A range of Australian haiku poets have been included in the latest edition of the ‘cattails’ haiku journal (from the UHTS), including the following three, whose work has been featured among the Editor’s Choices:

only the moon
privy to a possum's
tightrope walk

- Madhuri Pillai

outer suburb
the length of a dog’s
weekday voice

- Jan Dobb

first spring day
birdsong unravels
my knitting

- Hazel Hall

The Editor’s commentary accompanying these three haiku can be accessed through the following link, as can the text for Marietta McGregor’s haibun 'The Ten Millennium Tree', winner of second prize in the UHTS haibun contest:

http://www.unitedhaikuandtankasociety.com/

The judge’s comments in response to this prize-winning haibun can also be accessed through the UHTS website:

The Ten Millennium Tree

Marietta McGregor

Mt Read is surrounded by high-country woodland in the wettest part of Tasmania. More than three metres of rain fall on this place every year and, at an altitude of 1000 metres, it is cold enough for frequent winter snow. Crowding the margins of a small glacial lake is ancient forest, a relic of Gondwanaland, with 1000-year-old celery top pines Phyllocladus asplenifolius, endemic deciduous beech Nothofagus gunnii, and creeping pine Microcachrys tetragona. The feeling of this strange botanical world is primordial, a dark kingdom fit for trolls or dragons.

Beside the lake sprawls a distinctive stand of gnarled trees covering a hectare (2.5 acres). Tangled grey trunks stippled with peridot-green moss writhe like mythical serpents. Over the years, bowed and almost snapped by the weight of snow and alpine wind blasts a branch touches earth, sends down roots and throws out new upright stems which slowly mature into adult trees. These trees are male specimens of Lagarostrobos franklinii, or huon pine, a member of the Podocarpaceae family endemic to Tasmania, which is a dioecious species, bearing male (pollen) and female (seed) cones on different plants.

Huon pines are slow-growing, adding barely millimetres of growth each year. The timber is pale yellow, close-grained and almost free of knots with only tiny dark whorls visible in the satiny surface. Beloved by cabinet-makers and boat builders, huon pine contains a natural preservative, methyl eugenol, which gives the wood a characteristic aroma that persists for many years after milling. A gentle rub on the inside of an old box releases an unmistakable, delicately-sweet and haunting fragrance. Tree-ring studies of the Mt Read huon pine stand date the oldest trunk at around 3,000 years. Only California’s Great Basin bristlecone pine, ‛Methuselah’, has been verified to be older.

Botanists now believe the venerable Mt Read huon pines to be unique survivors. The remarkable fact is that they are genetically-identical males, part of a natural vegetative clone which thrived here for at least 10,500 years. What evidence is there that this clone has persisted for over ten millenia? Fossil pollen grains recovered in sediment from the lake have yielded a carbon date of 10,500 years. No female huon pines (distinguishable from their berry-like mature seed cones, tinted bright red by anthocyanin pigments*) grow at Mt Read, and there are no other living huon pines within 20 kilometres.

The Mt Read clone has been accorded the highest conservation value. But it has not always been so. From the first convict loggers in the 1830s who were forced to cut pines and float rafts of the buoyant green sawlogs down the Gordon River to the Sarah Island prison settlement in Macquarie Harbour, indiscriminate felling and burning by possum hunters has taken a heavy toll of accessible stands of huon pine.

Many hectares of burnt-out forest scar Tasmania’s south-west. Timber-getting and bush fires that rip through the wilderness unchecked remain the huon pine’s greatest threat. Fewer than 105 square kilometres (26,000 acres) of natural forest containing this species remain. Habitat shrinkage caused by climate change looms as a possible future threat. The patch of trees at Mt Read guards its priceless key to the resilience of nature.

death notice
holding the box
in both hands

Note: The writer made a comparative study of anthocyanin pigments in the Podocarpaceae for part of her honours thesis at the University of Tasmania, and also undertook palynological studies of post-Pleistocene glacier lake deposits in the south-western Tasmanian wilderness.

