The August Countdown . . .

August is a big month for me:

• I'm writing a haiku-a-day for the special 31 Different NaHaiWriMo Promters for August 2012. This I'm thoroughly enjoying. I haven't participated through the NaHaiWriMo Community Facebook page since my writing buddy Cara Holman was a guest prompter back in May 2011. It's great connecting up with lots of new-to-me haiku writers, seeing how others approach each day's prompt, and it's keeping my haiku mind active! If you're not on Facebook then feel free to follow along with me here, posting your haiku for the prompts in the comments section of the relevant day.

• Two of my photo haiga have been featured on Kathy Nguyen's August Blog Bash 2012, with commentary. See the August 13th post and write-up here. Kathy is hosting writers and artists of all kinds this month at her Live Journal Origami Lotus Poetry. I believe there are still places left, so check out how you could be involved here. All participants receive a free gift for taking part, as well as going into the draw to win the Snapshot Press 2013 Haiku Calendar. 

• I entered my first kukai contests this month: Caribbean Kigo Kukai and Sketchbook Kukai. I've been wanting to do this for some time, and finally got myself organised to give it a go. If kukai is new to you, then take a look at this article by Cara Holamn, written especially for Swimming in Lines of Haiku in 2009. It will give you all the links and info you need to get started.

• I'm currently writing rengay and tanka sequences with two of my American contemporaries. The tanka sequences are new for me and I'm revealing in working more closely with this form, and exploring writing tanka on different topics. Who knows where it will lead...

• And the best reason that August is a big month for me... I will finally finish my maintenance treatment for leukaemia! :) I've almost reached the end of two long years, and I'm still in remission. Yes! Thanks to everyone who has supported me along the way. It's been a tough ride at times, and all the poetry has kept me going. I hope you enjoy your August!

August 2012 - Kirsten's Calendar of Haiku & Photography

Above is the August page of the calendar I made for my family. The photo was taken at about this time of year (almost spring!) from Papamoa Beach, looking towards Mt Maunganui, in 2009. The haiku has appeared in a few different forms in a few different places. The closest version to the above was published in the taste of nashi: New Zealand Haiku. (Click on image to enlarge.)

New Zealand's National Poetry Day & a question for YOU!

Well, today's the day! Events are happening all around the country. For a list take a look here. But what I want to know is:   

How do you get your daily dose of haiku?

I read from Martin Lucas' Stepping Stones: a way into haiku daily, and have been doing so for maybe a year now. (I must have missed a few daily readings because there's only a years worth in there!). I also check in to the on-line haiku journal DailyHaiku each day and most days also now see what the Per Diem: Daily Haiku is on The Haiku Foundation home page (mid way down the page on the right hand side.)

My haiku reading also comes from Facebook posts and blogs I'm subscribed to. And then when new journals arrive in my letterbox I'll read them on a daily basis until I'm sated. Lastly, as I've been involved in writing quite a few rengay and renku this year, I'm almost daily reading haiku related to my latest linking verse. So much fun! :)

Enjoy National Poetry Day New Zealand! And enjoy your daily dose of haiku, where ever you are! :)

31 Different NaHaiWriMo Prompters in August 2012

An announcement from Michael Dylan Welch - creator and organiser of National Haiku Writing Month (NaHaiWriMo):

Dear NaHaiWriMos,

I’m pleased to let you know that, for the month of August, 2012, I’ve asked 31 different people to provide a single writing prompt for reach day of the month. I’ll be announcing the prompts each day, so you’ll discover not only a new writing prompt, but also learn who the day’s prompter is for each day. These 31 prompters include many of our past monthly prompters, plus a number of new folks. The prompters and prompts have all been selected, and the prompts are varied and fun, so August should be a particularly enjoyable month -- and hopefully a little different, to shake things up a bit.

