It is always a red letter day to receive news that one of my poems has been accepted for publication. I currently have haiku, senryu, short form poetry, tanka, haibun, and rengay that was selected to appear in upcoming issues of the following publications:
Name: Kirsten Cliff
Location: “Hobbiton” Matamata, New Zealand
Blog: Swimming in Lines of Haiku
How do you know Cara? I asked to be part of Cara’s network on Facebook after reading on a writing site that she was interested in haiku. Since then we have encouraged each other in all areas of our writing and still get a buzz out of appearing in publications together. We recently wrote two rengay via email and were excited to hear that they’d both been accepted for publication in A Hundred Gourds.
How long have you been writing poetry? I played with poetry as a child, then again as a teen, and came back to it as an adult in about 2005. I discovered and began writing haiku in 2007 after a January 1st stroll down the Katikati Haiku Pathway. It’s a form that I quickly became passionate about after feeling it clicked with me and how I wanted to express myself. I haven’t looked back since.
What kind of poetry do you write? I mostly write haiku, with tanka now being a close second, and I’m always experimenting with combining these two forms with art (photo or collage) to create haiga, with prose to create haibun, and with others to create rengay and renku (linked verse).
Please share a poem:
My insomnia has me awake early, and I’m exhausted. The low rumble of traffic has already begun, and as my feet hit the carpet I feel the vibrations through the floor. I head out to the lounge, and open the curtains on the dawn of another spring day.
bowing to the gods
the curve
of a lavender stalk
That scruffy blackbird is back. I watch him pluck worms from the wet grass, his jaunty pecks disturbing the disarray of dead leaves. With ruffed-up tail feathers, he finds one worm, then another, and hops to the concrete path in front of the dog-pawed ranch slider. He drops both worms in favour of the cockroach my fiancé stomped on and tossed out last night at my haughty insistence. The worms wriggle apart, and scoot in opposite directions. Which route is safer – heading back to the grass, or towards the house?
The blackbird turns away from me to crunch on the roach – dropping it, prodding it, clasping it once again in his beak. Does he sense my disgust? Or maybe he is too shy to receive my gratitude at having the signs of death cleared away.
all the street lights
flicker off
the sound of wind-chimes
He turns back to pick up the worms, then flies off with his breakfast bounty into the morning sky. I turn and walk to the kitchen to see what the fridge has to offer.
Notes: This haibun first appeared in Kokako 12 (April 2010). A different version of the first haiku appeared in Valley Micropress (Vol.12, Is.08, Oct 2009).
One challenge complete, another just beginning. February 1 marks the first anniversary of NaHaiWriMo. Although I’ve stepped out now and then to recharge my haiku-writing batteries, I have been fairly consistent about writing a haiku a day since last February. How do I love NaHaiWriMo? Let me count the ways… since then I have begun to feel more confident in writing haiku, made many haiku friends both online and in person, attended two haiku conferences and the annual Seabeck retreat, branched out and begun writing the related forms of tanka, haibun, senryu, and kyoka, had many publishing successes and contest placements, added dozens of books and journals to my haiku library, but most of all, have begun to feel like a valued member of the haiku community.
If you’ve been thinking of taking part in NaHaiWriMo, but not sure about the time commitment, the good news is that whether you choose to write one haiku, or all twenty-nine, you can still be part of the experience. More information about NaHaiWriMo can be found on Michael Dylan Welch’s NaHaiWriMo website.
And now, with no further ado, my first February 2012 NaHaWriMo haiku, as we work our way through the alphabet:
mid-winter blues
reaching for a red apple
on a gray morning
After working hard on getting the next batch of submissions into the pipeline, it’s always lovely when the acceptances come rolling in, and previously accepted work finally appears online or in print. I am not naturally a patient person, so the sometimes long waits to learn the status of a submission are difficult for me. But in the end, it all pays off. Of course there are those pesky rejections now and again, but I refuse to let those rain on my parade!
This has been a particularly good week for my writing:
Now onto my December submissions!
