Dust

visiting the in-laws

this dust on her

artificial flowers

Prune Juice, Issue 8, Spring 2012 

Senryu and photography © Kirsten Cliff 

 

When A Poem Finds Its Home

I'm beginning to believe more and more that every poem has a home, which will be found eventually. Prune Juice is a place where senryu of mine (some written back when I began in 2007) are finally finding their kin and I'm so pleased that these poems, which I was starting to think just didn't fit anywhere, are now being enjoyed by an audience who can appreciate my humour.



          at the lookout
          we view pics
          on his camera



                    valentine's day
                    buying tampons
                    on special



                                        the size of this bathroom
                                        with me in it
                                        as well as the fly



This third senryu is relatively new having been written during NaHaiWriMo last year. But even so, it was still rejected its fair share of times before finding a place in Prune Juice's pages. NaHaiWriMo 2012 starts in just a few days, where people all over the world will be writing a haiku a day for the month of February. Check out all the information here. And who knows what place your haiku will eventually call its home...

July Round-Up - A Month Of Gratitude

July: the second River of Stones month for 2011, where people all over the world took time out each day to pay attention to something fully and write it down. My practise of this observational exercise was enhanced by adding gratitude to the process: it made me more grateful of the things in my life as I looked around, listened, touched, tasted, photographed, read and rested. Why small stones of gratitude? See here.

As part of my practise of gratitude and abundance, and as July was my birthday month and the 2nd anniversary of my engagement, I decided to have a draw to give away two haiku books. The post about that here and the winners here. It's cool to have so many new people join me on Swimming in Lines of Haiku and great to be sending out two New Zealand haiku books to readers and writers in America. I think I'll run a haiku competition for my 2012 birthday so stay tuned!

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

• week twenty-seven - submitted one haiku to Wednesday Haiku @ Issa's Untidy Hut - accepted!
• week twenty-eight - submitted seven tanka and seven haiku to paper wasp, awaiting outcome
• AND submitted a tanka to Red Dragonfly (Melissa Allen's blog) mushroom feature post - accepted!
• week twenty-nine - submitted ten senryu to Prune Juice, three accepted!
• week thirty - submitted one previously published haiku to Pin-ku, awaiting outcome
• AND resubmitted three haiga to Notes from the Gean (due to change in editor)

Me with my haiku on the Papamoa Poetry Walk
for New Zealand's National Poetry Day 22/7/2011

July was a fruitful month as I reaped the rewards of my past poetry and prose labours -

• Four of my haiku appeared in 'poetry walks' around parts of Tauranga as part of National Poetry Day on Friday 22nd July
• Prune Juice (Issue 6, Summer 2011) came out with two of my senryu
• a fine line, The Magazine of the New Zealand Poetry Society, came out with my feature article A Haiku Journey
• Melissa Allen's Mushroom Harvest post came out with my tanka
• Excellent Writing (July Issue) came out with two of my senryu and the final of three Quick Tips For Freelance Writers
• Three of my haiku appeared in the May/June Sketchbook “vegetable(s)” haiku thread (#07, #40, #48). “sunday brunch” was named "Editor's Choice" by John Daleiden, and “sunday brunch” and “pulling up” were named "Guest Editor's Choice" by Bernard Gieske, and "returning home" and "sunday brunch" were named "Editor's Choice" by Karina Klesko. This means all three of my entries were highlighted in the judging process; not bad for my first time participating.

An update on the state of affairs re my various artistic projects -

• I finished my haiga calendar and had one printed so I could see how it looked in the flesh. I'm really happy and excited about it so will now get several more printed out for family Christmas gifts. Sorted!
• I haven't made any new collage haiga this month and I still have an unfinished one on my art table from May! Hopefully I can get that completed in August and then I will have two full albums of collage haiga that have haiku and tanka from my collection exploring my leukaemia journey.
• I did manage to finish my vision board around finding a new home, and what a mammoth task that was! Now it's time to make the magic happen :)

My completed vision board!

