Calendars, T-shirts, Chapbooks, Positivity: It's a Haiku Life for Me!

Welcome to March, dear readers! Below is this month's page from my 2014 calendar of haiku and photography, which I did with my husband this time round, for our family and friends. Hubby, Cameron Elliot, took this photo last year in Cambridge, and his haiku is previously unpublished. (click to enlarge)

Haiku & photo by Cameron Elliot

February was a great month for me on the haiku front. I put out my first poetry chapbook, thinking of you, as a gift of love for Valentine's Day. (Read my post about it here.) My eChapbook of twenty haiku and tanka on the theme of love is free to read and download here. Enjoy! And don't forget to pass it on.

I also began an online shop called Haiku On where I'm selling t-shirts, cards, and later this year, my 2015 calendar. Haiku poets around the world have responded favorably buying "Trust me, I'm a haiku poet" and "Every Haiku is an Act of Environmental Activism!" t-shirts. I am so grateful for the support I've received from the haiku community on my new venture. More t-shirt designs coming soon! If there is something that you'd like to see in the shop that isn't there then please ask, and I'll try to create it for you.

I've also been flooding my Facebook page with positivity this month, and doing a daily post on what I'm grateful for each day. It's been amazing to see people's positive response, and even joining in with the gratitude posts. I couldn't have wished for better. :-) Come join me!

March is already full of haiku and tanka promise. I have a haiku in the March issue of The Heron's Nest here.See a collaborative haiga here that I did with Seánan Forbes, which appears in the March issue of A Hundred Gourds. We hope to do some more collaborating this month. I've been asked to write a commentary for Haibun Online about my tanka prose piece, The Taste on My Tongue, which first appeared in Skylark 1:1. And I'll be adding more to my online shop Haiku On - Taking you on a haiku journey. Stay tuned . . .

Celebrate Valentine's Day with my FREE Chapbook!

I haven't been participating in NaHaiWriMo this February. But I have been getting creative with haiku, and have come up with this: my first chapbook!

Click here to download my eChapbook

"If you miss love, you miss life." ~Leo Buscaglia

A mix of twenty haiku and tanka with the theme of love. It's my gift of love this Valentine's Day. Please feel free to print it out and pass it on to those you love.

I'm also researching creating print copies for purchase, so please let me know if this idea interests you. Watch this space for future projects coming soon!

how can I repay

all the people who've created

my recovery?

I will write poetry

& learn the layers of love

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...