I’ll be honest. Halloween is not my favorite holiday. Not even my second favorite. But Aubrie Cox’s Tea with Trolls post went a long way towards putting a smile on my face, after the last candy wrapper had been swept up, and we finally turned off the porch light. I’m still playing with haibun these days, so I submitted a haibun and a senryu for the post, in honor of all those trolls I’ve owned and loved in the past. So click the link to Aubrie’s blog, sit back, read, and enjoy! Happy post-Halloween!
I discovered the VoiceCatcher collective two-and-a-half years ago, when I was still predominantly a writer of prose. I submitted two prose pieces to VoiceCatcher 4. Neither was accepted, but with the second, I received a really thoughtful page of feedback for improving the story. I edited both stories, and the first one (“The Tao of Laundry”) ended up in a Cup of Comfort for Mothers, while the second (“The Power of Music”) won the first Chicken Soup for the Soul Wednesday Giveaway Contest. Still, the VoiceCatcher stories and poetry tended to be a bit edgier than either of the above, so I did not submit at all in 2010, instead re-grouping. This was also the year I turned mostly first to general poetry, posted on Poetic Asides, Read Write Poem, and Big Tent Poetry, and then haiku. So when submissions for VoiceCatcher rolled around in February of this year, I was undecided on whether or not to attempt submitting again, and if so whether to go with poetry or prose. Finally, I decided to submit haibun, a form that had long intrigued me, but that I had only recently begun to write. And my haibun (“30 Degrees from the Horizon”) was accepted! I had the pleasure last night, of reading it aloud to a roomful of other women writers/poets/artist and collective members, at the book launch party for VoiceCatcher 6, an anthology I am truly proud to be a part of!
A limited run of VoiceCatcher 6 is available at Wordstock, any of the VoiceCatcher readings, Powells (Burnside and Hawthorne only), and New Seasons Markets, or it may be ordered directly from VoiceCatcher.
All proceeds support the VoiceCatcher mission:
Starting on Day 2, I realized that what I really needed was a strategy not only to keep from overload, but also to maximize my experience. I have to admit that sleeping in was a huge temptation, but I didn’t make all the effort to come to the conference just to catch up on my sleep! So with that in mind, I attended the 8 a.m. session of “Tai Chi Ch’uan– Waking Your Haiku Mind”, led by Don Baird. Now I’ve been doing Tai Chi for awhile, but I picked up two major tips that may seem totally obvious, but no one had ever told them to me before. The first was not to lock my knees while doing Tai Chi, something I discovered I do automatically, because I am thinking so hard about my breathing, and what my hands should be doing. The second was to start all movements with the legs; outwardly, that probably wouldn’t even be noticeable to someone looking on, but it makes a big difference in ease of movement. Afterwards, we wrote haiku, inspired by lovely photos taken by Don that were spread around the room.
slow exhale…
at the tip of my finger
a butterfly
The conference officially began with opening remarks by Michael Dylan Welch, and a round robin reading of the HNA conference anthology Standing Still. You can read the intro to the anthology here, and a sampling of haiku from it (mine is the 3rd down) here.
Then the hard choices really began in earnest. With three choices for the first session, I opted to attend “Monophilia: The History and Practice of One-Line Haiku in English”, where Jim Kacian did an excellent session on “the two-handed backhand of haiku”, to use his tennis analogy. I have yet to write a monoku myself– my next challenge, I guess– but have been enjoying reading them.
With no break, the next session I attended was “Celebrating 20 Years: Rengay Workshop”, presented by Garry Gay, where we got an intro to writing rengay, and received worksheets for writing 2 and 3 person rengay. We learned that while a rengay required adherence to a particular theme, it also needed to progress through space and time, with shifting points of view. Afterward, over lunch, five of us began attempting our first ever rengay (using the 3 person form), and got a respectable start on it.
After lunch, there was the first panel discussion, of “What Makes Canadian Haiku Canadian”, chaired by Terry Ann Carter, and with panelists Bruce Ross, Jessica Tremblay, and Michael Dylan Welch, where we learned more about haiku on the other side of the border.