Posted by Rodney Williams at 11:17 PM | Permalink

For the third time this month, Australian haiku poet Jo McInerney has been honoured by having her response chosen as the winner in the ‘re: Virals’ segment on The Haiku Foundation website. Jo’s evaluation of Janice M. Bostok’s ‘envelope’ monoku can be found below, preceded by another commentary from fellow Australian haiku poet Marietta McGregor.

As the weekly winner of ‘re: Virals’, Jo has chosen the following haiku for comment:

dry wheat grass . . .
the whiteness of
a child dying

— Robert D. Wilson, ‘A Lousy Mirror’ (2011)

For posting on Friday morning (Eastern US Time) – as before – responses to Robert D. Wilson’s haiku must be received online by midnight Tuesday (New York time). Contributors need to submit through the THF’s Contact Box – using a subject header of “re: Virals” – with guidelines available through this link:

http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2016/01/29/revirals-20/

Jo McInerney’s third success with “re: Virals” has resulted from her evaluation of the following one-liner:
envelope my thumb slips open the seal of his tongue

— Janice M. Bostok, ‘Amongst the Graffiti: Collected Haiku and Senryu 1972-2002’ (2005)

After presenting other commentaries, The Haiku Foundation provides this segue into the two responses from Australian haiku poets, Marietta McGregor and Jo McInerney:

‘… it’s clear that Jan’s poems speak keenly to her fellow Aussies. Here’s Marietta McGregor’s astute take:

‘This haiku begins with the initially prosaic image of the ‘opening of an envelope’. Then it quickly reveals its true colours: like so many of Janice Bostok’s poems, it reaches sublime heights of sensuality. We see the poet sliding a thumb into the envelope, clearly thinking about how the missive has been sealed — with the tongue of a lover, two slow licks the length of the gum. There’s a sense of anticipation, regarding both the letter and the sensation of the touch and moistness of those sealing lips.

‘Of course, another reading could be that some mystery has been penetrated, something heretofore hidden from the poet which will now be revealed when this letter is opened. The sliding sibilance of the s serves to heighten the anticipation.

‘Sad to say, it’s a museum piece as well — in the age of self-adhesive envelopes, no-one writing about letter-opening will ever call to mind that slow sensual caress of a tongue on funny-tasting gum!’

‘However, pride of place belongs to Jo McInerney’s keen dissection of the poem’s many parts:

‘The meaning of Bostok’s monoku unfolds or evolves over the course of the line in a way peculiar to some one-liners. They are poems of transformation, rather like some of Escher’s etchings, where the images shapeshift across the page, morphing from one form to another, overlapping as they do so.

‘It opens by calling attention to an ‘envelope’. The word is not preceded by an article; it is almost as though the envelope were being addressed (pun not intended). There is an inevitable pause after the first word. If this were a three-line haiku, this single word would occupy the first line. What does the pause do? Create a sense of expectancy; suggest the potential importance of the message within? Imply that the speaker has recognised the handwriting, knows from whom this is sent? Yes, on all counts, I think. Then there is an apparently simple action. The envelope is being unsealed, but for just a second there is the possibility the speaker’s thumb has been cut, ‘my thumb slips open’. Paper cut? Something worse? There is a fleeting suggestion of pain. But no, it is ‘the seal’ of the envelope that is being broken. Yet the previous ‘misreading’ leaves an after-image. The letter has significance, perhaps the capacity to wound. Then the poem delivers its greatest surprise, the seal that is being opened is ‘the seal of his tongue’.

‘The ‘seal of his tongue’ could mean no more than his silence, but when ‘thumb’ and ‘tongue’ are suddenly brought together the result is startlingly sexual. Opening an envelope has been transformed into part of an act of lovemaking. On a literal level the description is no more than accurate — the speaker’s thumb is opening an envelope sealed by the tongue of the man who sent it. However, that is not the predominant image the monoku creates. ‘Thumb” and ‘tongue’ seem to touch in the same intimate space. Interestingly, a penetrative role has been assigned to the apparently female speaker. Indeed, the more the haiku is considered the more the various actions potentially performed by each lover challenge the reader’s erotic imagination.

