. Boynton, Feu Violet, CaroleAnn Lovin, LeRoy Gorman, Lucille Raizada, Owen Bullock

We do hope that you will enjoy this issue of World Haiku Review.

Kengin,

Susumu Takiguchi
Managing Editor & Acting Editor-in-Chief, World Haiku Review
Chairman, The World Haiku Club

Kala Ramesh
Deputy Editor-in-Chief, World Haiku Review
Rohini Gupta
Technical Editor, World Haiku Review

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Alice Osborn sent this:

I'm thrilled to announce the pre-order season of my newest poetry book, After the Steaming Stops which will be published March 2012 by Main Street Rag Publishing Company.

Pre-order price is 30% off (reg price $11) at $7. Order now to beat the crowd and save some money for your future self. www.mainstreetrag.com/AOsborn_2.html

Yes, the catch is that you won't have it in your hands for the holidays, BUT if you tell me that you pre-ordered it because of this email, the first four people will receive a free signed copy of my smash hit Unfinished Projects! Here I am at my last reading at Only at Barnhills in Winston-Salem:



Read what poet Scott Owens says about After the Steaming Stops:

“In Tillie Olson's ‘I Stand Here Ironing,’ we've seen the image of the ironing board and the steam press used before as a revelation of the hazards of the American dream of perfection (particularly for women)—perfect house, perfect marriage, perfect family, perfect composure. In these poignant poems, Alice Osborn hauntingly and painfully updates and expands the use of domestic imagery as an expression of that narrow dream's tyranny, adding to it the expectations and regimentation inherited from a successful military grandfather, and the inevitable insufficiency of everything else.”

and poet Sara Claytor, “This is a book crammed with images, explicit descriptions, characters and emotions. It needs to be read.”

Warmest and thank you so much for your support, my friends!

Alice

Alice Osborn, M.A. is the author of three books of poetry, After the Steaming Stops (Main Street Rag, 2012), Unfinished Projects (Main Street Rag, 2010) and Right Lane Ends (Catawba, 2006); she is a manuscript editor, successful blogger and powerful speaker. Alice teaches creative writing all over the country where she uses sensory images and road-tested prompts to stimulate her students’ best work. Her work has appeared in Raleigh’s News and Observer, The Pedestal Magazine, and in numerous journals and anthologies. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her husband and two children. Visit her website at www.aliceosborn.com

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Dietmar Tauchner sent this:

schnee by dietmar tauchner & bernd bechtloff - cd release

"schnee" -
an exceptional audio book has been released a few days ago.
blixa bargeld, singer of the einstuerzende neubauten and bass player at nick cave and the bad seeds, and others reciting poems by dietmar tauchner in a modern, unexpected, extatic and sensual way.
in combination with the excellent music by bernd bechtloff, "schnee" is the soundtrack of a sonorous silence. the album "schnee" introduces snow as the 5th element, as a broad screen for the psyche. "schnee" is a secret path to the virtual dimensions of being. now you may listen to the snow to warm up your mind.

available at www.mokshamusic.at - blechbernd@hotmail.com
or at www.bregengemme.net  - bregengemme@aon.at

outtakes from the cd at

http://bregengemme.net/bregengemme/pages/en/audio.php

http://www.mokshamusic.at/mm-main.php

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Sasa Vazic sent this:

Haiku Reality Vol. 8, No. 15, Winter 2011 Issue is Out

http://haikureality.webs.com/indexeng.htm

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A new issue of Sketchbook is online.

Sunday updates

Pris Campbell sent this:

Rusty Truck has one of my poems up today in its Days of Protest series. If you feel so moved and are able to comment on the site to let the editor know you read it and what you think about it, I would be grateful.

http://rustytruck.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/let-them-eat-cake-by-pris-campbell/

xxPris

Visit my website at http://www.poeticinspire.com
and my blog, Songs To A Midnight Sky at http://poeticinspire.blogspot.com/

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Here are the results of the 13th HIA Haiku Contest (2011)

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colin stewart jones sent this:

Hi all,

The new issue of NFTG looks great and will be up around the 8th. There is a teaser up now!

http://www.notesfromthegean.com/currentissue.html

There are now too many mags coming out on or around the same day (this was not the case when we fist started) which has created a bottleneck of haiku.

As we are not in competition with anyone and we would hope that due time will be given to reading every magazine properly we have decided to delay publication of NFTG by one week.

However, we don't want to keep you waiting too long for your favourite magazine but because of the reasons stated above, NFTG will now hit the cyber stands around the middle of the month for future issues.

thanks.

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Collin Barber had a flash fiction piece published recently in Spilling Ink Review.

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Roberta Beary was awarded an honorable mention in the Haiku Internation Association contest for this poem:

weeping willow
soldiers trudge by
without a glance

Roberta also received an Editor's Choice award from The Heron's Nest for the following poem:

closing time
winter dusk slides down
the book drop

http://www.theheronsnest.com/haiku/1304R1922/thn_issue.e1.html