Being Aunty Kirsten

My sister came to visit today with my baby nephew so I could take some photos of them together. It's cool being Aunty Kirsten for a couple of hours and seeing the changes in my nephew each time I see him. Here's a senryu I wrote when he was still in the womb and I was a spectator at my sister's ultrasound scan.

seeing faces
in the scan
that aren't the baby's

Prune Juice, Issue 6, Summer 2011

It's a wonderfully sunny day here so we headed to the beach for a short time. The waves had come out to play and there were many surfers enjoying themselves out on the ocean. It looks like this weather might last through the weekend. I hope you have a good one where ever you are :)

Photo taken by Kirsten Cliff at Papamoa Beach 5/8/2011

A New Year

With my birthday mid-year, it's a time for me to take stock of where I'm at, and August 1st feels like the start of a new year for me. I've been busy this morning catching up on errands, writing in my journal, and generally feeling positive about the potential of life.

Only eleven months of my maintenance chemo to go, and thankfully, my blood tests are only once a month at the moment, but this scene plays out time and time again.



monday morning blood test

all the old men

reading women's magazines

Prune Juice, Issue 6, Summer 2011

Happy New Year! I hope you find something that makes you smile today :)

Half-Way Through My 2011 Challenge

In the first week of January, buoyed by the excitement of writing a small stone a day during A River of Stones, I decided to set myself the challenge of submitting to a poetry publication or competition every week in 2011.

It was my way of getting back out into the world through poetry, after a year of writing taking a backseat to four cycles of chemotherapy and over four months of hospital stays. While I did resume writing regularly in the later part of 2010 (when I could finally say I was home! and felt the need to process the whirlwind of events that began with my diagnosis of leukaemia on March 2nd) I wasn't submitting my work, instead using it purely to process my journey.

It's now week 26 of 2011 and I've faithfully kept to my goal; sometimes submitting to more than one outlet a week. I've never before been waiting on so many editors' verdicts and competition results: currently awaiting replies from seven publications (on-line and in print), two anthologies and five competitions. Phew!

It's opened me up to submitting to several publications/competitions I had never submitted/entered before, and a few places that I'd been meaning to send haiku too for a couple of years, but had chickened out! So, lots of firsts coming out, including:

• my first time submitting tanka to and appearing in Eucalypt
• my first time submitting to, and first ever haiga submission, appearing in Notes from the Gean
• my first time submitting senryu to and appearing in Prune Juice

Hopefully many more to come!

I've also really enjoyed sharing my poetry on Swimming in Lines of Haiku and through Facebook by participating in A River of Stones, NaHaiWriMo and NaPoWriMo. These month-long poetry challenges have lead to me connecting up with several writers/poets/haijins on Facebook, blogs and the Writing Our Way Home community. It's great to be introduced to new publications, be exposed to new ideas, and be encouraged by this thriving and supportive online community. I'm reading, writing and sharing more poetry than ever before and it feels good! Thanks for being part of it :)

A Word On Kyoka

I had never heard of kyoka before stumbling across the term on the Prune Juice website, where it states:

Kyoka is often regarded as being to tanka what senryu is to haiku. They are usually five lines in length and read like tanka. (read here in full)

I decided to follow the blog link given and found the writings of M. Kei on kyoka, including his article Kyoka vs. Tanka - Examples (2006) which makes for very good reading. I highly recommend that you go and take a look yourself.

Kyoka don't have to be tasteless or funny. They don't have to be satire. The great virtue of kyoka is that they give voice to what cannot be voiced in tanka as it currently stands in the English language. I hope kyoka amuse you. I hope they shock you. I hope they hurt you. I hope they open your tanka so that you too will be able to express yourself with all the aching joy of being human.

So, I wonder if this is a kyoka?

he told me

a mouse was atop

the fridge

& I replied, well -

there's no food up there!