‘For the time at which it was written, perhaps for any time, this is an audacious haiku, both in form and content. However, Bostok’s one-liner is not only a witty wordplay intended to amuse. It is a revelation of the multiple dimensions of intimacy and their capacity to be embodied in word.’

Posted by Rodney Williams at 10:20 PM | Permalink

For the second time this month, Australian haiku poet Jo McInerney has been the winner of the weekly 're: Virals' competition on The Haiku Foundation website: Jo’s response to a haiku by Charles Easter – ‘dry heat’ – can be found below.

In the meantime, however, Jo has again been given the chance – as the latest weekly winner – to choose a haiku to which other readers could respond: following on from her selection of Lorin Ford’s ‘cellophane’ one-liner, earlier in January, this time Jo has selected a further monostich from another Australian haiku poet, Janice M. Bostok –

envelope my thumb opens the seal of his tongue

For posting on Friday morning (Eastern US Time), responses to Janice’s one-liner would need to have been received online by midnight Tuesday (New York).

Guidelines for contributing through the THF’s Contact Box – using a subject header of 're: Virals' – can be found through this link:

http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2016/01/22/revirals-19/

Jo McInerney’s latest success with 're: Virals' has come through her extended response to the following haiku:

dry heat —
to the same withered flower
a bee returns

— Charles Easter, ‘Frogpond’ XXII:3 (1999)

After quoting another response (by Marion Clarke), The Haiku Foundation website notes: ‘But Jo McInerney found something more from the ecology’:

‘A dramatic decrease in the number of bees, especially in the northern hemisphere, has become yet another marker of environmental degradation. In 1999 concern over declining bee numbers did not appear necessary.

‘In Charles Easter’s haiku, the bee displays a curious persistence, a pointless return to a flower which can yield no pollen. However, it does not make an appearance until line three. What the reader is shown first is “dry heat” and then its impact on the physical environment — the “withered flower”. Despite the dash at the end of the fragment, line two functions like a pivot, the flower is affected by the heat from line one and visited by the bee of line three.

‘It is interesting that it is “the same flower”. This suggests the ongoing nature of the environmental damage. This is not a dried flower; it is a “withered” one. Its loss of vitality is not deliberate and preservative, rather regretted, yet in its desiccated state it has been effectively embalmed. This is the conservation of death, carrying the awful suggestion of a lifeless and unchanging world.

‘The last line gives us the bee. Two features of this line seem particularly significant. Firstly, it is a single bee; there is no abundance of insect life. Then there is the fact that it “returns” to this flower. It appears there are no life-giving options available to it. It seems analogous to the dove in Genesis, flying out repeatedly over the devastating waters seeking somewhere to land. But here a lack of water is the affliction and there seems no likely hope of fruitfulness or forgiveness. It is impossible not to sympathise with this small creature in its doomed endeavours.

‘I recently listened to an interview with Francine Banwarth videoed by The Haiku Foundation. She suggested that some forms of political statement are the legitimate province of haiku. Not crude propagandising, but an attitude of awareness which grows out of the acute engagement with the natural world which haiku fosters.

‘Whatever Charles Easter’s intent, this haiku seems a powerful warning of some of the consequences of climate change. To observe faithfully can sometimes be to predict.’

Posted by Rodney Williams at 06:27 PM | Permalink

Hearty congratulations to Quendryth Young for gaining 2nd Place in the Fifth edition Polish International Haiku Competition 2015 with

broken glass
some of the shards
glisten

Quendryth Young
Alstonville NSW

Commended haiku include the following Australians:

harbour light show—
a little boy points out
the half-moon

Owen Bullock
Canberra

yellow blossoms
fall into a street
of yellow blossoms

Rob Woods
Darwin

View results at:
http://polish.international.competition.haiku.pl/results2015.php

Posted by Cynthia Rowe at 05:10 PM | Permalink

As noted in a previous item here on 'HaikuOz', the following one-liner by Australian haiku poet Lorin Ford has been posted for comment in the 're: Virals' segment of The Haiku Foundation website:

their wings like cellophane remember cellophane

— Lorin Ford, 'Roadrunner' IX:2 (2009)

Lorin’s monostich had been selected by another Australian haiku poet, Jo McInerney, as a result of Jo’s own response to a preceding haiku having been chosen by The Haiku Foundation as the weekly winner in its 're: Virals' feature.

