Sunday, 31 October 2021

gun metal clouds and deep woods: Claire Vogel Camargo and Rachel Sutcliffe


deep wood and clouds


 
 
 
 
the tailgater 
gesticulating 
gun metal clouds 
 

Claire Vogel Camargo
 
 
 
Claire says:
"Driving in heavy traffic one cloudy afternoon, amidst laid-on car horns, screeching tires, and cars cutting in front, this haiku was born. Road rage incidents are increasing. A guy even followed me off the freeway years ago. The fright of another honking, tailgating, menacing guy remains with me." 
 
 
 
 
 Claire's choice of a favourite haiku is by Rachel Sutcliffe:
 



 
deep woods happy to just be 
 
 
 
Rachel Sutcliffe 
 Per Diem, The Haiku Foundation, October 2018 
 
 
 
photo:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Claire says:
"Rachel Sutcliffe’s poetry can be wrenching. Having died much too early, suffering debilitating illness, Rachel wrote with an exquisiteness of expression; in a way that touched the raw ends and receptors in my mind, heart, and soul. Her poems bring me right into her pain, illness experiences, and feelings about life. Her monoku I chose to share stood out to me. In it, I can feel her sustaining and last gratitude maybe, but I also feel a message of positivity for the living." 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
“Waiting for Godot”:  
Vladimir:  “Extraordinary the tricks that memory plays.” 
 
 
 
 “Withnail and I” 
I:  “Get out of it for awhile. Get into the countryside. Rejuvenate.” 
 
 
 
 
NOTES:
 
 
the soft brush
of our hands folding sheets
cherry blossoms
 

Claire Vogel Camargo
Masters of Japanese Prints: Haiku (Bristol Museum & Art Gallery)
 
More about the live and online events:
 
 
 

adoption
re-coloring
a future
 
Claire Vogel Camargo
HAIKU DIALOGUE – ink ed. kjmunro (July 2019)
 
“Adoption or fostering is a gift to a child bereft of family, and of care and diligence, and love. Wonderful poem.” Alan Summers (adopted)
 
 
 
 
 
just widowed
all she accomplishes
without him
 
Claire Vogel Camargo
International Women’s Haiku Festival: Two Haiku by Claire Vogel Camargo
March 2018
 
 
 
 

 
Rachel Sutcliffe
(6 November 1977 – 23 January 2019)
 
 
 
Rachel Sutcliffe
Flying Free: A Poetic Response to Illness 
(Misfit Books Press 2018)
free download: 
 
 
 
 
 
Poetry Corner: Seeing the World Differently 
Hosted by Kathabela Wilson
October 2018
 
Rachel Sutcliffe
“Simple seasonal changes can also be seen at a deeper level as lessons worth learning in life.”
 
 
 
Halloween party
the surgeon
takes his skeleton
 
 
Rachel Sutcliffe
 
 
 
 
 
Half A Rainbow
Haiku Nook: An Anthology
Dedicated to Rachel Sutcliffe (1977-2019)
& Haiku Nook G+
Edited by Jacob Salzer
 
Proceeds will be donated to Leeds Clinical Immunology Research Fund, Leeds Cares at St. James's University Hospital. 





 
 
 
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Thursday, 28 October 2021

Vandana Parashar and Julie Schwerin enter the MahMight Zone






 
 
sudden rain
am I a puddle
or the sea
 
Vandana Parashar
 
 



Vandana says:
"With all the uncertainty and volatility around us at present, I sometimes wonder—what if I found myself in something unpredictable or catastrophic? 
    
Will it overwhelm me like the rain does to a puddle, or will I be able to tide it over with mettle and grace."
 
 
 
 
 
One of my favourite haiku is by Julie Schwerin.
 
 

 
half a lifetime . . .
the lemon tree
yet to grow a peach
 
Julie Schwerin
is/let, April 2021
 
 

 
Vandana says:
"This masterful haiku by Julie shows how humans are bogged down by aspirations of their own and others, resulting in them becoming what they aren’t, and weren’t meant to be. In a very subtle and yet powerful way, she calls upon us to acknowledge and celebrate the individuality of every being."
 
 
 
 
 
Favourite quote from “Waiting for Godot”
 
“We always find something, eh Didi, to let us think we exist?“
 
 
Favourite quote from “Withnail and I” 
Change down, man, find your neutral space. 
 
 

 
 
 
Notes:
 
 
Vandana Parashar
 
 
 
 
 


I AM 
Vandana Parashar
Title IX Press 2019
 



 
Julie Warther Schwerin is the associate editor at 
The Heron’s Nest and member of the Red Moon Anthology editorial team. 
 
