Dave Russo - Three Questions

Dave Russo's haiku have appeared in Simply Haiku, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Acorn, and other journals. He is included in big sky: The Red Moon Anthology 2006 and the 2007 New Resonance anthology (Red Moon Press). He is the Webmaster for Haiku North America, the North Carolina Haiku Society, and Red Moon Press. He was one of the local organizers for Haiku North America 2007. Dave won the head-to-head haiku slam competition held at that conference.

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1. Why do you write haiku?

About 10 years ago, a friend gave me a copy of Robert Hass's Essential Haiku, versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa. This book swept away my assumptions about what haiku are and what they can express. It made me want to write poems that sounded like the poems in this book.

Yet, I was reluctant to write haiku because I had such a bad impression of haiku in English. Any haiku that I might have read by Gary Snyder or Jack Kerouac were drowned in a tsunami of pop-culture haiku about cats, spam, rednecks, and the like. Haiku in English seemed to be a kind of limerick, a verse form that was completely defined by the 5-7-5 syllable pattern, a kind of poetry game suitable only for popular contests and arts programs for kids.

Luckily, however, I happened to go to a literary festival where I heard Lenard D. Moore read his haiku and other poetry. It was clear that for Lenard, haiku were poems: not experiments with an exotic form; not trifles dashed off between stints of real work. They were American, yet they had an unmistakable family resemblance to the Japanese haiku I had read in translation. I think I started writing haiku in earnest after that.

2. What other poetic forms do you enjoy?

I’m not the sort of person who wakes up in the morning and says, "I think I’ll write a sijo today. Or maybe a ghazal." But if I take "forms" to mean "kinds", I can say that I like many kinds of poetry, from many ages and many parts of the world.

I must confess that I have not yet made peace with renku. Renku sessions, with their rules, socializing, multiple sources of advice, shifts of perspective—and the pressure to write something while your partners are waiting—are quite confusing for an introvert like me. On the other hand I really enjoyed the small renku session we had with Paul MacNeil when he came for Haiku Holiday some years ago, so maybe there is hope for me yet.

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

Hmm. Well, excuse me for 100 years while I go and try to write some wonderful haiku! In the meantime here are some one-liners. I’d like to write more of these.



roasting a rattlesnake we talk about girls



walking alone ghost water down a dry creek



a duck's wake in blown pollen dad's voice weaker



Credits: “roasting”: New Resonance 5 (Red Moon Press: 2007). “walking alone”: Modern Haiku 37:2. “a duck’s wake”: Simply Haiku: Winter 2006, vol 4 no 4.

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Angelee Deodhar shares her response to Haiku - Three Questions with us next week.

Bill and Penny need your prayers

Please keep Bill Higginson and Penny Harter in your thoughts and prayers. Bill has been hospitalized for two weeks, including having had minor surgery to get a sample of the quickly growing and inoperable tumor in the center of his chest. Today, the tumor was diagnosed as malignant but highly treatable. Since the mass has been pressing on the esophagus and, therefore, inhibiting Bill's ability to eat much, he has been getting adjunct nourishment, and will continue to do so until the tumor shrinks.

He will start chemo this Friday in the hospital, to be followed, after several chemo cycles to shrink the mass, with targeted radiation. His case was so difficult to diagnose that the hospital's tumor board, which includes several Sloan Kettering physicians, will discuss the case on Thursday. If all goes well, he may come home late next week and continue treatment on an outpatient basis. Here is Bill and Penny's address:

Penny Harter / William J. Higginson
P. O. Box 1402
Summit, NJ 07902

Penny's email address is penhart@2hweb.net

I know these two wonderful people would greatly appreciate your prayers, cards, and get well wishes.

Matthew Paul - Three Questions

Matthew Paul has contributed haiku to journals in the United Kingdom and the United States for seventeen years, and many of these appear in his collection The Regulars (Snapshot Press, 2008). He is the reviews editor for Presence haiku magazine, has a poetry blog at matthewpaulpoems.blogspot.com and lives and works in London. His latest book, Wing Beats: British Birds in Haiku, written and compiled with John Barlow, is available from www.wingbeats.co.uk.

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1. Why do you write haiku?