From five responses to Lorin’s one-liner selected – in turn – for inclusion on The Haiku Foundation website, two of those newly posted comments have been written by Australian haiku poets: Jo McInerney herself once again, accompanied by Cynthia Rowe.

Responses by Jo and Cynthia to Lorin Ford’s haiku can be read below, with all five comments about her ‘cellophane’ one-liner able to be accessed through the following link:

http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2016/01/15/revirals-18

The pair of comments by Jo McInerney and Cynthia Rowe regarding Lorin Ford’s haiku are reproduced here in full, in sequence, as found on The Haiku Foundation website:

“Jo McInerney explains the technique, and then grounds it in the real:

Lorin Ford’s one-liner opens by reaching for a simile. ‘[T]heir wings like’ and there it is, the comparison — cellophane. We realize we are probably being shown a dragon- or a damselfly.

‘Cellophane’ at first seems a slightly jarring comparison, one without the obviously beautiful connotations of gossamer. However, the image-maker is not looking for poetic effect. Cellophane has a shine and transparency that is just about right because without the winged creatures being named we know what they are.

Yet the poem is focused as much on this substance as on what is being described. Perhaps the writer has been taken back to childhood memories of gifts and lollies, cellophane-wrapped. There is a lovely spoken quality here — ‘remember cellophane’, a gentle wonder in the call to remember, as well a longing for confirmation. Thus the one-liner creates a sense of transience, a wistful recall of what once was and we are brought back to the ephemeral creatures with which it begins.

And Cynthia Rowe unpacks the variety implicit in the exotic word choice:

Lorin’s haiku provokes the reader, stirring the imagination. The simile ‘like’ is overt and yet we don’t know which insect’s wings are ‘like’ cellophane. Our thoughts are drawn to dragonflies and their whirring. Then again Lorin could be referring to cicadas whose wings vibrate and crackle in the way that cellophane does. She asks us to remember the ubiquitous product cellophane, which of course we do, particularly every Christmas when we wrap presents to place under the tree. The haiku could also refer to Christmas beetles. The kigo could be implied by the word ‘cellophane’; the speculation of the insect that the poet might be referring to is endless . . ."

Posted by Rodney Williams at 09:53 AM | Permalink

The deadline for the next edition of paper wasp is 1 February 2016.

Please note that the address for submissions has changed. It is now:

[email protected]

If you have already sent a submission to another address please resend it to the email address above.
Likewise all enquiries, including any regarding snail mail, should be referred to Jacqui Murray.

With thanks and warm regards

Jacqui Murray
Founder: Paper Wasp
Founding Editor: paper wasp: a journal of haiku

Posted by Cynthia Rowe at 05:21 PM | Permalink

Australian haiku poet Jo McInerney has just been honoured as the winner of the weekly ‘re: Virals’ segment on The Haiku Foundation website, which provides the opportunity for readers to respond to a particular haiku of note, as chosen by the previous winner.

Jo’s response to a haiku by English poet John McManus can be read below.

Looking ahead, however, it should be noted that Jo is not only the first Australian to have a piece of haiku commentary adjudged to be a winner of ‘re: Virals’ – with her choosing the following haiku by Lorin Ford for the next set of comments, it has also meant this is the first time that the work of an Australian haiku poet has been featured for comment:

their wings like cellophane remember cellophane

- Lorin Ford, ‘Road runner’, IX: 2 (2009)

The Haiku Foundation website strongly encourages readers to comment – guidelines are provided through this link:

http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2016/01/08/revirals-17/

Jo McInerney’s successful comment in the ‘re: Virals’ section of The Haiku Foundation’s website responded to the following haiku:

story hour
we fall further down
the rabbit hole

— John McManus, ‘bottle rockets’ 28 (2013)

In its introduction to Jo’s winning response, the THF website noted that she ‘identified some of the metaphor’s reach for us today’: as Jo herself observes -

‘John McManus’s haiku suggests the power of the imagination when taken by a captivating narrative. Through ‘story hour’ it presents story-telling as a spoor we follow to strange new worlds.
John’s allusion to Lewis Carroll’s ‘rabbit hole’ metaphor places the storyteller as gatekeeper, spirit-guide, midwife drawing the reader or listener through the passage between one realm of existence and another.

