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Daily Haiga

The DailyHaiga website was launched on July 1 and will present a new contemporary or traditional haiga each day. (For those new to the form, haiga comprises an image and a haiku.) The first few months will feature work by invited artists, including an'ya, Susan Constable, Laryalee Fraser, Sakuo Nakamura, Carol Raisfeld, Ray Rasmussen and Liam Wilkinson.

General submissions will open on July 1 and guidelines can be found on the website. The editors say: "In addition to new haiga, we will also consider haiga that pair new images with previously published literary components (e.g. haiku and related poetic forms). We will not consider haiga that have previously appeared online in any form."

Japan in July

1: The Windrift Haiku Group will be flying the flag - well, handing out bookmarks - for haiku at the festival on July 11. The festival is in the Wellington Town Hall and is a joint initiative of Wellington City Council and Asia New Zealand. The Windrift stall will promote haiku and the NZPS, and will be running a one-day haiku contest so mark the date in your calendar to go and join in the fun.

2: The Museum of Foreign Art in Sofia, Bulgaria, is staging 2009JAPANSCAPE from July 24-26. About 400 contemporary Japanese haiku, tanka and senryu have been printed with Japanese landscapes on "tapestries" To find out more nearer the time go here.

Haiku Podcasts

Haiku Chronicles is a new website has started offering podcasts - for those unfamiliar with the term it essentially means a digital file (audio or visual) that is available via the web only (i.e., it's not a radio broadcast). More poets will be added as time passes.

Obituaries

James Kirkup was the founding president of the British Haiku Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and adviser to the Japanese journal Ko. He died in May at the age of 91. Read an obituary from The Guardian here.

Paul O Williams was a former president of the Haiku Society of America, a former vice-president of the Tanka Society of America and a founder of the Haiku Poets of Northern California. As well, he was the award-winning author of nice science fiction books. Read an obituary on The Haiku Foundation website, scroll to June 10. Paul was 74.

gone from the woods
the bird I knew
by song alone

- Paul O Williams

Stoku 

Ben Okri supposedly creates a new form in his latest book, a loose collection of folk tales, calling them "stokus" (an amalgam of short story and haiku). "A stoku is a story as it inclines towards a flash of a moment, insight, vision or paradox." Needless to say, a writer should not have to tell us what has been attempted, The Guardian reviewer noted. "These are vague sketches - ill-formed, framed in generalised symbolic language, with only occasional moments of genuine poetry and insight." Hmm. Have a look at the full story here.

Hiroshima and Haiku

August 6 marks the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima - haiku poet Yasuhiko Shigemoto was 15 at the time and survived by hiding under a bridge. This NZ Herald article from 2005 recalls the 60th anniversary of that event and asks how haiku have been important to Mr Shigemoto. The poet's own website is here. On August 9 a second bomb was dropped, this time of Nagasaki. The World Kigo database includes information and poems about both events.

Mr Shigemoto also features in a documentary film, Resilience, about poets who have survived great trauma in, for instance, Rwanda and Poland. Read more about the film and see a trailer here. Mr Shigemoto features in the stills gallery.

Four Seasons of Haiku

The Four Seasons of Haiku website has collected together haiku written by a group of contributing poets, many of them English, from 2006 onwards (plus the Japanese masters), recording the changing of the seasons.

Tanka Resource List

Issue 5 of Atlas Poetica will feature a compendium of tanka resources. Anyone involved with tanka is being invited to send a short blurb (one paragraph) about your tanka group with its name, contact info, and brief description. The journal will also publish announcements, book notes, press releases, and other non-fiction items about tanka around the world that in some way touch on tanka poetry of place. Non-fiction announcements can be submitted at any time and will be included on a space available basis. For more information see the website.

Congratulations

To Ernie Berry who has completed a feat that will be hard to match - tying with himself for first place in the Lyrical Passions Blossom Haiku Contest (US), coming third and also receiving an honourable mention. This was one of the winners:

katrina
he reels in
his fishing boat 

To Patricia Prime who received an honourable mention in the same contest:

a long look
at the plum blossom
fading so soon

Read all the poems here.

Other results:

Kaji Aso Haiku Contest (US).

Kikakuza Haibun Contest  (Japan).

Haiku magazine contest (Romania) Scroll down this website to the results.

Competition cancelled: The "Basho Prize" for a book-length travel haibun, organised by Single Island Press (US) at the end of 2008, has been cancelled. Organiser Tom D'Evelyn says: "We had to suspend that for financial reasons. Too much in the pipeline, too little cash. We did get some submissions and had to break the news to these unhappy poets. Perhaps one day ..."

Submissions

Flower Haiku Anthology is being put together by bottle rockets press for publication in 2010. Submissions can cover any aspects of any type of flower, but no tanka, haibun or haiga will be considered. Send up to 20 haiku, previously published preferred. No e-mail submissions.
Closes: August 1. For full details see the website.

Haiku Page is asking poets to send 5-10 unpublished haiku, senryu or haibun for consideration, and notes that editor JQ Zheng is on sabbatical so there may be a delay in reply. Haiku Page will shortly go online, but in the meantime I can forward the latest (double edition) to anyone interested in reading it. E-mail me here.
Closes: November 15.

Publications

Takeaway by Diana Webb.  Read a review of this collection of haibun by Patricia Prime here (scroll down to find it). The chapbook is  £5.50, purchase details at the start of the review.

The Longest Time: Haibun by Richard Straw. Read a review by Patricia Prime here (scroll down to find it). The chapbook is $US8, purchase details at the start of the review. 

the taste of nashi: To hear Judith Walsh of Christchurch and nashi editor Nola Borrell discuss haiku and the anthology, go here and click on the first link to begin the audio interview with Lynn Freeman of Radio NZ National.

Order your copy of the taste of nashi using this form. There are various prices - including for NZPS members and those buying from overseas.   

Festivals & Conferences

Haiku North America: August 5-9, National Library of Canada, Ottawa. Crosscurrents will offer worldwide reflection, smooth the waters to navigate through regional haiku trends, and chart the ways to new poetic possibilities. To find out more go to the HNA website.

Pacific Rim Haiku Conference: September 22-25. Wind Over Water is being held in Terrigal, Central Coast (about 1hr 30 north of Sydney), Australia. For more information e-mail Beverley or go to the website. Registrations for this conference have now closed and the conference is full.

World Haiku Association Conference: September 30- October 5, Vilnius, Lithuania. For more details see the website.

6th International Tanka Festival in Tokyo 2009: October 10-12 in Tokyo, hosted by The Japan Tanka Poets' Society and members of The Tanka Journal. For more details e-mail Aya Yuhki. The programme is available here.

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