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Contest News

The family-run museum in Key West, Florida, that includes the Robert Frost cottage has been sold and closed and it seems the cottage will become a private home. Read about the sale here. The annual Robert Frost Poetry Festival, of which the haiku contest was a part, is being taken over by new organisers (the website has already disappeared), and it is hoped that both the haiku contest, and the festival, will continue.

Ernie Berry and Sandra Simpson, who were First and Third respectively in this year's Robert Frost Haiku Contest, will have those poems, plus the Honourable Mentions (and Ernie had one of those too) published in the September/October edition of the venerable Saturday Evening Post.

The two contests run by the British Haiku Society - the annual James W Hackett Award for haiku and the biennial BHS Haibun Anthology - are being combined into one annual contest which will have a closing date of January 31. Haiku NewZ will have full details nearer the time, but if you'd like to read more now, go to the website.

Renshi, "a new way of writing"

Four poets got together in Kumamoto, Japan, one of them American, in March for 3 days to write a "renshi", a mainstream poetry take on renga. Read about the project and the form in this essay. And read the completed renshi, Connecting Through The Voice, here.

Obituary:

Vladimir Devidé, 1925-2010:

Professor Vladimir Devidé of Croatia passed away on August 22 in Zagreb (thanks to Sasa Vazic for the news).

According to the website, Haiku in Croatia, the development of haiku in that country is indelibly tied to Professor Devidé, a "Japanologist", mathematician and member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb. His contribution in popularising Japanese culture in Croatia for over 40 years was recognised with the award of the prestigious Japanese Order of the Sacred Treasure - Konsantõ Zuihôshõ.

Among his books were Antologija hrvatskoga haiku pjesništva (Anthology of Croatian Haiku), published in 1995, and Haibun, a collection of his work, published in 1997 with illustrations by Nada Žiljak and translated into English, German and Japanese. For a full biography, including some haiku, go to the website.

Anyone who would like to send a haiku in memory of Professor Devidé is welcome to email them here for publication in the next issue of IRIS haiku journal. The deadline for submissions is September 15.

Congratulations

To Doc Drumheller who has had 10 haiku published in the anthology from the World Haiku Festival, in Pecs (Hungary), which was held between August 6 and 8. And at the Festival Contest, Doc won first prize with:

a frog statue
doesn't jump into the pond
the sound of silence

(Thanks to Vasile Moldovan for this news. Read all the prizewinners here.)

To Barbara Strang, Pat Prime, André Surridge, Elaine Riddell, Helen Yong and Ernie Berry who have all received prizes (exactly which ones is in Japanese only) in the Ito-En Haiku Contest (Japan) and will probably have their poems appear on labels for tea drinks. Read the full list of winners here.

monday
a swarm of gardeners
on the tulips

- Barbara Strang

Barbara emails to say that she has won Y50,000 (over $NZ700) and is to receive green tea products with her haiku on them - and that was for an Honourable Mention! Late in August she added that she has received a copy of the "beautifully wrapped" book of the contest, Jiyu-Katari (free-talking).

Andre Surridge received an Honourable Mention for:

sunny day
butter melting
on sweet corn cobs

And Ernest Berry a prize for:

riding school
the synchronised rise and fall
of ponytails

"Can't find any others by Kiwis among the thousands of Japanese haiku; it makes you realise what a big contest it is, and pretty amazing to be part of," Barbara says.

Other results:

Tanka Society of America International Contest (US).

Kikakuza Haibun Contest (Japan, but run in English).

Submissions

1: Cellphones is seeking poems of 140 characters or less and, to mark the site's second anniversary, is also looking for what amounts to haiga.
Submit: For full details of how to submit poems only go to this webpage on the Cellphones site; or for poems and pictures go this webpage. 

2: Simply Haiku calls for submissions - "quality traditional English-language haiku, tanka, haibun, haiga, renga, book reviews, interviews and feature articles".
Closes: September 15. For full details see the website (go into current issue for submission details).

3: Janice Bostock is to guest edit the haiku pages for the December issue of Famous Reporter. Send poems to Janice. See Publications page for submission details.
Closes: September 30.

4: 25 Tanka for Children is a new project from Atlas Poetica and is seeking poems suitable for children aged 6-12. "Upbeat, fun, and silly tanka are welcome," editor M Kei says, "but so are tanka that address topics such as the loss of a pet, divorce, disabilty, bullies, etc. However, the purpose of the collection is to engage children with tanka, so serious subjects should be handled in a positive and entertaining way. Poets should speak to children, not about children."

Tanka, kyoka, waka, gogyohka, cinquain, cinqku, and other recognized variants of tanka in English are all welcome, as are shaped tank (but all should be able to be reproduced as text). A Teacher Guide is possible so those who work with children in any capacity are invited to comment briefly upon their poems regarding pedagogic value. These comments might be edited and expanded to become a teachers guide, and poets understand that their commentary, if used, will receive a credit. The teachers guide is not a firm project, and there is no guarantee that it will happen.
Closes: September 15. Poems should be contained in the body of an email. Please query before sending attachments. Send up to 10 poems (only one poem by each poet will be chosen). Send to: editor@AtlasPoetica.org, with a subject line of Tanka for Children.

5: Magnapoets Special Anniversary Bilingual Feature seeks haiku and senryu in English or French. The feature will be published in conjunction with the regular issue. Send up to 10 haiku/senryu to Damien Gabriels. 
Closes: October 31. Full details from the website.