‘One particularly interesting aspect of this haiku is the use of ‘further’. This suggests we actually live by way of imaginative re-creation, constantly moving further down the ‘rabbit hole’ as we birth and rebirth our own existence. We may be our own myth makers, the creators of our own stories. ‘Fall’ seems to imply the inevitability of this process. It may not be something over which we have conscious control.’

Posted by Rodney Williams at 09:21 AM | Permalink

The submission period for this year’s running of the Sharpening the Green Pencil Haiku Contest will be between February 1–28.

Poets are welcome to offer one (1) haiku not previously published.

Any form of haiku allowable (no strict syllable count). No set theme. No entry fee.

Using the entry form provided online (see the link below), poems should be submitted in English, but poets may also submit a variation in their own native language.

Prizes: books and diplomas (first, second and third place, plus ten commendations)

Jury’s decision to be made by 1 April, 2016

Jury: Corneliu Traian Atanasiu, Dan Doman, Cezar Florin Ciobîcă

Further details, plus the entry form, are available from http://sharpeningthegreenpencil.blogspot.ro/p/guidelines.html

Eduard Tara (Secretary)

Posted by Rodney Williams at 09:01 AM | Permalink

Edited by Beverley George (Blue Giraffe Press, 2016).
ISSN 1839-5449.
In Australia: $A15 for one issue a year for 2 years, postage included; elsewhere: $A25, postage included.

Review by Elaine Riddell.

There will be many looking forward to this fourth annual issue of ‘Windfall’. The first time I was shown a copy of ‘Windfall’, my response was delight. Issue 4 is a worthy successor to the previous three issues. Like its predecessors, Issue 4 has the lovely, understated Ron C. Moss cover design and a simplicity of layout. Despite being small (A6), it uses a good sized font and gives each haiku breathing space on the page. The translucent papers, which separate the cover from the body of the work, seem to say, ‘This is a treasure. Hold it with care.’

Most haiku publications are international in nature, so it is refreshing to find a work that seeks to showcase Australian writers and their country. There is a danger in seeking haiku that are relevant to Australian life. The commercial world produces clichéd and superficial images that fill the stream of consciousness. The writer needs to escape these to find unique personal responses. The haiku collected in ‘Windfall’, Issue 4 avoid the trap of the stereotypical and the predictable. Not all are distinctively Australian, but when experienced as a whole, Beverley George’s selection gives a wonderful evocation of Australia: its environment, its language and its way of life.

Issue 4 begins with the mythical and the ancient. There is an unsettling sense of mystery in Lorin Ford’s opening haiku:

dusk on the river the bunyip’s cold breath

It is half light and getting darker. The reader can sense the palpable cold breath of the insubstantial bunyip. There is a sense of menace. Quendryth Young’s haiku which follows, also links back into ancient times, to the dreamtime when sacred places were established:

women’s business
gnarled roots around
the sacred lake

The image of ‘gnarled roots’ is particularly apt as a physical description and figuratively as a picture of women’s rites, shaped by time and deeply rooted in the past.

Haiku of rural Australia, the outback and the wilderness feature prominently in this selection with images such as the wide sky, mountain ranges, a tarn, a campfire, a dirt road, silver wattle, cockatoos, saltbush, a lagoon:

the one steep rise
on this same dirt road
that hawk once more

- Rodney Williams

rising
from the lake a jabiru
dripping light

- Lorraine Haig

Port Augusta
a freight train rattles
through saltbush

- Leanne Mumford

While there are haiku which feature everyday life without specifying location, there are not many that clearly show urban life. The Telstra Tower makes an appearance, as does the Harbour Bridge, a city footpath and long distance flight. This selection suggests that it is the vast spaces between the cities that are pervasive in the Australian psyche. There is a sense of vulnerability in this unforgiving terrain and climate. The weather finds its way into many haiku: the heat with its dust and haze, but even more the rain, which is either long awaited, or is worth mentioning because it is falling:

