Dangerously Poetic Launch - sand between the toes: a haiku journey through Byron Bay and beyond
Dangerously Poetic Press will be launching sand between the toes, a haiku journey through Byron Bay and beyond CD/book at the Byron Bay Writer’s Festival on Sunday the 29th of July at 1:45 pm. Dr. Jacqui Murray will do the honours. Poet, journalist, historian and broadcaster, she has been writing haiku for many years. In that time she has been an international haiku judge, co-ordinated the JAL World Childrens' Haiku Contest in Australia and has been widely published. She is also a founding editor of the haiku magazine, Paper Wasp. About the cd/book, she has said, A lyrical reaffirmation of nature in haiku, music and organic sound to calm the senses and feed the soul.
Last year, Dangerously Poetic held a reading featuring the haiku of internationally award winning poet, Janice Bostok from Murwillumbah and Quendryth Young,a foundation member of the haiku group, cloudcatchers from Alstonville. We invited a shakuhachi flute player named Kevin James to play between the readings and the result was stunning. The audience expressed regret that we hadn’t recorded the afternoon and the idea for the cd was born. We called for haiku about the rainforest, the hinterlands and the sea from the many local haiku poets and were rewarded with 61 evocative poems by ten poets, many of them well-known in the haiku world. We decided to have a male and female voice on the cd and to print a small book of the haiku so a listener could follow along. Actor, James Khidir, and Laura Jan Shore read the haiku accompanied by Kevin James on flute and ocarina. The hinterland section is opened with a didgeridoo solo by Scott Bolton.
Beverley George, noted haiku poet, former editor of the magazine, Yellow Moon and present editor of the tanka magazine, Eucalpyt, has written the foreword. She says...
"On the CD recording that accompanies this booklet, the breaths of human voice and Japanese bamboo-flute flow and ebb, interspersed with bird calls recorded in authentic locations. The playing of shakuhachi flautist, Kevin James, is sensitive and interpretive. It bridges the spaces between poems so that each haiku can resonate in the listener’s consciousness."
Contact us through our website, www.dangerouslypoetic.com for an invitation to join us at the launch or a Sunday pass to the Writer’s Festival will get you in.
Meet the haiku poets and hear a sample of the work read by James Khidir and Laura Jan Shore with Kevin James accompanying them on the flute and ocarina.
by Laura Jan Shore