Hortensia Anderson Memorial Haiku Competition

The 1st “aha” (Annual Hortensia Anderson) 

Memorial Haiku Awards Competition 2013

This Memorial Haiku Competition is to honour the memory of well known and respected New York based haiku poet, Hortensia Anderson. Sponsored by Haiku Oregon. Find all the details here.

Peacocks and Dandelions

Here are two of the pages I made for my 2013 Calendar of Haiku & Photography that didn't make it into the final cut . . .

Click on image to enlarge.

I think this is the first image I put together when starting out planning for my 2013 calendar. I really like this combination, but in the end I couldn't find the right place for it. The haiku above was first published as a one-liner on DailyHaiku here. Our neighbours are horse breeders and have peacocks roaming amongst their fields. We don't see them as much as we'd like, but we hear them making their distinct call, more especially in summer. Hubby found this peacock feather on our property not long after we'd moved in. I first photographed it for a tanka that I wrote for Hortensia Anderson, in memoriam (you can read that post here).

Click on image to enlarge.

This would have been another summer page, but in the end, I created ones that I liked better. This photo was taken on our property after my husband alerted me to the butterfly. The fence is between us and a cow paddock, and the cows often push through the fence, shifting these posts, to get to our grass. The haiku first appeared on DailyHaiku here. I first paired this photo with another haiku that I'd written as part of a rengay with Cara Holman, "The Scent of Pine". You can view the post here.

I look forward to sharing the pages that comprise my 2013 Calendar of Haiku & Photography here beginning January 2013! :)

The XIV Calico Cat Haiku Contest

I entered the Calico Cat haiku contest for the first time last week as it was in honour of the late Hortensia Anderson. The results are now out and I'm very happy to see that I have been awarded an Honorable Mention for:

shooting star

I fold another

origami heart

Congratulations to the winner Sanjuktaa, who also took first place in the Haiku My Photo Challenge that I judged last month. You can view all the award winners and the write up here. A big thank you to Origa for running this wonderful competition.

Take Five Tanka

I'm so very excited to have three of my tanka chosen for the latest (and last) volume of Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka. M. Kei and a team of editors from around the world (two of which were New Zealanders! Patricia Prime and Owen Bullock) read over 18,000 tanka published over the course of 2011 and chose the best to come together in this fine anthology.

Although a tanka may be as small as a pebble, it creates expanding ripples in the mind of a receptive reader, ripples that touch far shores, with the polished perfection of the poem as the still center of meaning and experience. ~M. Kei

I'm honoured to be there alongside so many of my friends within the on-line haiku community, and especially two that we've lost to cancer - Svetlana Marisova and Hortensia Anderson. My three tanka to be included are all from my leukaemia journey and I'm grateful that they can now be read by many more people so that they might reach the very souls that need to read them.

browsing

the second-hand books

from my wheelchair

today I decide

not to feel ashamed

Eucalypt 10 (May 2011)

                    planning our wedding

                    in the hospital chapel

                    while I have chemo

                    I am not dying

                    but a part of me is

                    Presence #44 (June 2011)

                                        re-negotiating

                                        my drug regime

                                        with the doctors

                                        I tell them that today

                                        they may see me cry

                                        paper wasp 17:3 (October 2011)


My thanks to M. Kei and his editing team, and to the editors that first published my tanka. You can by your copy of Take Five from Createspace or from Amazon.com.

In Memoriam, Hortensia Anderson

I'm so grateful to have known Hortensia. Not just her poetry but her beautiful and courageous spirit. She reached out from her pain to mine with generosity and genuineness. In fact the first message she sent to me through Facebook was: "I think we have a lot in common!"

In further messages she told me that she was so excited for my accomplishments, that my work touched her and that I inspired her. Of course the feeling was mutual! I so enjoyed reading her poetry. She was posting tanka on her Facebook page as she said it helped ease her mind and that the feedback made her forget a little bit despite the bleak outlook of her current health.

just as I think
i can't stand the pain,
a blossom passes
and I cling to this life
while learning to let go...

hortensia anderson
April 26, 2012

(This is the last tanka she posted on Facebook.)

