Decemeber Haiku Share: The Week That Was #1

The first week of Cara Holman's December Haiku Share has finished. Below are the links to the seven days of posts, and the haiku I have shared each day. I hope you enjoy reading all the haiku as much as I have been, and maybe you'll come and join us this week! (Here's the link to the latest prompt - night sky)

December Haiku Share - Day 1

coming home
to an empty house
so many stars
– Kirsten Cliff

Kokako 12, April 2010
evolution: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku (Red Moon Press, 2011)

December Haiku Share - Day 2

suspended
from an evening cloud
the mountain
–Kirsten Cliff

the taste of nashi: New Zealand Haiku (Windrift, 2008)
Bay News, Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Waiariki Institute of Technology 2010 Calendar

December Haiku Share - Day 3

drifting fog
where does the dream end
and I begin
–Kirsten Cliff

“Dream Catcher” rengay with Cara Holman, Fox Dreams, April 2012 (edited by Aubrie Cox of Yay Words)

December Haiku Share - Day 4 

extinguished
after love-making
a single candle
– Kirsten Cliff

paper wasp 17:3 (October 2011)

December Haiku Share - Day 5

summer again
the dress I wore
to hospital
– Kirsten Cliff

‘All the Words that Mean Cancer’ rengay sequence with Cara Holman, LYNX 27:3 (October 2012)

December Haiku Share - Day 6

as I begin to sing
in my head
the sparrows scatter
– Kirsten Cliff

Kokako 9, September 2008
Waiariki Institute of Technology 2010 Calendar

December Haiku Share - Day 7

fallen blossoms –
loading empty beehives
on the truck
– Kirsten Cliff

Kokako 8, April 2008

Share a Haiku-a-Day for December

Cara Holman has come up with a great haiku sharing event on her blog Prose Posies for this month. As she points out, there's many haiku out there that we miss seeing because there is so much to read, or maybe it was published before our time, or in a journal in a country far from our own.

What Cara is inviting us to do is to share a haiku each day in the comments section of her blog that relates in some way to the haiku she posts each day. Easy peasy, and heaps of fun. Get into it folks! Here's the first post (sign up to her blog and receive her posts directly to your email inbox).

a stranger in the crowd
that looks like you
blue mist

Cara Holman

(Shiki Kigo Kukai, November 2012)

coming home
to an empty house
so many stars

Kirsten Cliff

Kokako 12, April 2010
evolution: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku (Red Moon Press, 2011)

Breaking News of the Haiku Variety

Finally some good news!

I found out on Friday (while visiting Haiku NewZ) that one of my haiku was selected for evolution: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2010, edited by Jim Kacian and the Red Moon Editorial Staff (Red Moon Press, 2011).

The exciting thing about appearing in the annual Red Moon Anthology is that you don't submit your haiku: it is chosen from the pool of haiku that is published internationally each year.

This from Johnye Strickland in her review of the 2008 anthology:

The key to the selection process for all works nominated by the editorial staff was that they should be considered to be "of exceptional skill." Those making the final cut had to receive approval of the editor-in-chief, as well as votes from five of the ten staff editors (50%). My PhD dissertation didn't receive this much scrutiny.

And these thoughts from Michael Dylan Welch in his 2000 essay A Survey of Today’s English-Language Haiku Activity:

Also of note in the last four years are annual anthologies published by Red Moon Press, primarily edited by Jim Kacian, that aim to collect the very best haiku poems published each year. Though the selection process remains flawed and the editor includes too much of his own work, this annual publication is beginning to serve a very useful purpose in attempting to collect the best haiku in English each year.

I am pleased as punch that I made the grade and promptly bought two copies of evolution from the Red Moon Press website.

My haiku sits alongside other New Zealand haiku poets: Ernest J Berry, Owen Bullock and Andre Surridge. And here it is: 

coming home
to an empty house
so many stars

Copyright © Kirsten Cliff
First published in Kokako 12 (April, 2010)