harbour bridge
rain drops drip from
the security guard’s hat

- Vanessa Proctor

days after
downstream in flood debris
the missing calf

- Mark Miller

Australian English adds colour and uniqueness to a work such as this. While one imagines that most of the readers will be Australian, any from further afield may have to resort to creative guesswork or a dictionary of Australian idioms to make sense of some of the haiku:

country sportsground
footy franks simmering
over the gas ring

- Gavin Austin

cut up newspaper
and a redback in the corner -
country dunny

- Myron Lysenko

‘Windfall’, Issue 4 comes highly recommended. The haiku cover a variety of moods. Some are more sombre, like the final group that reminds us of mortality. But there is also plenty of humour. Beverley George has again demonstrated her skill at taking a group of unrelated haiku and weaving them into a sequence that leaves the reader enriched.

For subscriptions and other enquiries, write to:

Publisher and Manager: Peter Macrow
Blue Giraffe Press
6/16 Osborne Street
Sandy Bay Tasmania 7005
Australia

Posted by Rodney Williams at 04:52 PM | Permalink

After much consideration Peter Pike, managing editor FreeXpresSion magazine, has decided, regretfully, not to go ahead with the FreeXpresSion Literary Competition in 2016. Consequently the Haiku Section of the competition, well-received and popular internationally, will not take place this year.

Cynthia Rowe
President Australian Haiku Society
Editor Haiku Xpressions
http://www.cynthiarowe.com.au

Posted by Cynthia Rowe at 02:31 PM | Permalink

‘Windfall: Australian Haiku’ Issue 4 2016 has now been mailed to all subscribers.

The issue features the work of 56 Australian poets and is published by Peter Macrow's Blue Giraffe Press, edited by Beverley George, with a cover design by Ron C Moss.

The annual submission window for 'Windfall' is July only.

Send up to six haiku relevant to life in Australia to [email protected]

Please be aware there is a considerable interval of time between notification of acceptance or non-acceptance and the mail-out of the journal in the following January.

For subscriptions and all other business, write with an SSAE to the publisher:

Peter Macrow
6/16 Osborne Street
Sandy Bay Tasmania 7005

$15 AUD provides one issue a year for 2 years, postage included.

Able to be drawn on an Australian bank, cheques should be made out to Peter Macrow. Australian postal stamps or cash are also welcome.

Overseas: $25 in Australian currency, includes postage.

Posted by Rodney Williams at 09:25 AM | Permalink

Selected by Jon Baldwin & Margery Newlove
Edited by Graham High
ISBN 978-1-906333-03-4
Ramsgate, Kent, The British Haiku Society, 2015 [265 pages]

This carefully selected anthology brings together fifty of the major articles published in The British Haiku Society’s ‘Blithe Spirit’ between 1992 and 2014. The selectors considered between three hundred and four hundred articles before making their choice of fifty, with no more than one by a single author. Its publication was made possible by The Sakaguchi Literary Studies fund which supports the production of special publications, and by the personal benevolence of Akiko Sakaguchi.

Lifted from the diverse pages of the quarterly issues these articles take on new value, coming together as a reference book of personal value to writers and readers of haiku and related genres, and also as one that would be a useful acquisition by leaders of the various small haiku groups, for sharing and discussion between members.

Browsing the contents pages sparks interest in various topics. I am currently very interested in the distinctive ancient role of Shintoism in Japanese culture, too often undervalued and dimly understood by westerners who readily embrace the broadly adopted concepts of Zen, without paying due regard to the significance of both practices. I recently attended a lecture on Shinto at the Art Gallery of NSW, and have been gathering articles on the topic to try to understand it better. Thus the article in ‘A Silver Tapestry’ by Stephen Henry Gill on ‘Shinto in Haiku’ is timely and helpful.