Now, to make this idea even more fun, I’ve asked each of the 31 daily prompters to monitor all poems posted and to select at least five favourite poems written in response to their prompt. I’ve asked them to select haiku and senryu only (no haiga, but poems used in haiga can be considered). To be selected, poems should be previously unpublished (we'll assume so). So please post your best haiku and senryu, because the daily prompt providers will be on the lookout for their favourite poems from what you post (prompters, please also include one of your own poems if you write about your own prompt). If all goes well, I’d like to turn this into a PDF-format book that everyone can download for free. How does that sound?

In case you were wondering, I’m still working on the February book, which will be a grander and much larger print production. I plan to get that wrapped up by the end of August, but there are still a lot of variables. I'll keep you posted. Thanks for your patience on that project -- I’m making progress.

Meanwhile, regarding the August project, I’m mentioning it now in case any of you have questions. Ask away! And maybe mentioning it now will also build anticipation. Shucks, you might even want to encourage friends to join us. Please do!

Thanks to all of you for your enthusiastic ongoing participation in NaHaiWriMo! Isn't this place a hoot?

Michael Dylan Welch

The NaHaiWriMo community Facebook page

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

My 2nd Cancerversary

Yep, today is the day that I was diagnosed with leukaemia two years ago. I'm still in remission (yay!) and I have about five months of maintenance treatment left (double yay!) so almost at the end of it all now. If you haven't already, you can read a bit about my leukaemia journey here on the Leukaemia & Blood Cancer New Zealand website (don't worry, there are no gory details!).

I wanted to take a moment to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has been part of my treatment and recovery over the past two years: my family and friends, my doctors and nurses, my fellow writers, bloggers, Facebookers and haiku poets. I greatly appreciate your support and encouragement, your kind words and friendship :) You all have made this journey a much easier one to get through. THANK YOU!



          as I'm driven

          to the Cancer Centre

          an old man

          sits on his porch

          playing the guitar 

Ribbons 7:4 Winter 2011

Writing haiku and tanka over the past two years has also helped me enormously in processing my journey through leukaemia. I was so pleased to get an email yesterday telling me that I had four tanka short-listed for this year's Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka, Volume 4, all of which are part of my cancer collection. (And yes, it was one of my secret 2011 goals to get in this anthology:) Maybe this time next year I will have my book (with the working title, Patient Property) ready and published: my third anniversary would be the perfect time to launch it! 

How Did Your NaHaiWriMo Go?

I quietly wrote my haiku-a-day for NaHaiWriMo this February: I didn't follow the prompts by Michael Dylan Welch on the NaHaiWriMo Facebook page, and I didn't blog about it. Unfortunately, I did miss two days mid-way through due to illness, but as I wrote two haiku a few of the days throughout the month, I have come out with more than 29 at the end of it all, and am pretty pleased with my lot.

March 1st signals Autumn in New Zealand, and so it's time to share the March page of my calendar... 

March 2012 - Kirsten's Calendar of Haiku & Photography

The photo was taken at McLaren Falls near Tauranga last year, and the haiku was written on this blog during April's NaPoWriMo last year. You can click on the image for a larger view. Enjoy!

Bedbound...

         


          bedbound...
          three finches take turns
          in the bird bath

a handful of stones, Friday, 16 December 2011

There are still a lot of finches flitting around at our new home, but none of these ones are showing any interest in the bird bath. Luckily, in our rural setting, we don't need such an item to attract all the bird life, and we are happily enjoying watching them where ever they may nest, rest, play, fly and feed.

To all my Facebook friends: Although very exhausted from the move, etc., I'm not bed bound just now, thank God! I know you've been leaving me messages of support and I thank you all :) 

Unfortunately, between needing to rest and my dial-up connection, I haven't been able to get back on Facebook. The good news is that I've reached another milestone: only six-months of treatment to go, and the start of my latest 3-month cycle and bone marrow aspirate is being held-off until after Christmas and New Year. Phew!

A very happy Summer Solstice to those in my part of the world :) It's been a rainy summer here so far and I'm loving it as it's filling up our water tank! A happy Winter Solstice to the bulk of my readers over in the Northern Hemisphere. I hope everyone is writing some Solstice haiku...

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 :)