Because it's essential! I first encountered haiku at school, around 1982, and I came across some key haiku books, including Henderson's, when I was at university, so when the British Haiku Society started up in 1990, my interest soon became much more than a habit. Writing haiku is, to me, as natural as any other urge and I rarely go more than a day or two without coming up with at least a proto-haiku.

2. What other poetic forms do you enjoy?

I enjoy reading most forms of poetry, although long lyrical poetry tends to bore me rigid. I write the occasional tanka and longer poems too, some of which I post at: http://matthewpaulpoems.blogspot.com.

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

As all your other respondents seem to have said, it's hard to pick out the 'best', but these are three of my favourites. The first is from the Blue Ridge Mountains after last year's Haiku North America conference.


evening heat
the unseen sapsucker
drums five times

Simply Haiku



crows muster
at the edge of the marsh
a patch of celandines

Blithe Spirit



the bistro chef
smoking out the back
misty rain

Moonset



All the best,

Matthew (Paul)

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A couple of readers of this blog have suggested that Haiku - Three Questions be made into a book. Perhaps, someday, after contributor responses no longer drop into my inbox, I'll seek a publisher.

Which reminds me, if you haven't already participated in this little project, please consider doing so. Also, tell your friends about this blog. You can email me directly or use this online form to send your thoughts/answers to Haiku - Three Questions.

Dave Russo will be our guest next week.

Terry Ann Carter - Three Questions

Terry Ann Carter is a past vice president of Haiku Canada and Education Chair for The League of Canadian Poets. She has organized four conferences for Haiku Canada at Carleton University (visit this link for William J. Higginson's photo essay on Haiku Canada's 2007 conference) and will take on HNA (with the help of a local committee) next summer. She is co-founder (with Marianne Bluger) of KaDo Ottawa, a local haikai group that meets seasonally and launches a broadsheet each spring at the Japanese Embassy in Ottawa. (crimsonbamboo.ca)

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1. Why do you write haiku?

Haiku came to me through my mentor and friend Marianne Bluger, the "godmother" of Japanese literary forms here in Canada. With her encouragement I began the slow process of trial and error. "Take a risk", she used to say. I write haiku as a kind of death poem for a particular moment, a moment I will never experience exactly the same way again. With Marianne's death in 2005, haiku is even more intrinsically bound to this notion, for often she is mystically present in the poems where I am reaching deepest into the core of nature, into the core of myself. I write senryu as a kind of comic relief, to find humour in the small spaces and chaos of my life. Together, these two approaches: death poems and comedy, inform and inspire my poetry. With two sons living in distant cities: Singapore and Vancouver, British Columbia, I often have opportunities to travel. I love writing haiku in small spiral bound notebooks as I move around the world...for no other reason than to simply say yes, I am here, and it is wonderful to be alive.

2. What other poetic forms do you enjoy?

As a member of The League of Canadian Poets, I have been writing free verse (lyric poetry) for many years, and have published two collections: Waiting for Julia, Third Eye Press, 1999, (now out of print) and Transplanted, Borealis Press, 2006. An example of a recent lyric poem can be found at the website for Tree Poetry, Ottawa's oldest reading series – http://www.treereadingseries.ca/TreeLeaves/100608-TerryAnnCarter.html. Just as my musical tastes run from opera to rhythm and blues and from Jazz to folk (depending on my mood and the weather) my poetry horizon is always stretching. I enjoy composing tanka, and haibun and creating haiga with travel photos and artworks from friends. My lyric poetry readings always include a recent haiku or senryu and as a poet-in-the-school under the sponsorship of The League, I try to give as many haiku workshops as I can. Part of the great experience of writing any kind of poetry is the tremendous pleasure in sharing what has been composed.