Probably yes: all be it a not very good one...

May Round-Up - Dreamy, Crafty, But Always Poetry

It's hard to believe I'm writing a round-up for May already: the month has seemed to fly by! (Time to find some savings, like Orbitz and plan a winter holiday!) I should have received two journals during the month with my work in them, Haiku Presence and Eucalypt: A Tanka Journal, but they are still yet to arrive.

I did, however, receive the copy of Stepping Stones: a way into haiku by Martin Lucas, which I ordered from Snapshot Press. I look forward to digging into that in a week or two, once I finish Haiku Mind by Patricia Donegan, which I've been reading a haiku and commentary a day from since February.

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

• week eighteen - submitted eight senryu and five kyoku to Prune Juice (first time submitting here) two senryu accepted for Issue 6 (July, 2011)
• week nineteen - submitted two haiku, seven tanka and a haibun to Kokako 15, awaiting outcome
• week twenty - submitted ten haiku to haijinx (first time submitting here), awaiting outcome
• AND submitted three haiku to the Sketchbook May/June Haiku Thread (first time submitting here)
• week twenty-one - submitted two haiku to the International "Kusamakura" Haiku Competition

May saw me return to my dream work after the busyness of NaPoWriMo in April, and saw my poem "A Journey in Three Masks" (written during NaPoWriMo using the personal mythology prompts on InkSeeds) published in the May issue of Excellent Writing.

During the month I posted quite a few haiku on the NaiHaiWriMo Facebook page in response to prompts by Cara Holman. It was great to connect up with so many people writing haiku. I'll definitely be dropping in there most days to read and enjoy all the poems people are sharing.

I created two collage haiga for my collection exploring my leukaemia journey, for a new total of 28 pieces. I have another one half completed but am lacking the ingredients to finish it just now: some IV tubing. Hopefully I can ask the nurses at the Cancer Centre for some when I'm there later this month.

To catch the last of the autumn foliage, hubby-to-be took me to Mclaren Falls Park for the first time, and what a gem I'd been missing out on! Beautiful trees, lakes, gardens, grounds, walking tracks, sitting spots and look outs. Will definitely go back there again.

So now it's June and the beginning of winter in New Zealand. I look forward to the June issue of Excellent Writing where I have a quick tip for freelance writers appearing, and the June issue of Four and Twenty, which will be sporting one of my images on the cover. I wonder what else the month will bring...

Mclaren Falls Park, Tauranga, Bay of Plenty, NZ
by Kirsten Cliff 23/5/2011

Submitting to Prune Juice: Journal of Senryu and Kyoka

Prune Juice is an online publication appearing twice annually and edited by Liam Wilkinson. Submissions for Issue 6 are open now: deadline June 1st 2011. You can find all the submission guidelines here. Issue 6 will be published in July 2011.

My goal of submitting to a poetry journal or publication every week this year is making me seek out new avenues for publication and I'm really enjoying myself. Submitting to Prune Juice was my poetry submission for week 18 of 2011 (that's last week) and it was my first time submitting here. I was very pleased to have two senryu accepted for publication!

One of the great things about Prune Juice is that it doesn't consider poems that have appeared on social networking sites or blogs to be in the "previously published" category. This from their Submissions page:

* NOTE ON THE TERM ‘PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED’: Here at Prune Juice, we believe ‘previously published’ poems are those that have been previously selected for publication by another editor. Therefore, any work that you yourself have submitted to social networking sites, blogs and microblogs are still considered here at Prune Juice. In short, if your poem has only appeared publicly in your Twitter stream or on your personal blog, we will still consider it as we believe this is not considered as a previously published piece.

You can check out previous issues here, which are a lot of fun to read. The most recent issue has work from New Zealand's own Andre Surridge and Patricia Prime.

Prune Juice Issue 5 Winter 2011
Edited by Liam Wilkinson