Julie Warther Schwerin has been instrumental in establishing The Forest Haiku Walk in Millersburg, Ohio https://www.innathoneyrun.com/open-air-art-museum/haiku-walk/ and the Seasons of Haiku Trail at The Holden Arboretum in Kirtland, Ohio. PDF available here:
   
  
and Words in Bloom: A Year of Haiku at the Chicago Botanic Garden: https://www.chicagobotanic.org/blog/news/celebrate_national_poetry_month_garden_haiku 
 
 
 
More of Julie’s haiku can also be read at the tinywords site:
 







 

























Julie Warther Schwerin
What Was Here 
(Folded Word Press): 
 








A New Resonance 11: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku ed. Jim Kacian and Julie Warther (2021)



 


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Saturday, 23 October 2021

Übermensch and haiku by Jennifer Hambrick and Cherie Hunter Day

 
 
 

 
 
 
sizzling heat
a carton of eggs
in the middle of the road 
 
Jennifer Hambrick
 
 
 
 

 
Jennifer Hambrick says:
In America, one sees all kinds of weird stuff. I saw a cardboard carton of eggs lying in the middle of a busy road last week. In suburbia, no less. It was a freaking hot summer day, too, and I'm sure the poor wee eggs were cooked to squealing by the time someone bothered to stop and move them the hell out of the street. It was a moment so delightfully odd for its context that the juxtaposition was natural. 
So there you go.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A favorite haiku by another poet: 
 
 
 

the porn star speaks
through an intermediary
cherry blossoms 
 
Cherie Hunter Day 
is/let poetry (May 18, 2018)
 
 
 
 
 
 Jennifer Hambrick says:
 
What I appreciate about this haiku is how it totally dismantles the übergendered evocative power of one of haiku's most cherished—and most overworked—images, namely cherry blossoms, by juxtaposing it against an image of the cynical smut of the post-modern media age. Huge poetic energy involved in so perfectly tipping a cow that sacred. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
My favorite quote from Waiting for Godot: 
 
 
“Demain, quand je croirai me réveiller, que dirais-je de cette journée?”
 

("Tomorrow, when I think I've woken up, what will I say about today?"  
Translation mine [Jennifer Hambrick].) 
 
 
 
 
 
A different quote from “Withnail and I?"  
 
Okay ... um, how about this:
 
 
 
“Have you got soup? Why didn't I get any soup?”
 
 
 
I often find myself wanting soup. I mean, don't we all?
 
 

 
 
NOTES:
 
 
 
Jennifer Hambrick, Ph.D.



 
Book Review: Joyride by Jennifer Hambrick
Reviewed by Rich Youmans
 
Living Haiku Anthology:
 
 

 
Cherie Hunter Day’s haiku

the porn star speaks
through an intermediary
cherry blossoms 
  
 
 
 
Cherie Hunter Day says:
 
This was written in response to Stephanie Clifford’s (Stormy Daniels) lawsuit against Donald Trump for hush monies he paid to her in October 2016 for their affair in 2006. Michael Avenatti was her attorney and he made statements on her behalf. I found it telling that she needed a representative to facilitate a media response. She is capable but somehow not believable due to her role and gender—the power dynamics in politics. The lawsuit was filed on March 6, 2018 and the subsequent media circus took place in peak blossom-viewing time. Cherry blossoms don’t seek permission to express their intentions. It’s all in the open. The historical details aren’t really necessary to enjoy this haiku because the story comes through in the context.
 
 
 

Link to Cherie Hunter Day's most recent collection: 
for Want (Ornithopter Press, 2017)
 
 
 
Selected haiku from for Want (Ornithopter Press, 2017)








 
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Friday, 22 October 2021

Pravat Kumar Padhy is walking with dinosaurs as Neena Singh gently mourns, while Subir Ningthouja is held captive by Matsuo Bashõ

 

 
 

 
 

the dinosaurs we have come a long way

 
Pravat Kumar Padhy 
 
 
 
 
 
Pravat's Statement:
 
Monoku is an interesting poetic form of release of compressed expression in brevity and creating a room to unfold the expanded meaning of it for the readers. 
 
Dinosaurs used to walk on our planet 65 million years ago. The huge asteroid impact triggered the extinction of dinosaurs after walking on the Earth for about 165 million years.
 
The ku expands the vertical axis exploring the geological history. It corroborates the evolution history of human beings and the pragmatic scientific visualization on the stretch of the time plane.
 
 
 
 
 
My favourite haiku by Neena Singh:
 


 
quiet mourners
a half-eaten peach
on the table
 
 
 
Neena Singh
is/let 12.2.2021
 
 


 
Pravat's Comment:
 
Neena Singh is a haiku poet with the reflection of originality and integrity in her writing. The ku creates an emotional resonance through the image ‘quiet mourners’: the split of time for the life becoming lifeless. It juxtaposes an image of heavenly departure expressed through the word phrase ‘a half-eaten peach’. Perhaps the poet narrates the incidence with a seasonal reference to autumn during the prevailing pandemic time.
 