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

This is an impossibly difficult question to answer, (as other poets have noted) but I have come up with three favourites.



underground parking
no space
for the moon

R. H. Blyth "People's Choice Award" 2005



street hockey
young boys shoot cherry petals
into the net

Best Canadian Poem, Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, 2007



winter dusk
in my mother's log cabin quilt
my father's red shirt

Carpe Diem: Anthologie Canadienne du Haiku/Canadian Haiku Anthology 2008



I would like to add a note of explanation to "street hockey". This poem was composed in Shaughnessy, a very affluent section of Vancouver, British Columbia, where homes sell for millions of dollars and celebrities from Hollywood and all over the world are often cited. This particular spring afternoon, I was with a friend who was picking up her daughter who attended a private school there. As I waited in the car, I happened to spy a few boys probably 6 or 7 years old. They had gathered a huge pile of cherry petals that had fallen onto the street into one amazing heap. Then they took turns whacking it with their hockey sticks. Street hockey is a culture unto its own for many young Canadian boys and girls (who often use regular pucks or frozen dog turds in winter) and it was an indelible moment as I heard their laughter in this simple old fashioned game that they had created with the resources around them. To watch the sprinkling of petals as they fell for a second time, earthbound, was indeed, an added pleasure. I was surprised that the poem went on to win an award a number of years later, for I had not written it for that purpose, but of course, I was pleased to receive the recognition which included an engraving on a large stone in the VanDusen Botanical Garden, Vancouver.

Thank you Curtis, for this opportunity to share some thoughts with my wonderful American poet friends, south of our border. The archive of other poets is also a treasure. Thank you for all your diligent work.

Sincerely,
Terry Ann Carter
Ottawa, Canada

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Matthew Paul shares his response to Haiku - Three Questions next week.

International Kusamakura Haiku Competition

There is still time left to enter the International Kusamakura Haiku Competition. A contest description is available here.

As stated in the submission guidelines, the entry fee is free. Also note that if you submitted haiku between June 1st and June 10th, your poems could have been lost.

You may submit up to two haiku via their convenient online form.

Past winners in the English section (and poems) can be viewed here.

The web sites listed in this post have, at times, been unavailable. If you cannot access these sites, try again later.

Good luck! Perhaps you will win an all expense paid trip to the beautiful country that gave us haiku.

Lenard D. Moore Radio Interview

Lenard D. Moore, President of the Haiku Society of America, was interviewed on North Carolina Public Radio yesterday. Lenard talked about his new book of poems entitled A Temple Looming. He also read a few poems from the book.

The interview can be heard in its entirety at:

http://wunc.org/tsot/archive/sot0812c08.mp3/view

Bruce Ross - Three Questions

Bruce Ross is a humanities educator. He edited HAIKU MOMENT, An Anthology of Contemporary North American Haiku and Journey to the Interior, American Versions of Haibun. He authored How to Haiku, A Writer's Guide to Haiku and Related Forms and four collections of haiku, most recently summer drizzles . . . haiku and haibun. Bruce is also an editor for the journal Contemporary Haibun Online.

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1. Why do you write haiku?

I write haiku because it is an experience of enlightenment. Hui-neng wrote: "Realizing one's own real essence is the ultimate expression of enlightenment." This world of ours is where this happens as we move from birth to death.

2. What other poetic forms do you enjoy?

I have from an early period enjoyed lyrical/philosophical poetry from all periods and cultures, writing original nature lyrics early on. Later in life I began to sort of enjoy the discipline of writing haibun prose.

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

My favorite haiku was my first real understanding of deep pathos:


abandoned house —
the lilacs just as bright
this spring

It originally appeared in my HAIKU MOMENT.


One that originally appeared in Persimmon others seems to like, as I do too, is:

singing its heart out
to no one in particular
morning blackbird


A final haiku, which I like, won some attention in the 2008 Mainichi Daily News annual choices:

lightning flash
after lightning flash
and a firefly

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Terry Ann Carter will be our Haiku - Three Questions guest next week

Pamela A. Babusci - Three Questions

Pamela A. Babusci is an internationally award winning haiku, tanka, and haiga artist. Some of her awards include: Museum of Haiku Literature Award, International Tanka Splendor Awards, First Place Yellow Moon Competition (tanka category), First Place Kokako Tanka Competition, Basho Festival Haiku Contest (Japan), Honorable Mention Suruga Baika Literary Festival (Japan), and Joint 3rd prize for the 1st With Words International Online Haiku Competition. Pamela has illustrated several books, including: Full Moon Tide: The Best of Tanka Splendor Awards and Taboo Haiku. She was the logo artist for Haiku North America in NYC in 2003 and Haiku North America in Winston-Salem, NC in 2007. You can visit her solo exhibit listed under archives at: www.threelightsgallery.com. She is the sponsor and judge for the First International Erotic Tanka Contest for 2008. Pamela has a deep desire to be creative on a daily basis, which feeds her spirit and soul and gives meaning to her life. Poetry and art have been an integral part of her existence since her early teen age years and will continue to be a driving force until she meets her creator.

