June Round-Up - Visual Arts In Abundance

June has been a big and busy month. At week 26 of 2011, I'm half-way through my goal of submitting poetry to a publication or competition every week. You can read my post about that here. And thanks to fellow Facebookers, I got to see my haiku on the HSA Haiku Wall in Bend, Oregon. You can see some pics of mine and New Zealander's Pat Prime and Svetlana Marisova here.

Here's how I'm doing on my 2011 goal of submitting poetry to a publication or competition every week:

• week twenty-two - submitted two senryu to Excellent Writing, both accepted for July issue (with accompanying image)
• AND submitted two haiku to the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival 2011 Haiku Invitational (first time submitting here)
• week twenty-three - submitted two haiga to Notes from the Gean (first time submitting here & first time submitting haiga!), one accepted for September issue
• AND submitted seven haiku to The Heron's Nest (first time submitting here), awaiting outcome
• week twenty-four - submitted three haiku to The 6th Kokako Haiku and Senryu Competition, closes October 31st 
• AND submitted a further two haiga to Notes from the Gean, awaiting outcome
• week twenty-five - submitted one haiku to Wednesday Haiku @ Issa's Untidy Hut
• week twenty-six - submitted six tanka to Eucalypt, awaiting outcome

June was absolutely a month of visual art making and creating. I began putting together a vision board early in the month, which you can read about and see photos of here, with an update here. I did no other collage making this month; one collage haiga is still on hold waiting for some IV tubing that I hope to get next week.

Photography - I went autumn leaf spotting with a side of graveyard visiting several times in June and got some wonderful shots. One quickly became the image to sit alongside my two senryu accepted for the June issue Excellent Writing: my first time putting a border around an image and changing it to sepia. Love the look! Will put it up on my Photography page once it's published.

I created some more photo haiga this month and submitted them to a publication for the first time (and had one accepted! Notes from the Gean). Then I embarked on a haiga calendar for my family for Christmas. This was great fun to do and a lot easier than I expected (using Vistaprint). It was fun choosing images from my own well-stocked (though terribly catalogued) photo library and thinking about what my family would enjoying seeing, and how that could fit with my haiku, instead of having literary merit in mind. A very freeing experience.

And addictive for some time as well! I would get up each day and work on it a little more; even found myself thinking about it at night before sleep: composing new haiku to fit seasonal images or fiddling with placement of words. I soon realised that I had little in the way of spring images so will have to wait until I can get a few early spring shots before I can finish this project off. I know my family will love it, and I look forward to holding a copy in my hands very soon :)

July sees me once again taking part in the River of Stones challenge, plus completing my vision board and that poor little collage haiga that's been waiting all month to be finished. Otherwise, I'm concentrating on my treatment: many blood tests, a haematology appointment and a bone marrow biopsy to get through in July. I'll see you in the river! (And don't forget that I'm giving away a book here during July: details here.)