It reminds me of Ezra Pound’s observation:

“An “Image” is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time….. It is the presentation of such a “complex” instantaneously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art.”
 
 
 
Waiting for Godot:
 
“For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.”
 
― Samuel Beckett, ‘Waiting For Godot’
 
 
Withnail and I:
 
Uncle Monty: 
“There can be no true beauty without decay.”
 
 
 
 
 
 
gibbous moon 
the pond's captive 
swims with fishes
 

Subir Ningthouja
 
 


 
Subir's Commentary:
 
Who can forget first falling in love? 
 
This is my first haiku, I seriously wrote, when I started falling in love with this kind of poetry. 

The image of the moon in the pond fascinated me, despite the mosquitoes! Making up the poem in my mind, I dedicate it to all aspiring haiku poets, including myself.



 
 
It's not like anything
they compare it to—
the summer moon.
 

Matsuo Bashõ
English version by Robert Hass
The Essential Haiku: versions of Basho, Buson and Issa
 
 
 
 
 
Subir's Commentary:
 
I like this one because 
 
1. It is written so simply.
 
2. The moon has been compared to many things, as it has been in many aspects in various cultures and languages. 
 
3. Many of these vary.
 
4. The moon can be associated with different perspectives in different persons. From a child to an aged person, persons of different regions, cultures, professions....
 
5. Yet the moon is one shining above us all.
 
 
 
 
Waiting for Godot quotes 
 
“I'm like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget.”
 
“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It s awful.”
 
“If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot.”
 
"Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today?”
 
“Don’t question me! The blind have no notion of time. The things of time are hidden from them too.”
 
“When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we' ll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you?”
 
“For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.”
 
 
 
Withnail and I quotes
 
“I feel like a pig shat in my head.”
 
“I don't advise a haircut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos, and transmit them directly into you brain! This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.”
 
 
NOTES:
 
 
 
Pravat Kumar Padhy
 
Editor: Haibun, Haiga and Visual Haiku, “Under the Basho”
Panelist: The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Poem Awards
 
Monoku: An Experiment with Minimalism in Haiku Literature
by Pravat Kumar Padhy
 
Pravat Kumar Padhy’s zero
 
 
Pravat Kumar Padhy on another haiku 
by Neena Singh:
 
 
Neena Singh

World Haiku Series 2019


 
Subir Ningthouja
Imphal, Manipur, India
 
Subir Ningthouja is a physician. Initially, he wrote free verse and very short stories as a hobby. He writes that: 
“After a friend introduced me to haiku, I have been swimming in haiku and related forms of writing as an enthusiastic novice.” 
 
His work has been published in the Moonlight Haiku Challenge September 2020 Anthology, Haikuniverse, and Haiku Dialogue, and the Blo͞o Outlier Journal Winter Issue 2020:


 
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Thursday, 21 October 2021

Roger Stevens goes biking and Mirjana Božin is listening to the soil's twilight

 




racing bicycles
on the road behind the hedge
late hawthorn blossom

Roger Stevens
 
 
 

Roger says:

After taking a haiku writing course with Alan Summers I began to grapple with the complexities of haiku. I managed one that seemed to be quite successful.

This summer I started again, and wrote some whilst walking on the Sussex Downs. It began as I was thinking about how late the hawthorn blossom seemed.

The comparison then fell into place. In fact there is a third layer to the story, the pace set by the poem's teller.

Sussex Downs, now part of the South Downs National Park Authority 
which spreads across East Sussex, West Sussex and Hampshire (England):
 

After taking the above-mentioned course by Alan Summers I can't say I am absolutely sure what a haiku actually is. But I like this one by Mirjana Božin:



watering the garden
I listen to the soil
whispering in the dark

Mirjana Božin
 



Roger adds:

It's about the sound of water seeping through the soil, and so it has a resonance with pleasant memories of gardening. But also because I've recently been reading about the sentience of trees, and how they communicate with one another through micro-organisms and fungus through the soil. As though whispering. 




I never was a big fan of Withnail and I. 

And so I have no favourite quote. 

If that gets me banned from Mahmight, so be it.


I said:

So you don't like Shakespeare?!  😉
 


Roger said:

I am a big fan of Waiting For Godot though. 

And Samuel Beckett.

    

Vladimir: You should have been a poet.

Estragon: I was. Isn't that obvious?


Thank you. 

Roger

PS Regarding Marmite. I quite like it. 