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1. Why do you write haiku?

i write haiku because it brings an inner-peace & serenity into my essence. it teaches me to observe life, in all its forms more closely & carefully; to distill & write down these moments into a haiku which brings enlightenment. i am content to be a droplet in the pond of haiku, for as the droplet falls, its ripples can reverberate for many years.

2. What other poetic forms do you enjoy?

free verse poetry & tanka are some of the other poetry forms i write. i was introduced to tanka around 1995 through my friendship with kenneth tanemura, a wonderful tanka poet & i continue to write tanka on a daily basis, over a cup or two of morning java.

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


my three favorite haiku:


i climb the mountain with my eyes never ending snow

Museum of Haiku Literature Award 1995 Frogpond



no attachments
to this world
falling plum petals

World Haiku Competition HM 2000



before the monk
& his walking stick
ageless mountain

Basho Haiku Festival 2007



curtis, thank you so very much for doing this wonderful haiku site. i am sure it will enrich the haiku community for years to come.

harmony, pamela

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Next week, Bruce Ross shares his response to the same three questions.

HAIKU: the Art of the Short Poem

Tazuo Yamaguchi of Poem Studios has informed me that his haiku documentary (filmed at Haiku North America 2007) is ready. To view a trailer of Haiku: the Art of the Short Poem go to:

http://www.youtube.com/poemstudios

This highly anticipated film, produced in association with Brooks Books, is the first full length film to explore English-language haiku.

The film and companion anthology are available for purchase at Brooks Books Haiku.

Thank you Poem Studios and Brooks Books for this important film and book.

Also, Yamaguchi has created another DVD, which contains Haiku North America 2007 conference highlights and which will be mailed out in August by Dave Russo to all presenters and to all who paid for the conference package that included the DVD.

Carolyn Hall - Three Questions

Carolyn Hall was an editor of Mariposa (the journal of the Haiku Poets of Northern California) and served as a member of the Red Moon Anthology Editorial Staff. She is currently the acting editor of Acorn: a journal of contemporary haiku. Her haiku have been widely published in the U.S. and abroad, and she has received numerous awards, including both Poem of the Year and Poet of the Year in The Heron's Nest Readers' Choice Awards. Water Lines, her award-winning collection of haiku and senryu, was published by Snapshot Press (UK, 2006).

Carolyn shares her response to three questions.

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Dear Curtis,

Thank you so much for undertaking this exciting project and for giving me the opportunity to participate.


1. Why do you write haiku?

Before I was introduced to haiku (by a friend) nine years ago, I walked through the world with my eyes half-shut. I grew up in a city, and, aside from the angleworms in the back yard and the occasional spider in the bath tub, I was oblivious to the living things around me--both flora and fauna. Haiku opened my eyes to it all--for which I am exceedingly grateful. The pleasure of learning the names and habits of things creepy and crawly and deciduous or evergreen is something I can't imagine having ever lived without. Haiku also taught me to see friends and family and neighbors in a way I never had before, and gave me a means of expressing those observations. Though haiku is often described as the relationship between Nature and human nature, for me it is all about human nature. Even my most purely Nature-oriented poems always reflect the human condition. Finally, haiku play an important role as a memory-jogger and diary of my life. I often draw a blank when asked to recite one of my own haiku from memory. Yet when I read or recall my own haiku I am taken immediately back to the time and the place and the emotions that were evoked and that inspired me to write that particular poem. In short, haiku allows me to express who I am, and to hold onto who I was.

2. What other poetic forms do you enjoy?

I enjoy reading and writing senryu (which I can only sometimes distinguish from haiku) and haibun and rengay and, occasionally, tanka. I have written and published creative nonfiction and longer poems. But the poetry I return to again and again is haiku. It suits me--and satisfies me.

