The Sketchbook thread for September / October is “cemetery”. As a kid, cemeteries were always kind of spooky places for me, but now, I find in them quiet peace. My haiku for the thread:
I brush aside leaves
to read their names…
cold granite
# 11.
autumn leaves—
grave markers blanketed
in heavy fog
# 67.
graveside service
the whisper of wind
through the pines
# 69.
pioneer cemetery
soft moss clings
to the headstones
# 71.
The entire thread can be read here.
The Haiku Foundation says that to request a listing in their Haiku Registry, you only need to be a poet who has “”published English-language haiku in an edited journal, either in print or online.” My first haiku publication (if you don’t count my early 5-7-5 attempts, and I don’t!) was in 2010, when a sequence of three Mother’s Day haiku I wrote appeared in a special section of the March/ April Sketchbook, followed later that year by my first non-kukai contest placement in World Haiku Review (August 2010), and publication in my first print journal in Riverwind 30 (October 2010).
But that wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted to feel like I “earned” my listing, and consequently set a personal goal for myself. To make sure it wasn’t just beginner’s luck, I decided that I would wait to apply to be listed until I was published twice in each of three of my favorite journals: Frogpond, The Heron’s Nest, and Notes from the Gean, and also placed well in at least two international contests.
“starting over” appeared in the Winter 2011 issue of Frogpond, and two haibun will appear in the Fall 2011 Frogpond; “muted sunlight” appeared in the June 2011 issue of The Heron’s Nest and “fine mist” in their September 2011 issue; “daydreaming” and “flickering stars” both appeared in the June issue of Notes from the Gean; I received a Sakura award in the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational in September of this year for “honor guard”, and in the same month, took third place in the International “Kusamakura” Haiku Competition for “morning mist”. My quest completed, and with twelve haiku contest or journal submissions currently pending, I finally felt ready to apply for my listing.
To the Four and Twenty Facebook prompt to write a four and twenty “that defines your muse”:
Musings on my Muse
bigger than a breadbox
smaller than a sequoia
fickle and flighty
will work for words
Sometimes I read a prompt and immediately have a haiku for it. Such was the case this morning, when I read the Wednesday prompt for Poetic Asides (write about “a creature that lives primarily in water”), and immediately penned:
frogs
on my mind…
it’s that kind of day
first day of autumn
a maple leaf
falls soundlessly
(Sketchbook, Vol.5, No. 5, September/October 2010)
crimson maples
chinook salmon
find their way home
(Sketchbook, Vol.5, No. 5, September/October 2010)
Both of these haiku appeared in the Sketchbook haiku thread, and also in the “Dusk at my Feet” haiku sequence that editor John Daleiden put together with some of the haiku from the thread.
“Dusk at my Feet”: A Haiku Sequence No. 1 Arranged from the “fall trees” Haiku Thread
Ralf Bröker, DE; Bouwe Brouwer, NL; Claire Everett, UK; Aju Mukhopadhyay, IN; Bernard Gieske, US; Cara Holman, US; Alegria Imperial, CA; Ramona Linke, DE; Chen-ou Liu, CA; Vasile Moldovan, RO ; Aju Mukhopadhyay, IN; Karen O’Leary, US; Keith A. Simmonds, TT; Janice Thomson, CA
What’s really fun for me is to go back and read the old haiku threads, and see how many haiku poets I am familiar with now from reading their works in other journals, or “meeting” them on NaHaiWriMo!
This was my first haiku that was named Editor’s Choice by John Daleiden, on Sketchbook:
first day of spring
under the bracken
a single trillium
(Sketchbook, Vol. 5, No. 2, March/April 2010)
I’ve been participating monthly in the Caribbean Kigo Kukai since April, 2010. Guess I’m hooked! The latest kigo was “mud”:
all-day rain…
indistinct footprints
in the mud
(Caribbean Kigo Kukai #28, September 2011)
All the haiku can be read here.
This was one of my early haiku on Shiki Monthy Kukai. It took 5th place in the free format division:
fifth birthday party
the oak adds
another ring
(Shiki Monthly Kukai, June 2010)
More of my early poetry….
A hundred sequestered monkeys
typing away —
is Shakespeare really inevitable?
(Four and Twenty, Vol. 2, No. 3, March 2009)
This poem first appeared in Four and Twenty, Volume 1, Issue 2, November/December 2008:
Puddle in the Rain
One drop joins another
In a rivulet, a stream, an ocean, a flood.
Still my pre-haiku days, but moving towards them…
Prose Posies 