Back in February, Hortensia sent me an email with the subject line: "I thought of you today". She was about to have some further tests and said, "I want to be the piping plovers on my Facebook page. They don't seem to worry..."


in the wide sweep
of wind-sculpted dunes
i found undisturbed
the tiny trail
of a piping plover

hortensia anderson
(Modern English Tanka, Winter 2007)

click on image to enlarge

I look forward to recieving the copy of Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, Volume 4, which I've ordered as Hortensia's work is within its pages, along with mine for the first time. You can read more of Hortensia's work on her haibun blog The Plentitude of Emptiness and more about her life, as well as the awards she received, poetry books she wrote and some of her haiku, on her Haiku Registry page at The Haiku Foundation here.

Haiku and Tanka for Hortensia 

from her friends and fellow poets around the world. 

(You are invited to post your haiku or tanka for Hortensia in the comments section and I will add it to this post.)

spring dawn
in the stillness
a mourning dove

                    vigil lamp
                    losing the flame
                    to the Light

~Alegria Imperial
Both posted at NaHaiWriMo (24/05) under the prompt, Hortensia Anderson, In Memoriam

indigo sky
the lingering chill
in Chelsea

                    dusk at Union Square
                    lone pigeon waddles
                    against pounding steps

Couldn't resist adding these two. I know the area where her body lay in state from the years I lived at the Lower East Side. My friend in NY says there’s thunderstorm today, her burial. ~Alegria


                    first butterfly
                    of the season
                    I name it Hortensia
                    then it flies away

~Stevie Strang
On Facebook, every comment or like from Hortensia was an inspiration. I am honoured to have known her, if only for a while.


spring woods . . .
a distant voice
falls silent

~Michael Dylan Welch


                    in the seconds
                    between then and now
                    the white on her wing

                    ~Kat Creighton


poet’s journey
filling your bowl
with stars

                    the milky way
                    unfurls at your feet
                    hortensia
                    now galaxies hear you
                    sing the cosmic song

'as a wave'*
my finger sails round
the clay jar

~Stella Pierides
*'as a wave' refers to Hortensia’s haibun on her blog The Plenitude of Emptiness


                    fireflies
                    as far as I can see...
                    this gentle night

                    ~Pris Campbell          RIP Hortensia


I would like to offer this interaction between Hortensia and Svetlana Marisova on 28 June 2011. Hortensia sent it to me earlier this year with these words "I don't want this one to get lost. She posted it on my page July 28 when we were both feeling insomnia" ~Hansha Teki

Hortensia Anderson - I am the ultimate insomniac.
28 July 2011

Svetlana Marisova - I thought that I was.

waning moon
also awake
beyond dawn
28 July 2011 


howling wind —
an autumn note within
the bamboo flute

                    full moon
                    a glowing taj mahal
                    on river Yamuna

lotus leaf...
a water droplet rolls
the moon

~Kala Ramesh


I was overwhelmed by Hortensia's last post about her diagnosis a few weeks ago, overcome with grief and the realization that I'd never have the chance to meet the wonderful person whose work--and spirit--I'd come to admire. . . .

                    heat lightning
                    the sky heavy with
                    promises of release

selfish thoughts
at the news of her death . . .
if only we’d met
this friend I know only
through the shape of words

~Margaret Dornaus


I remember a draft of a haiku getting a lot of criticism, and I was about to ditch it when Hortensia stepped in, and said she liked it and it worked.

ill all day...
a crime novel
in both rooms

~Alan Summers

Publications credits: Blithe Spirit vol. 17 no.1 (2007); Haiku Friends Vol 2 (Japan 2007); Disclaimer, (Bath Spa University 2008); haijinx vol. III issue 1 (2010); Day’s End: Poetry and Photography about aging (2011)

Thank you Hortensia, for your faith in my work.

that star
to the left
so bright

i.m. Hortensia Anderson
June 24, 1959 – May 21, 2012


                    where she passed
                    a trail of poems
                    still glimmers 

                    ~Annette Makino