3. Of the many wonderful haiku you've written, what do you consider to be your top three?

This seems an impossible question because my answer will vary from day to day depending on my mood. However, these three have received some attention and appreciation from others, and I like them as well.



baiting one fish
with another
autumn dawn

The Heron's Nest IV:11 (2002)



so suddenly winter
baby teeth at the bottom
of the button jar

The Heron's Nest VII:1 (2005)



hand in hand —
how slowly
the creek meanders

Modern Haiku XXXI:2 (2000)



Wishing you all best,

Carolyn Hall

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Pamela A. Babusci will be our Haiku - Three Questions guest next week.

Baseball Haiku reading video

Ed Markowski informed me today that an online video of the Baseball Haiku reading at Chautauqua Institution is available.

You may recall that Cor van den Heuvel, Alana Pizzarelli, and Ed Markowski read from Baseball Haiku on June 26.

The web address to watch the reading is:

http://fora.tv/2008/06/26/Cor_van_den_Heuvel_Baseball_Haiku

Also, check out Ed Markowski's free online brochure, “American sports . . . American haiku” available at David Giacalone's f/k/a blog.

Enjoy!

Beverley George - Three Questions

Beverley George is our Haiku - Three Questions guest this week. She is President of the Australian Haiku Society [HaikuOz]. In April 2007, she was invited to present a paper at the 3rd Haiku Pacific Rim Conference in Matsuyama, Japan and is currently working on convening the 4th HPR conference.

Between 2000-2006 she edited 12 issues of Yellow Moon, an Australian literary journal which published haiku and related genres for ten years. More recently she founded Eucalypt, the first Australian literary journal dedicated to the Japanese poetic genre of tanka.

Her own collection of haiku, Spinifex, was published by Pardalote Press in December 2006.

Beverley's international First Prizes for Japanese genres include: The Third Ashiya International Festa [Japan] 2004; the British Haiku Society JW Hackett Award 2004; The World Haiku Club Fourth New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day Double Kukai 2003/2004; The World Haiku Club RH Blyth Award for Haibun 2004; The Tanka Society of America’s Annual International Contest 2006 and the Chajin [Paris] International Haiku Competition 2007.

Beverley loves the way in which writing haiku has put her in touch with so many astounding and generous-spirited people all around the world.

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1. Why do you write haiku?

Writing haiku encourages me to notice things more carefully and to live in present time. I find concise writing aesthetically pleasing. I like the intellectual and emotional spaces in haiku that invite active and interpretive reading.

2. What other poetic forms do you enjoy?

Most really, although the diminutive genres haiku and tanka have usurped much of the time I once spent reading other types of poetry. Reared on classic English poetry, with Tennyson a firm favourite, it took me a while to come to terms with free verse which is the only other type of poetry I write now. In Yellow Moon, which I edited 2000-2006, haiku, tanka and haibun were always featured, and sometimes haiku or tanka sequences, or Kasen Summer Renga. But I do believe in an open-minded approach to poetry and also published, at different times, odes, sonnets, villanelles, elegies, Chaucerian, limericks, cinquain, tetractys, clerihew, free verse or rhyming nature poetry, and also humorous poetry, which is arguably one of the most difficult genres to write well. As do many people, I think that the discipline of haiku writing can improve the way we write other genres too.

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


train tunnel —
the sudden intimacy
of mirrored faces

voted best of issue by readers Presence #22, 2004; A New Resonance 4 Red Moon Press, 2005; Spinifex Pardalote Press, 2006


lengthening shadow . . .
above her eggs the hen's heart
beats against my arm

equal first place British Haiku Society International Haiku Award 2003 and published in Blithe Spirit 14 (2) 2004; A New Resonance 4 Red Moon Press, 2005; Spinifex Pardalote Press, 2006


sprigs of rosemary
something about the tea urns
makes me cry

from a sequence Village Hall April 25, 2006 (about ANZAC Day). Sequence first published in Blithe Spirit 16 (2) 2006 ; Spinifex Pardalote Press, 2006

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Next week, Carolyn Hall responds to Haiku - Three Questions.

Ferris Gilli - Three Questions

My early attempts at composing haiku were typically of the 5-7-5 variety. They were, occasionally, amusing. I suppose it would be more accurate to label them senryu albeit very, very, bad senryu. Up until the time I stumbled upon The Heron's Nest via a Google search, all I knew about haiku had been gleaned from a suspenseful novel entitled Cryptonomincon by Neal Stephenson.

