A small stone I picked up a few nights ago...

as the bath fills

so does the sky

with this moon

 Photography by Cameron Elliot - Poetry by Kirsten Cliff

Call for Submissions: MOONBATHING Issue 6‏

MOONBATHING

A JOURNAL OF WOMEN'S TANKA

 

FROM EDITOR
Pamela A. Babusci  

 

Moonbathing Issue 6 is now accepting submissions. 

 

I have additional copies of Moonbathing issue 5

If you wish to purchase a copy(ies) please e-mail me.
 

Moonbathing will publish two issues a year: Fall/Winter and Spring/Summer.

 

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:   

Moonbathing will feature only women poets.  

Send a maximum of 10 tanka per submission period. 

Submission deadlines:  

Spring/Summer: In-hand Deadline:  May 15th (spring/summer themes or non-seasonal only) 

Fall/Winter: In-hand deadline:  Dec. 15th ( fall/winter theme or non-seasonal only)

 

No previously published tanka or simultaneous submissions; no tanka that has been posted on-line on a personal website/blog.

SUBMISSION ADDRESSES:

Send your tanka IN THE BODY OF AN E-MAIL to:  

Pamela A. Babusci  

PLEASE NO ATTACHMENTS. E-mail submissions ONLY.

I hope that all tanka poets who have their work accepted will support Moonbathing by purchasing a copy or a subscription. If Moonbathing is to survive it will need your support and I will be most grateful for it. DONATIONS MOST WELCOME

 

DISCLAIMER: Moonbathing does not assume liability for copyright infringement or failure to acknowledge previously published tanka.

 

COPIES/SUBSCRIPTIONS:

 

Subscriptions: $12 for one year (two issues) U.S. and Canada; $6 for single issue. 

International: $16 (two issues) $8 single issue U.S. dollars; send US cash or international M.O.—payable to Pamela A. Babusci to:  

 

Moonbathing Editor

150 Milford Street Apt. 13 

Rochester, NY  

14615-1810  USA    

 

PLEASE NOTE: I will be moving into a new apt. by the end of May, so, please check with me for my new address before mailing me-thanks!

The Editor of Moonbathing is looking forward to receiving your best tanka. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail Pamela A. Babusci 

Respectfully submitted,

Pamela A. Babusci, Editor of Moonbathing

These are a few of my favourite things...

Haiku and dreams. Dreams of the night variety, that is. Both are equally important to me, although I'm not very diligent about writing my dreams down each day, whereas I will almost always write down my haiku. I hope to get much better at this, as I value highly what my dreams are telling me. Below is my favourite quote about dreams that sums up my feelings exactly:

Suppose someone told you

that there was something that spoke to you every night,
that always presented you with a truth about your own life and soul,
that was tailor-made to your individual needs and particular life-story,
and that offered to guide you throughout your lifetime,
and connect you with a source of wisdom far beyond yourself.
And, furthermore, suppose that all of this was absolutely free.
Naturally you would be astonished that something like this existed.

Yet this is exactly the way it is with our dreams.  ~ John A. Sanford (1975), Dreams and Healing, Paulist Press, NY

My blog title actually comes from a dream: In it I was literally swimming in lines of haiku and only awoke, with a sudden start, when I heard hubby's whispered exclamations as he'd hit his leg on the way into the bedroom (or something similar). I love water and swimming, so swimming in lines of haiku was a wonderful experience for me. I'm currently searching out dream haiku for my month as one of The Haiku Foundation's Per Diem: Daily Haiku editor's with my chosen theme of 'Dream Speak', the title of which I took from one of my own haiku: 

          dream speak...

          sunlight on the opening

          tulip's tips

DailyHaiku Cycle 12 (November 4, 2011) 

So, I thought it was about time I wrote a haiku about my above dream, and came up with this on Friday:

          even in my dreams

          swimming in lines

          of haiku

I'd wanted to change my blog's welcome picture ever since I moved last November, as the iconic Mount Manganui and beach scene was now in a different region to my new home. As of Friday, I have a very cool photo of rippling water, which I took some years ago in this region (Waikato) with the well-known Kiwi icon of a silver fern floating under the surface. And I've added my new haiku into the mix to convey my two favourite things as well as to give readers, old and new, some insight into me and my blog's title. I've always liked the image and am happy to be able to give it a fitting home at last.