6: Matrix Magazine is seeking previously unpublished "Zen-inspired poetry", including haiku, tanka, haibun and renku. Please send 1 poem per page, apart from haiku which may be 3-4 to the page. Electronic submissions only for the attention of issue editors Mary di Michele & Susan Gillis.
Closes: October 31.
For full details see the website.

7: The Heron's Nest 2010 Illustration Contest is looking for material that will be used for the Volume 12 annual print edition, which will be mailed next April. Submit graphic images suitable for use as either a cover or a section marker for any of the four seasons or "overview" or "readers' choice awards" sections. The format should be TIF, and the resolution must be 300dpi or better.

Submissions may be emailed to managing editor John Stevenson or posted to The Heron's Nest, PO Box 122, Nassau, NY 12123, United States. Please note that any images selected will have to be provided in the TIF format.
Closes: In-hand November 15.

Conferences & Courses

1: Seabeck Haiku Getaway, November 4-7, Washington State, USA

An annual haiku "retreat" organised by Haiku Northwest on the Kitsap Peninsula. $US199 for a long weekend of meals, accommodations, and all the haiku you can carry! Workshops, presentations, writing and a book fair. Register by September 30. For full details, including a location map, see the website.

2: Haiku North America, July 27-31, 2011, Millikin University, Decatur, Illinois

Pathways to Learning and Teaching Haiku is the theme of this biennial get-together which will celebrate teachers, mentors, editors, publishers, friends, haiku societies, website-based connections, and social networks that introduced us to and nourish us on the haiku path. For more information see the HSA website.

Publications

First Winter Rain: Selected Tanka from 2006-2010 by Denis M. Garrison (MET Press) was published on August 1.  

The 252 tanka are grouped in 8 themed chapters and following the individual poems "there is a long final chapter of enthralling tanka presented in sets, strings and sequences, within which each piece stands alone and also resonates with the next", says Amelia Fielden, herself a tanka poet of note. "There could be no better description of the brilliance of Garrison's work, as showcased in First Winter Rain, than this tanka which appears in its first chapter," she says:

These unstrung beads
Each is a work of art by itself
Fragments of a piece
But each a thing of beauty -
They know the snowflake's secret

Denis M. Garrison is the publisher of Ambrosia: Journal of Fine Haiku, and Concise Delight Magazine of Short Poetry. He lives near Maryland's Chesapeake Bay with his wife, Deborah, and is a well-known poet and editor. For more review notices, go here.

First Winter Rain is available here and sells for $US13.95. ISBN 978-1-935398-21-9.

Spilled Milk by Gary Hotham.

Read details here of this collection crafted over the past decade by the American writer. 

Walking into Autumn: a haiku collaboration by John Bird & Beverley George (black & white drawings by Carl Ripphausen).

Beverley, editor of the tanka journal Eucalypt, and John, editor of the Haiku Dreaming website, have done something unusual with this collection. "We soon discovered we were most comfortable when writing truly collaboratively, working together on each haiku and sharing ownership", Beverley writes in the introduction.

Reviewer Pat Prime says the collection comprises eight sequences; all of which have been published in journals, and many of which have received prizes. "The sequences are characterised as emerging from the encounter of two poets, meditating on the same topic. This in turn combines to form a third element which transcends its component parts and, at its best, allows the reader a glimpse of what is behind appearances. John and Beverley, both excellent poets in their own right, make plain that this endeavour gave them great pleasure."

She selects two favourites:

the old school -
discussing Norfolk pines
no longer there

finding words
for the colour of things -
a skein of greys

To order Walking into Autumn write to: B M George, PO Box 37, Pearl Beach, NSW 2256, Australia. The book costs $A12.50 within Australia, $A15.50 in Japan and New Zealand, and $A17.50 in Britain, the US and Canada.

To read Pat's full review (which includes more poems) go here.

Double Take: Response Tanka, by Sonja Arntzen and Naomi Beth Wakan, published by MET Press, $US15. Find more information here.

A catalyst for this book was In Two Minds, a book of tanka by Australian poets, Amelia Fielden and Kathy Kituai, a book of what they called "responsive tanka". Sonja writes in her introduction: "To have two short poems create a conversation with each other brought a whole new dimension into the presentation of tanka in English. Reading the book with delight, I mentioned to Naomi that we could try exchanging tanka for fun. ‘We certainly could and we'll make a book out of it!' was her response."

The translation of poems written in Chinese by the Japanese Zen monk Ikky S jun (1394-1481) absorbed Sonja Arntzen for 20 years and resulted in the publication of Ikky and the Crazy Cloud Anthology (Tokyo University Press, 1986). Also drawn to the vast body of work produced by Japanese women writers in the 10th and 11th centuries, she has published a translation of a 10th century woman's journal, The Kager Diary (University of Michigan, 1997). Retired from teaching at the University of Toronto, she is working on various translations and a history of Japanese women's writing. Naomi Beth Wakan has written over 35 books, including Haiku - one breath poetry (Heian International). Naomi is a member of Haiku Canada, Tanka Canada, The League of Canadian Poets, and Poetry Gabriola.

the taste of nashi is still available for sale - the third haiku anthology of work in New Zealand. Order your copy, or one for a friend, using this form. There are various prices - including for NZPS members and those buying from overseas.

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