Through a series of enlightening essays written by Ferris Gilli, the veil of what I erroneously thought were haiku gradually lifted, enabling me to see with new "haiku eyes." I recall reading and rereading each essay, hungrily devouring the lessons, applying the techniques that would eventually improve some of my poems. I periodically revisit those essays to this day.

Ferris Gilli, editor, essayist, award winning poet, and teacher offers her thoughts on three questions.

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1. Why do you write haiku?

I write haiku because I have to. In the same way that I am (usually) compelled to respond to someone who speaks to me, I respond to the moment when a haiku happens—by mentally recording it and eventually writing a haiku. I respond to the challenge of writing haiku according to specific guidelines because this stimulates mental alertness, and a natural mood elevation comes with answering the challenge. Haiku activities can be life changing, bringing cherished friendships and personal accomplishment.

2. What other poetic forms do you enjoy?

Renku and rengay intrigue me, and I have written a few. My early addiction to renku may reawaken at any time.

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

I don't know about "wonderful" or best, but I can think of three that have brought me much satisfaction, and even pure joy. They almost wrote themselves—that is, I wholly experienced the moments, and the haiku were there. They seem to have struck a chord with a number of people, which is greatly rewarding:


cherry blossoms
the baby's hair too fine
to hold a ribbon

(2008 Best U.S. Poem, Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival)



the way he leans
into her whisper . . .
a mallard's wingbeats

(Snapshots Calendar 2007)



winter rain
the boy realigns
his bug collection

(FreeXpressSION Jan. 2007)

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Next week, Beverley George stops by with her response to Haiku - Three Questions.

Michael Dylan Welch - Three Questions

Like many in the haiku community, Michael Dylan Welch is a person of numerous talents. Not only is he a recipient of many awards (one linked here), he is also an editor, contestant judge, photographer, and publisher. He cofounded the Haiku North America conference in 1991 and the American Haiku Archives in 1996. He also founded the Tanka Society of America in 2000.

Michael Dylan Welch shares his thoughts on three questions.

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1. Why do you write haiku?

To me, haiku is an approach to infinity. It has an expansive quality that's somehow captured in what's small or brief or ephemeral. There's something transcendent about a good haiku -- it makes the universe feel right and whole. And even if not all haiku I read or write capture something transcendent, they are still a means of commemoration, little personal histories, celebrating not only one's five senses but the emotional feelings we have in relation to them. I've always been attracted to short poetry, so on discovering haiku (or rather, having it taught to me in a high school English class), I easily gravitated towards it. I now write haiku for the same reasons I take photographs -- I can't help it!

2. What other poetic forms do you enjoy?

I've tried most of the set forms of poetry, to varying degrees of success -- triolet, villanelle, pantoum, limerick, cinquain, sonnet, and other forms. Each one has its challenges. And I particularly admire rengay. Aside from Japanese poetic genres, I gravitate most to nonmetrical poetry, however. I tend to apply organic form to both haiku and longer poetry (Denise Levertov has written some helpful essays on the subject). I'm also a board member of the Washington Poets Association (one of the largest state poetry organizations in the country), so I'm actively involved with many poets who don't write haiku -- organizing festivals, readings, and other events with the organization, and also helping to edit the WPA's annual journal, Cascade.

I'm glad you ask this question about other poetry forms because I think haiku has more or less put itself into a ghetto, and really has itself to blame for a perceived lack of respect from so-called "mainstream" poetry. But as Bill Higginson proclaimed in a presentation at the 2005 Haiku North America conference, "haiku IS mainstream." It's just that we reject mainstream adaptations of haiku because we think we're the only ones who have seen the light -- or we fail to see how we too have adapted haiku. Of course, there are still rampant misunderstandings out there, and worse yet is the indifference many people even in the literary poetry community have regarding whether they understand haiku properly or not. We can do what we can to offer informed understandings in a palatable way. But an additional step haiku poets can take is to stop keeping haiku to ourselves. We can send our best haiku, senryu, and haibun to nonhaiku journals, and send our news and announcements to publications such as American Poet, AWP's The Writer's Chronicle, Poets & Writers, American Poetry Review, and to leading online sites such as Poetry Daily. And if we also write and publish other forms of poetry, we can earn "mainstream" reputations for our poetry that can extend also to our haiku. As I said, if haiku is in a poetic ghetto, we largely have ourselves to blame.