During my dream haiku search, I came across the book Inside Out: Haiku and Dreams by Joseph Kirschner (Deep North Press, 2003). I was overjoyed when, on contacting Joseph and telling him what I was up to, he kindly sent me a copy of his book as a gift! Gosh, how I LOVE our haiku community :) I am thoroughly enjoying reading Inside Out and am grateful to read the haiku, dreams and explanations within it. (You can read a review by Modern Haiku here.) I will certainly look at writing more haiku from my dreams: It could definitely be a good way to get me to write at least some of my dream/s down each morning! After all:

Jung observed that dreams perform restorative, corrective, compensatory, prophetic, and developmental roles in our psyche; that to attend to our dreams is to attend to the cry of the soul.        ~ From The Art of Dreaming by Jill Mellick (Conari Press, 2001)

My 2nd Cancerversary

Yep, today is the day that I was diagnosed with leukaemia two years ago. I'm still in remission (yay!) and I have about five months of maintenance treatment left (double yay!) so almost at the end of it all now. If you haven't already, you can read a bit about my leukaemia journey here on the Leukaemia & Blood Cancer New Zealand website (don't worry, there are no gory details!).

I wanted to take a moment to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has been part of my treatment and recovery over the past two years: my family and friends, my doctors and nurses, my fellow writers, bloggers, Facebookers and haiku poets. I greatly appreciate your support and encouragement, your kind words and friendship :) You all have made this journey a much easier one to get through. THANK YOU!



          as I'm driven

          to the Cancer Centre

          an old man

          sits on his porch

          playing the guitar 

Ribbons 7:4 Winter 2011

Writing haiku and tanka over the past two years has also helped me enormously in processing my journey through leukaemia. I was so pleased to get an email yesterday telling me that I had four tanka short-listed for this year's Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka, Volume 4, all of which are part of my cancer collection. (And yes, it was one of my secret 2011 goals to get in this anthology:) Maybe this time next year I will have my book (with the working title, Patient Property) ready and published: my third anniversary would be the perfect time to launch it! 

How Did Your NaHaiWriMo Go?

I quietly wrote my haiku-a-day for NaHaiWriMo this February: I didn't follow the prompts by Michael Dylan Welch on the NaHaiWriMo Facebook page, and I didn't blog about it. Unfortunately, I did miss two days mid-way through due to illness, but as I wrote two haiku a few of the days throughout the month, I have come out with more than 29 at the end of it all, and am pretty pleased with my lot.

March 1st signals Autumn in New Zealand, and so it's time to share the March page of my calendar... 

March 2012 - Kirsten's Calendar of Haiku & Photography

The photo was taken at McLaren Falls near Tauranga last year, and the haiku was written on this blog during April's NaPoWriMo last year. You can click on the image for a larger view. Enjoy!

Straight From the Haijin's Mouth #1

'Straight From the Haijin's Mouth' is one of the features that makes up my haikai column in a fine line, The Magazine of the New Zealand Poetry. This edition is from the September 2011 issue, and is reprinted with the kind permission of Laurice Gilbert, Joanna Preston and Owen Bullock. 

Straight From the Haijin's Mouth

I asked this year's NZPS International Haiku Competition Judges, Joanna Preston (Open) and Owen Bullock (Junior), 'What is it about haiku that keeps you coming back for more?'

