Wild bluebells

Thanks to Chen-ou Liu for translating and featuring my haiku wild bluebells on his bilingual poetry blog recently.

My painting of the bluebell wood at Narrow Water Castle, Warrenpoint, N Ireland

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Leaf III

The third issue of Leaf, journal of The Daily Haiku founded by Amanda White, has just been released. Editir Ravi Kiran is once again at the helm, and Keith Evetts and I have written our usual haiku and haiga commentaries.

We hope you enjoy this issue.

A gull crying in The Heron’s Nest

It’s been a while since I’ve had work featured in The Heron’s Nest journal, so I’m particularly happy that this one-line haiku has just been published in Volume XXVI, Number 1: March 2024.

This morning I decided to produce a shahai (photo haiku) using the one-liner, so combined it with this photograph taken last September at a local beach. By applying a monochrome filter, I hoped to create a more moody atmosphere, and cropped the original photo, so that the image became elongated. Hopefully, the solitary figure walking towards the faraway lighthouse—a symbol of protection and safety—will resonate when considered with the theme of melancholy.

I have just realised when zooming in that there is a gull in the photo!

With thanks to Fay Aoyagi who proposed this one to the editorial team at The Nest. 🙏

About The Heron’s Nest

The Heron’s Nest, founded in 1999, is a quarterly online journal. A new edition is published during the first week of March, June, September, and December. We publish multiple pages of fine haiku in each issue, plus three Editors’ Choice Haiku; one of which is presented with the Heron’s Nest Award, and receives special commentary. The Heron’s Nest also appears in a single annual paper edition anthology each April.

It is our intention to present haiku in which the outward form of each poem has been determined by two important elements. The primary element is the poetic experience, faithfully and uniquely evoked in words. The second element helps to shape the first; it is the poet’s knowledge and respect for traditional haiku values. When well balanced these elements result in work that is distinctively and unmistakably haiku. “Poetic experiences” are those that inspire us to express ourselves creatively with words. “Haiku values” are the traditional underpinnings, both Japanese and Western, by which haiku sensibility has evolved into what it is today, and which will continue to shape haiku traditions in the future. There are many ideals equated with each of the various haiku forms. No one poem can embody all, or even a majority of these ideals. Each of us must decide for ourselves what is important in the writing and appreciating of haiku. To help you decide whether to submit your work, you should know the qualities (described on our “Submit” page) that we regard as important to haiku.

Thank you for coming to The Heron’s Nest. We hope you enjoy what you find, and share what you have.

— John Stevenson, Managing Editor

#haiku #shahai #haiga

Another Leaf has dropped!

Thanks to editor Ravi Kiran for accepting two haiku and this haiga for the second issue of LEAF Journal, published today.

Keith Evetts and I provided the haiku and haiga commentaries for this issue which is available to read at the following link: https://leafjournal.io/leaf-issue-two-has-arrived/

Results of the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Contest 2023

What a lovely surprise on this wet and windy day in Ireland to hear that my haiku sudden gust has received an International Sakura Award in the annual Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational Contest.
Wonder if the fact I live in Warrenpoint helped! 🤔

2023 Winning Haiku

It’s a wrap

It was certainly a challenge, but also lots of fun to take the helm for the latest issue of international haibun journal, Drifting Sands.

Published today, these fascinating snapshots in time feature both factual and fictional narrative and haiku. Congratulations to all whose work features in this issue, as well the winners of the wearable art and haiku contest. Feel free to have a browse!

Sharpening the green pencil…

Today, on tinywords…

My first experience of judging — results of the San Francisco International Haiku Competition

Last autumn, I received an email from J Hahn Doleman of the Haiku Poets of Northern California. Jeff is the Contest Coordinator of the San Francisco International Competition for Haiku, Senryu, Tanka, and Haibun, sponsored by the HPNC. In his communication he asked if I would agree to judge the haiku category of the 2022 competition. To say that I was surprised is an under-statement but I was also extremely honoured, so accepted.

Over a period of six weeks I read the four hundred and forty-five entries—three times. Choosing from these was a daunting task and every haiku was re-read several weeks apart to ensure that there was consistency of choice. The competition was judged double-blind, so entrants were unaware of my identity and each poem simply had a number attributed to it. Imagine my shock, after sending my selection and judge’s report to Jeff, to learn that I had chosen the same poet’s entries for the top three prizes!

Everyone in the haiku community will have heard of the winner, Scott Mason. Scott is a highly respected and prolific poet and, despite my shock at placing him first, second AND third, as Jeff pointed out, it was probably only a matter of time before he achieved such a result.

As mentioned in my report, the final selection contains those haiku that I found to have placed a moment in time into sharp focus and reflected this in an interesting or thought-provoking way. I also considered the aural effect and visual layout and I hope you agree that these are fine, well-crafted poems.

Click here to read the winning haiku and commentary.

11th Setouchi-Matsuyama International Photo Haiku Contest

Combining words and images to produce haiga and shahai (photo haiku) has grown to become one of my favourite creative activities. I’m a fan of short form poetry and enjoy taking photographs of the local landscape, so it’s an interesting challenge to combine these in a way that adds meaning, without one part simply describing the other (see The Role of Fusuko Furi in Photo Haiku for more info). So this morning I was ridiculously excited to learn that I have been placed in both categories of this year’s Seoutchi-Matsuyama photo haiku competition.

Comment from the Judge: David McMurray
Try as we might to look past the fence and cross the water to a greener shore in a pleasing sunlit background our travel dreams are frustrated by the pandemic. The bold horizontal leading lines of the fence, the sea, and the landscape stretch right across this wide-angle image, dovetailing with the sound of despair from the text: though we want to, we cannot go. Similarly, the well-placed ellipsis […] makes us pause and cuts the lines of a debate in two. The haikuist masterfully imbued a photo and a pithy 3-4-3 syllable form with the longing that is on all of our minds.

This part of the competition involved the entrants using their own photograph and writing a haiku to accompany it. Mine was taken during lockdown on a short drive with my family along the coast from my hometown of Warrenpoint, County Down. It features Carlingford Lough, an inlet of the Irish Sea, with the mountains of County Louth across the water. It was fortunate that the shot, taken from the passenger seat while moving, wasn’t blurred!

The second part of the contest involved writing a haiku in response to a set photograph. This one was taken by one of the judges, Kit Nagamura (thank you, Kit)

I imagined the tension and pull of gravity as the bird lifted itself from the water, much like a plane taking off. I’m terrified of flying and that is definitely the worst part of the experience for me! When I lived in England for over a decade, I often travelled home and it was much easier to take the plane to Dublin or Belfast. But I never got used to it. After the holidays, it was also difficult leaving my family behind, hence why i struggled with the weight of departure.

Thanks so much to David McMurray for his judge’s comments. David is editor of The Asahi Haikuist Network