We then proceeded to the Monorail station, and rode downtown, where we split into groups to see the sights. I saw Pike Place Market first, followed by the Seattle Art Museum, and had lunch with three others at the Copacabana, a Bolivian restaurant by the Market. We had to do a bit of power walking to catch the last monorail back so we could attend a haibun reading, featuring (among many others) Cor van den Heuvel reading from A Boy’s Seasons: Haibun Memoirs, and Eve Luckring’s video renku. I’ve been playing around with the haibun form a bit, and have five haibun that will shortly appear in Frogpond (2), Notes From the Gean (1), A Hundred Gourds (1), and VoiceCatcher6 (1).
I rounded out my evening with a panel discussion about “Developing Haiku Book Manuscripts”, chaired by Michael Dylan Welch, and with panelists: Jim Kacian, Ce Rosenow, Charles Trumball, and Don Wentworth. This left me with lots of food for thought, as I hope to put a chapbook together someday. This is not so much because I think the world needs another haiku book, but because I have so many haiku kicking around in my various spiral notebooks, and on my computer, that I feel a compelling need to organize them in some cohesive way.
To be continued…
Well I kinda sorta wrote to prompt this week for Big Tent Poetry. Actually, it’s more like a reprise of last week’s prompt. I liked the haibun form so well I had to do it again! And a journey, taken frequently in the past, that I’m contemplating taking again soon is an adventure, right?
Betwixt and Between
The first leg of my journey. I feel the familiar sense of anticipation twinged with reservations: Have I forgotten anything? (Have I ever forgotten anything?) Is this the best time to be going? (Is there really any best time?) My side of the bed will be empty tonight— I will be elsewhere. (Is this what death feels like?)
windfall apples—
another one detaches
from the tree
Now I am disassembling. Off comes the jacket, the shoes, my belt, my watch, my keys from my pocket. Out comes my Ziploc bag with miniature bottles of toothpaste and lotions. One by one, they fill up the little plastic bin, then another. I feel myself getting smaller and smaller. Becoming undone.
beneath the outer
layer of onion—
another layer
The green light comes on, the uniformed security guard waves me through. I have passed the test. Been given clearance. I’m on my way. I reconstitute myself. Put back all the pieces. Suitcase. Check. Shoes, belt, watch, jacket, keys. Check. Toothpaste and friends. Back in the suitcase. Ticket, driver’s license. All here. Before I have time to wonder: Do I have time to grab a quick lunch? Where’s my gate? I get swept away in the crowd, heading for Concourse A.
summer afternoon—
the drone of bees
grows louder
Finally we are on the runway, taxiing into position. More clearance given. We roll along, unimpeded now, picking up speed, faster and faster until the wheels lift, the nose of the plane points skyward and with a mighty roar, we are airborne!
higher than
the highest cloud—
the eagle
This week’s Big Tent Poetry prompt (which I almost missed, due to being so busy this week I forgot to check the Monday prompt until today), is to write a travel haibun. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at haibun. It combines my favorite two literary elements: prose writing and haiku. So here is my very first (and definitely not last!) haibun:
The Doors are Closing
This is an eastbound train to City Center and Gresham. The doors are closing. Past cars on the freeway, suddenly plunged into the darkness of the tunnel. Riders with iPod buds in their ears, behind newspapers, dozers. Metal on metal, shrieking in protest. Washington Park. Doors to my left. The doors are closing. And suddenly we emerge again, like moles, blinking into the sunlight. Past The Real Mother Goose, past Brooks Brothers, past the Galleria. This is a blue line train to Gresham. In the priority seating area, you are required to move for seniors and people with disabilities. Sun gone, now threatening rain. A man huddled in blankets on the sidewalk looks up at the sky with dead eyes. A woman snubs a cigarette out on the sidewalk. Skidmore Fountain. Doors to my right. The doors are closing. Over the steel bridge, the Willamette still and sullen. I stash away my notepad, take a few wobbly steps to the door, clutching the pole for balance. Rose Quarter Transit Center, Rose Quarter Arena, and Memorial Coliseum. Doors to my left and right. Exit, breathe city air, shoulder my backpack. I’ve arrived. Behind me, the doors are closing…
early fall-
the maple drops
a single leaf
