Happy Holidays!

I created this book Christmas tree for Elliot Books and I'm so stoked with how it turned out. Oh, and before I forget - here is the December page of the haiku calendar I did with my husband for this year. (click to enlarge)

 

Haiku first published in The Heron's Nest Volume XV, Number 2 (June 2013)

Well, it's been a crazy year with lots of twists + turns. And for those that haven't caught up - I stepped down as editor of the haikai section of the NZPS magazine. Onwards to 2015.

I wish you all the best for a safe + happy holiday season, and a creative new year ahead. Blessings!

November Calendar Page

Here's the current page of the 2014 calendar my husband and I did for our family. (Click on image to see enlarged view.)

 

 

thoughts of home

the air sharp

with sea salt

 

I didn't think I'd get a calendar done this year, but even with all that's gone on these last several months the itch to create one was still strong. So glad I did it, and my family members that have already seen it are loving it. I hope you've been inspired to create some of your own Christmas presents this year, in whatever form that takes. Maybe even pop a haiku in a card, or two. Enjoy! :-)





With A Little Help From Nature . . .

Nearly four years ago I found these:

What I assume are seed pods, under some trees in a lovely park in Tokoroa. I'd never seen them before and collected about 10 of them. All this time they've been sitting in a draw on my craft table waiting to be turned into something.

Four are now:

Christmas tree decorations for my nieces and nephews. I speckled them with white glitter for that dusting-of-snow look, then placed a red or green heart or star in the centre. Add a ribbon for hanging and I've created something truly unique. But I didn't stop there.

With these decorations being on the fragile side I decided to make them each a box with the letter of its recipient on the top. I hope Toby, Sadie, Rāwhiti and Te Hiranga enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them! :-)

Buttons for Christmas

Don't ask me where it came from, but this year I was inspired to make Christmas cards with buttons! As you can see below, my family will be getting green Christmas trees decorated with coloured wooden buttons on their cards this year. :-)

The pink and lime green one is especially for my brother and his new wife, Jess. She told me that she decorates her tree in a different combination of colours each year and that 2013 was lime green and pink, so I've done a card as close a possible for her to match. I hope they like it! (click on image to enlarge)

Writing My Way into 2014

Just two days ago I posted that I didn't have any writing goals or plans for 2014, and that I'd just wait and see where poetry took me. Well the Universe has provided . . .

Yesterday I was invited to take up a place as Writer-in-Residence at the New Pacific Studio Artists' Residency Centre in the Wairarapa (NZ) for one or more weeks. I'm so very excited to be offered this new opportunity.

And what an honour to be invited! A writer's residency is something I've dreamed of doing for years. Now I just have to figure out how I can make it work for me, as the residency is only partly subsidised.

I do have a project idea in mind, so am seriously considering my options over the next few weeks. And maybe my poetry will pay its way there . . .

This week I decided to take the plunge and offer my 2014 desk calendar up for sale to the New Zealand haiku community. This calendar is separate from the one I've made (with my hubby) for my family as Christmas gifts this year.

For my desk calendar of haiku and photography I've used some of my favourites from 2013 and added many new haiku and photo combinations to create a year of beautiful haiku moments. I'm delighted to write that I already have orders totalling 10 calendars, with still a few days left for folks to order, and I'm feeling great about this result.

I put myself out there and so far, so good. At least quite a few people out there in Kiwi land will have my haiku calendar on their desks in 2014, and that is a truly wonderful thought!

Photos of my Christmas cards coming soon . . .

December Daze

Things have gotten hectic this month. Even if you're not a big Christmas person you certainly can't help but get caught up in the rush of others as they proceed to shop, celebrate, and ready themselves for the big day. All this extra buzz and busyness makes things like supermarket parking difficult and appointments for haircuts hard to come by, even in a small country town!

So you'll find me at home making some Christmas cards for family and putting the finishing touches on my 2014 calendar of haiku and photography, which I invited my hubby to be a part of this year. We have six months each and it's pretty cool to have our two styles represented within the pages for our family to enjoy.

Below is my last calendar page for 2013. Click on image to enlarge.

I achieved some big things this year: the biggest of all being completing my first poetry collection and sending it in to the Snapshot Press Book Awards. It will be a long few months yet before I hear anything back about the contest, but it's exciting enough to have fulfilled my goal and the rest is out of my hands for now. 