Joanna Preston's answer: It's less a case of ‘what keeps me coming back’ than haiku refusing to let me go in the first place! Every few years I decide I want to leave the genre alone for a while, but something will happen that just can’t be expressed in any other form, or that announces itself to me that way. And then I'm astounded all over again at the depth and complexity of the genre. For me it's that shock of recognition, of purpose, of rightness, that’s crucial in all poetry, but most powerfully concentrated in haiku. And there’s no better training for a poet – to be precise, to be good at recognising exactly what elements of a scene or experience are the really important ones, and to be as supple in meaning and frugal in expression as possible. You feel the really good ones in your body, as a physical impact, as well as in your mind. So maybe my need for haiku is a form of addiction, the way runners can come to crave the endorphin high. Or maybe it's the nuclear physics of poetry – the power to blow the world apart packed into a tiny, seemingly innocuous package.

Read more from Joanna on her blog – A Dark Feathered Art

Owen Bullock's answer: I love the variety that is possible in haiku, and the depth that is sometimes held by such few words. That depth is like a lake, you can swim on the surface or dive deep, chase sticks or skim stones. But it is always about what is real, what is experienced, grounded in sensation. The technique is hidden; the approach of the best haiku so subtle that it is as if no effort goes into it, that it tumbles out of the sky fully formed. Haiku takes me by surprise more often than other forms of poetry.

My own search as a poet is for truth and simplicity. Truth, in this context, means a faithfulness to what actually occurred. The simplicity required to frame the experience is a great lesson and training ground for any and all writing.

waiting . . .

a leaf falls

into my lap

~from wild camomile

Read more from Owen on his website

First Published Haiku

I recently took Sandra Simpson's advice from her January 2012 Haiku NewZ article, Turning Over a New Leaf, and created a 'published' file on my computer for all my haiku and tanka. I thought I'd better get on to it before too many more years went by and the task became unmanageable and undesirable! Now it's all done, I'm enjoying the fast and easy access to my haiku, and where they've all been published. While undertaking this task, I was reacquainted with my first published haiku and thought, "Why not share!"

Papamoa Dwellings

motor camp

grass struggles

against sandy soil

                    cleansing the mind

                    glasses misty…

                    sea spray

following sandy footprints

too big to fill

                    frisky waves –

                    white foam

                    chasing my toes

in summer skies

green kites flutter –

corporate giveaway

                    laughing

                    with the rushing wind…

                    dune flowers

enveloped by sand –

my feet…

warmed

                    discarded nylon –

                    a fisherman was here

empty beach –

but for the waves…

hushed

                    suspended from

                    an evening cloud –

                    our mountain 

 

This Side of the World: Tauranga Writers Celebrating 40 Years (Tauranga Writers, 2007) Edited by Sue Emms and Jenny Argante

The last haiku is this sequence went on to be published (with a slight change, see below) in the taste of nashi: New Zealand Haiku (Windrift, 2008) Edited by Nola Borrell and Karen Peterson Butterworth

suspended 

from an evening cloud –

the mountain 

 

It has also appeared in:

Bay News, Wednesday, May 21, 2008 
Waiariki Institute of Technology 2010 Calendar

and on my THF Haiku Registry page here

 

2012 'River of Stones' Anthology: submissions wanted

Fiona and Kaspa will be putting together an anthology of small stones from this year's river. They'd love to have a submission from everyone who took part, so do send them your small stones whether or not you think they'll be included in the book. As last time this collection will be edited by the pair and they'll choose the small stones that resonate most with them.

Submission details: Email up to FIVE small stones and your name as you'd like to be included in the book to this address with the subject 'river book'. Submissions will close on Sunday the 19th of February. All contributors will receive a free PDF of the finished book as a thank you.

Fiona and Kaspa won't be acknowledging receipt, but they'll let you know whether your small stone will be included or not by the end of March. If you haven't heard from them either way by then do let them know and resend your submission.