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

I think everyone who answers this question must feel, like I do, that picking the top three is a difficult task, like saying which of your children you love most. So rather than worry whether they're my "top" poems, I'm just going to subjectively see what comes to mind. Turns out to be these:


meteor shower . . .
a gentle wave
wets our sandals

First Prize winner, 2000 Henderson Haiku Contest, HSA Newsletter XV:4, Autumn 2000


first star —
a seashell held
to my baby's ear

Grand Prize, Basho 360th Anniversary Haiku Contest, Mie Times (Japan)


spring breeze —
the pull of her hand
as we near the pet store

Woodnotes #19, Winter 1993


Thanks for this opportunity, Curtis!

Michael

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Next week, Ferris Gilli.

Roberta Beary at 3Lights Gallery

3Lights Gallery has put together an online collection of Roberta Beary's haiku entitled the words i meant to say. The beautiful design of this web site compliments Roberta's poignant, skillfully written haiku exceedingly well.

Please note that you'll have to scroll to the right to view the entire exhibition. Personally, I like this format; it has the look and feel of viewing an electronic chapbook.

Here are a couple of poems from the words i meant to say:


just enough moon
for this firefly to land
on my finger


abandoned mill
the dark water keeps
its secret


An archive of past exhibitions is located at http://www.threelightsgallery.com/archive.html

The Cradle of American Haiku

This just in from Charles Trumbull:

"The Cradle of American Haiku" Festival 2008

featuring

Teaching Haiku in Schools and the Community

Homage to Raymond Roseliep

Mineral Point, Wisconsin

August 22–24, 2008

More information about this exciting event can be found at http://www.modernhaiku.org/cradle

Adelaide B. Shaw - Three Questions

Adelaide B. Shaw is our Haiku - Three Questions guest this week. Adelaide's debut collection of haiku entitled An Unknown Road is available for purchase online at Modern English Tanka Press, www.Lulu.com/modernenglishtanka, and from major booksellers.

While preparing this week's post, I was surprised and pleased to Google a preview of An Unknown Road at http://www.lulu.com/content/2574223. The cover is very appealing; the haiku within the preview are evocative and of the highest quality. This book of poems comes highly recommended to me by several readers of this blog. I will definitely add this book to my collection.

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1. Why do you write haiku?

Haiku provide me with an outlet for preserving small, pleasurable moments. It’s a way to express an instant awareness of an image, a sound, a fleeting experience of the senses. I was drawn to haiku because, with its brevity, it is the ideal poetic form to convey these brief moments. In rereading haiku written months before or even years before, I find that they bring back memories which otherwise would probably have been forgotten.

2. What other poetic forms do you enjoy?

I also write tanka and haibun. On occasion I have collaborated with others to write renku and rengay.

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

I have chosen three haiku that bring back memories in a way that a prose narrative describing the incident would not provide. They revive the instant shock of an earthquake, the sadness I felt seeing my father asleep in our backyard, and the strangeness of our first Christmas living in rural Switzerland far away from Los Angeles.


the pre-dawn quake
jolts us out of bed
to view the sunrise

Haiku Highlights, vol.8, No.3, 1971



wind-tossed leaves–
the withered old man
asleep on a bench

Mayfly, #36, winter 2003



Christmas far from home–
the odor of hay and manure
from an open barn

The Heron’s Nest, Vol. VII, No. 1, March 2005
Editors’ Choice

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Next week, Michael Dylan Welch responds to Haiku - Three Questions.

HNA 2009: Call for Proposals

This just in from Dave Russo:

Please spread the word that the organizers for Haiku North America 2009 are ready to accept proposals for presentations and workshops. See the HNA 2009 section of our Website for details:

http://www.haikunorthamerica.com/hna_2009.html

There is also a detailed post on the North Carolina Haiku Society Blog:

http://nc-haiku.blogspot.com/2008/06/haiku-north-america-2009-call-for.html