NOTES:

Roger Stevens

The Poetry Zone www.poetryzone.co.uk

Shop www.rogerstevensshop.com

Children's Poems on You Tube http://www.youtube.com/user/rogerstevenspoet

https://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/author/1192/Roger-Stevens.html

YouTube channel for grown-ups  http://www.youtube.com/user/happy2oblige

Music www.reverbnation.com/rogerstevens

Twitter: https://twitter.com/poetryzone?lang=en




Mirjana Božin (Serbia) aka Mi Bo

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100025159083431

http://kamesanhaikublog.blogspot.com/2018/10/plodovi-duha-mirjane-bozin-12-novijih.html

http://kamesanhaikublog.blogspot.com/2018/10/u-ponedeljak-8.html

https://terebess.hu/haiku/nyugati/bozin.html






The  next generation of poets includes a number of interesting voices. Mirjana Božin tends to the understated, concise, miniature form, sometimes witty, always original, generally a brief idea expressed in one breath, as may be seen in her volume of haiku poems (Answer to the Sun's Ray, 1990). Her volume of poems (Immaculate Conception, 1991) suggests a new strength and range, and a particular concern with the destiny and, frequently welcome, solitude of women.

From 
“Voices in the Shadows: Women and Verbal Art in Serbia and Bosnia” 
by Celia Hawkesworth

REVIEW:
Women are conspicuously absent from traditional cultural histories of south-east Europe. This book addresses that imbalance by describing the contribution of women to literary culture in the Orthodox/ Ottoman areas of Serbia and Bosnia.
 
The first complete literary history in relation to women's writing in south-east Europe. The author provides a broad chronological account of this contribution, dividing the book into two main parts; the earlier period up until the eighteenth century concentrates on the projections of gender through the medium of oral tradition and the lives of a handful of educated women in medieval Serbia and the few works of literature they left. 

Hawkesworth also looks at the written literature produced by women, first in the mid-nineteenth century and then at the turn of the century. The second part focuses on the trials and tribulations that affected feminism and women's literature throughout the twentieth century. The author finishes by highlighting the new women's movement, 1975-1990, a great period for women in Yugoslavia which created a stimulating atmosphere for outstanding pieces of women's journalism, prose and verse, culminating in the creation of new women's studies courses in many universities.
 
 

 
 



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Sunday, 3 October 2021

the lion roars with S.Radhamani with rain on the tiles by Rachel Sutcliffe

 




midnight city throb

the secret of a lion roars

across the window


S.Radhamani





S.Radhamani says:

As opposed to a serene hamlet, the hustle bustle of city, be it an excited crowd from the theatre, or an enthralling mall, or a speedy ambulance that is deafening, or cautioning the passersby, there is sometimes agitation silently passing into the heart of someone, for reasons beyond articulation, this juxtaposition brings out something anew for speculation.





S.Radhamani chooses this atmospheric haiku:



cold rain

darkness trickles

off the tiles


Rachel Sutcliffe

Lyrical Passion Poetry E-zine, 2018 (ed. Raquel Bailey)

http://lyricalpassionpoetry.yolasite.com/japanese-short-form-pg7.php 







S.Radhamani talks about Rachel Sutcliffe's haiku:


Who will not like Rachel Sutcliffe? 


Wintry images of cold rain dripping and permeating darkness, with an impinging effect upon tiles, thereby both with combined effect and efface on tiles. 


The droplets or slow movement perhaps give a facelift to the tiles, change of color too. Contrast with darkness of cold rain showing on tiles with a telling effect, has a  catch and immediacy. 


The poet’s wording effecting room ambience and color all depicted in a running image. I like the image of show and tell that is well depicted.




Quote from Waiting for Godot

 

VLADIMIR: 

It'll pass the time. (Pause.) 

Two thieves, crucified at the same time as our Saviour.



Withnail and I scene:


The Bathroom

[I is in the bath shaving.]


I:

     Speed is like a dozen transatlantic flights without ever getting off

     the plane. Timechange. You lose, you gain. Makes no difference so long

     as you keep taking the pills. But sooner or later you've got to get

     out because it's crashing then all at once the frozen hours melt out

     through the nervous system and seep out the pores.


[Withnail enters with their lunch from the chippy]



Alan notes:


Rachel Sutcliffe’s now posthumous blog

Rachel Marie Sutcliffe 6.11.77 to 23. 1.19

https://projectwords11.wordpress.com


Marie Sutcliffe, Rachel’s mother continues the memory

https://putitintopoetry.wordpress.com



Half A Rainbow

Haiku Nook: An Anthology

Dedicated to Rachel Sutcliffe (1977-2019)

& Haiku Nook 

ed. Jacob Salzer

https://jsalzer.wixsite.com/halfarainbowhaiku/rachel-sutcliffe


Profits from the book go to Rachel's favourite charity

St. James University Hospital, Leeds Care

https://jsalzer.wixsite.com/halfarainbowhaiku









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