Another big highlight of my writing year was being part of A New Resonance 8: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku (Red Moon Press). I still have copies of this for sale, so please get in touch if you'd like one to give as a Christmas gift to yourself or to someone else. Just send me an email.

2013 also included writing tanka sequences with Pamela A. Babusci and Seánan Forbes (a delight); judging the junior section of the NZPS International Haiku Competition (great fun); coming 5th in the open section of the NZPS International Haiku Competition (yay!), and editing a month of dream haiku thanks to The Haiku Foundation's 'Per Diem:Daily Haiku' feature. Hard to believe it's all coming to an end . . .

So, what does 2014 hold? In regards to the writing realm I'm not sure, but stay tuned!

Ten Years Tanka

ten years too late
I've translated the Italian
he wrote me that Christmas
I await your presence
in Soave soon . .

                        A Hundred Gourds 2:4 September 2013

 

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Here are the haiku I've been writing and sharing over the past 12 days at Gillena Cox's blog for her Twelve Days of Christmas celebration.

Christmas morning

 amongst the pine needles

a spider's gift

family gathering ...
the many sounds
of laughter

cemetery visit --
I place a Christmas angel
at his headstone

full moon ...
picking at leftovers
from the fridge

Christmas lilies ...
the way her eyes
light up

packing away

the Christmas decorations ...

another year without her 

New Year's Day ...

the bunch of balloons

hangs shriveled

first dream of the year --
i wake not knowing
which way is up


late Christmas card
call of a peacock
in the distance


somehow
in every room
threads of tinsel


wrapped up
in this Christmas gift, too
his love for me


holiday's end --
the spirit of Christmas
still in the air

O, Christmas Tree . . .

My heartfelt thanks to all this year in the world of haiku who have supported me over the past 12 months. Sending happy Christmas thoughts your way today!

To my readers, those that have left comments, and the poets that I've written alongside: Thank you!

To the editors that have published my work, the judges that have chosen my poetry, and those in the community that have sent me gifts through our haiku inspired friendships: Thank you!

Here's our little living Christmas tree 2012

May we all remember moving forward into a New Year that haiku is not a mountain to climb, but a bed to relax in.

My wish for you is that you'll be able to write the way you hear the poetry in your heart.

Christmas morning

 amongst the pine needles

a spider's gift

Blessings!
Kirsten x

My Crafty Christmas

Christmas cards: an angel cut-out from Christmas music (click to enlarge)

Here are two crafty gifts I've made for my family this Christmas,

along with my 2013 Calendar of Haiku & Photography.

Reindeer Christmas tree ornaments for the kids

Celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas haiku-style on 

Gillena Cox's blog Lunch Break from  

Tuesday, December 25 to Saturday, January 5

where she invites you to collaborate for the fifth year running.

I'm hoping to share in Gillena's Christmas story for the first time.

It would be great if you joined me! :)

Hot Off the Press!

My latest use of Vistaprint's services:

You can see the 2012 calendar of haiku & photography that I made for my family here, and the mug with haiku & photo I put together here. I also did up a fridge magnet of this image from my calendar. Vistaprint keeps sending me vouchers and so I keep trying new things. Have a go yourself and see what you can come up with for your haiku. That Christmas shopping could be done in no time! :)

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...

Christmas Mall

      Christmas mall...
      clouds move slowly
      across the skylight

Notes From the Gean, December 2011 (3:3)

Merry Christmas to all my friends, readers and fellow writers!

May you find some space to move slowly

this busy holiday season :)

My 2011 Christmas Picks

Here's my picks for you and your creative peeps this Christmas:

• Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness & Open Your Heart by Patricia Donegan
• Stepping Stones: a way into haiku by Martin Lucas
• Memories of Our Lost Hands: Searching for Feminine Spirituality and Creaivity (Carolyn & Ernest Fay Series in Analytical Psychology) by Sonoko Toyoda
• And for the second year running, the Mslexia Writer's Diary

(Please note: some links direct you to the book on my favorite New Zealand on-line bookshop Fishpond, but these books can also be found on Amazon.) Additionally, you might find some Barnes & Noble savings here.

Crafty Cards for the Kids

My mum is heading to Canada at the end of this month to visit the newest addition to our family: my sister's baby girl, Sadie. I always give the kids books as presents so have loaded mum up with Christmas and birthday books for both my niece and nephew. Here are the cards I've made for their birthdays: Sadie will be one year old in April and Toby will be two this November.

They may not fully appreciate these but the fun was in the making :)