Also helpful are the two articles, both by Japanese authors, on haiga, the second of these also being translated by two Japanese people. As with all aspects of haiku and related genres, it is sound practice to return regularly to the basic origin of these genres, before forging our own pathways once more.

Explaining haiga, Akiko Sakaguchi writes “The existence of haiga arises from the incompleteness of haiku”, before commenting on the value of the light touch that Buson brought to haiga in his illustrations for Bashō’s ‘Oku no Hosomichi’.

In a separate article on haiga, this one by Kōta Kusura (tr. Susumu Yamane & Kiyoko Fukutomi), we read “haiga is the expression of poetic sentiment in harmony with haiku, drawing and calligraphy artfully combined.” The article cogently covers key aspects of haiga: including the following:

“Haiku is, in a sense, the poetry of silence; likewise haiga is the art of emptiness. An important factor in haiga is the beauty of blank space. The poet’s soul and feeling flows into the blank space …”

Two articles which prompt reading in conjunction are ‘A Sense of the Language’ by William J Higginson, and ‘Englishness of English haiku and Japanese of Japanese Haiku’ by Nobuyuki Yuasa. A topic that will always be relevant is addressed in these articles by two luminaries who have given so much time and thought to the internationalisation of haiku.

Of personal interest in recent times, was the article by W A Grant on Taneda Santoka 1882-1940 when in November 2015, in company with eight other Australian travellers, I visited Santoka’s memorial site on Kyushu, having previously visited his last home in Matsuyama, on Shikoku.

The chronologically ordered articles and contents pages, are in part useful to map the progress of haiku in English, always with the proviso to revisit original Japanese sources from time to time.

‘A Silver Tapestry’ is yet one more valuable achievement by the British Haiku Society for all who enjoy the diminutive but powerful haiku genre. At £12 UK ($17.00 US) plus postage, it is reasonably priced.

Purchases are most easily made through the British Haiku Society Bookshop, and can be made by cheque, transfer or PayPal, but please check details first.

http://www.britishhaikusociety.org.uk

Beverley George
Editor: ‘Yellow Moon: haiku and terse verse’, issues 9-20: 2000-06
Editor: ‘Eucalypt: A Tanka Journal’ 1- ; 2006-
http://www.eucalypt.info
Editor: ‘Windfall: Australian haiku’ 1 - ; 2013-
President: Australian Haiku Society 2006-10

Posted by Rodney Williams at 07:54 AM | Permalink

The following items were posted on the HaikuOz website during December, 2015, and can be accessed at www.haikuoz.org:

A Hundred Gourds 5.1 released
Report on December meeting of Bindii Japanese Genre Poetry Group
The Red Dragonflies’ Christmas Meeting and Ginko, 2015
Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival – 2015 Haiku Invitational
The Haiku Foundation – per diem haiku
Red Kelpie Haiku Group Meeting & Ginko #6
Australian poets included in ‘Haiku 2015’ – Modern Haiku Press
IHS International Haiku Competition 2015
2016 Setouchi Matsuyama Photo x Haiku Contest
12th European Quarterly Kukai Winter 2015 Edition
‘Eucalypt’ Issue 19, 2015 – appraisals
Tanka by Beverley George featured in Melbourne jazz performance
Submissions open till 31 Jan 2016 for Snapshot Press Haiku Calendar 2017

While we remain committed to sending a group email containing the above information to all AHS members – on the first day of each month – technical difficulties continue to be experienced on a website-based level with this circulation process. Apologies are extended to any members who have not been receiving such emailed notifications. Efforts continue to be made to rectify this problem.

Meanwhile, members of the Australian Haiku Society – and other readers of HaikuOz – are reminded that you are most welcome to submit items relevant to the haiku community, both here and overseas, especially in relation to:

• haiku competitions and opportunities for publication;
• news of success in haiku writing enjoyed by Australian haiku poets; and
• reports about meetings of haiku groups in various states/ territories across this country.

Very best wishes for the New Year,

Rodney Williams

Secretary
Australian Haiku Society

www.haikuoz.org
[email protected]
[email protected]

Posted by Rodney Williams at 02:30 PM | Permalink