2011 'River of Stones' Anthology

I didn't officially participate in the January River of Stones: I didn't blog about it or write one each day. But I did still spent time during the month, when I could, noticing moments and writing them down, usually in my preferred style of haiku. I asked Fiona if I should submit to the anthology or not and she said yes! So I'll be sending in a few of my observations from last month.

I look forward to reading all of the stones in the book when it comes out in a few months time, and hope I'll see some of my favourites from the regular bloggers I read who took part.

DailyHaiku call for submissions for Cycle 13

I've had an amazing time being a contributor for DailyHaiku Cycle 12: it was one of my 2011 haiku highlights, for sure. I encourage my readers to make a submission to this excellent journal as there is nothing to lose and much to gain from the experience! My time is almost at an end: I have one more week-long set to appear, and then I hope to see your work there.

cutting

the last rose stem...

woodsmoke

By Kirsten Cliff

DailyHaiku, November, 2011

Dear Readers, Friends, and Past Contributors,

We are thrilled to announce that submissions are open for DailyHaiku's thirteenth publishing cycle! This represents the start of our seventh year of publishing as an online daily periodical.

We now invite you to submit some of your best work for consideration. Your submission, if selected, will grant you one of six spots on our roster of Cycle 13 contributors. It will also become your first set of haiku that will appear on the site. At the end of the 6 month publishing period, each contributor will have four weeks of published haiku, and will receive a copy of our yearly print addition that features their work.

If you are interested in becoming a contributor, please read our submission criteria detailed on this webpage: http://www.dailyhaiku.org/info/#contribute 

Feel free to forward this call to any other haiku enthusiasts that may be interested in participating.

Thank you for helping to make DailyHaiku a lively and dynamic environment to showcase contemporary short form poetry!

All the best, 

Patrick and Nicole 

Editors---DailyHaiku

Goals Or Poetic Leanings?

I'm loathe to make any solid goals poetry-wise this year. I wore myself out in 2011 with my personal challenge "to submit poetry to a publication or competition every week for the whole year". I'm going to write an article about it for the New Zealand Poetry Society magazine, a fine line, so that others might learn from my madness. I think I'll call it: My Year of Submission :)

This year I'm more about leaning in certain directions with my poetry. I want to experiment more, play more with the writing, with the poetry and it's different and wonderful forms. Not that 2011 didn't see me do the most amount of poetry writing I'd ever done in one year. Just the four PAD (poetry-a-day) challenges I participated in alone (all for the first time) produced many haiku, tanka, small stones and longer poems, many of which have since found homes outside of my computer, and my head!

But I definitely need to deal less with submitting in 2012, and so far I've done just one submission a month, letting several "deadlines" pass me by. I'm just not that into it this year. Call it submitter's burn out. And a "so-slow-that-it-might-as-well-be-going-backwards" Internet connection :(

So here's my poetic leanings (not goals!) for 2012, and beyond:

• To make haiku and tanka more a part of my everyday life by putting poems in cards, for example: I've done this in hubby's Christmas and birthday cards, and my parents wedding anniversary card, so far. As I enjoy making my own cards, this practice just adds to the uniqueness of the gift and is always appreciated by those who receive them.
• To write more linked haiku and tanka verses: I did my first solo linked haiku verse as part of hubby's Christmas present, which I framed for the wall. I've also written three tanka sonnets this year, which I really enjoyed and will send off for hopeful publication at some stage. The tanka sonnets in particular really sparked my imagination, and I know I will write more soon.
• To write more haibun and tanka prose: I've written a few of these over the past few years but really want to write more seriously in this area (as I keep promising myself I will!). You see, I have an idea for a poetic memior, which I would write as my thesis for a Master's in Creative Writing. I figure I have a few years to get really good at haibun, or kiss that little "goal" goodbye. I'll be taking two haibun workshops at the Haiku Festival Aotearoa in June, which will give me the inspirational boost that I'm bound to need mid-year.

That's all I've got for now. Feel free to lean along with me...