I'll miss you

mountain of green
how I'll miss you
when we're parted . . .
the moon won't taste as sweet
without you to hold it high

Kokako 20 (April 2014)

Mindful Writing Challenge – day 29

amongst the mountain mist helicopter sound


Find out more about the January Mindful Writing Challenge here.

Over the Length

ninety minutes
until we reach her funeral
a low grey cloud
travels slowly over the length
of this mountain range

Kernels, Spring 2013

Through the Fog

winter solstice ...

a hawk glides on

through the fog

Kokako 18 (April 2013) 

Haiku & photograph by Kirsten Cliff

Mindful Writing Challenge: Day 30

O, the moon!

Mindful Writing Challenge: Day 14

after wrapping his birthday present

i sit for a while and watch the mountain

let the breeze flow through me

let the words come to me

let the . . .

Mindful Writing Challenge: Day 8

the triangle tree (my favourite tree)

how it mimics the mountain behind it

Mindful Writing Challenge January 2013

Fiona and Kaspa are once again hosting their small stone writing challenge in January. The Mindful Writing Challenge 2013 (formerly River of Stones) is all about noticing something each day and writing it down. I'll be doing it, as will many others around the world. I hope you'll join us! :)


Here's a small stone to get things started:

above the mountain

a cloud that looks

like a mountain

You'll find many more examples on Fiona's A Handful of Stones blog-zine. Enjoy!

Haiku Hawk

Painting by Jenny Longstaff

This painting by Jenny Longstaff was inspired by my haiku below, and done for the When North meet South exhibition, now on at Bellamy's Gallery, Dunedin.

 misty moon

above the mountain range

hawk's cry

Organiser Ruth Arnison brought together haiku poets from the North Island and artists of all kinds from the South Island to create this unique fundraising event. A percentage of the proceeds of all sales goes to Ruth's amazing Poems in the Waiting Room project.

Here's my TODAY IS MINDFUL WRITING DAY small stone

mountain mist ...

all the chores

that were before me

now lost in the call

of this peacock

 Check out MINDFUL WRITING DAY for yourself

Forever Home: A Tanka Sequence with Margaret Dornaus #9

lost

in that deepest green . . .

the mountain alone

has left its imprint

on my psyche

Fern Pass, Austria, 1998 (click on image to enlarge)

Tanka & photograph © Kirsten Cliff

Tanka appeared in LYNX XXVII: 3 (October, 2012)

in "Forever Home" a tanka sequence with Margaret Dornaus

To start with the first post in this sequence click here.
To see Margaret's tanka and pictures for "Forever Home", 
visit Haiku-doodle.

October Oops!

The beginning of another month and I'd usually be showing readers the corresponding page on my 2012 calendar of haiku and photography, but . . . I unfortunately got the last two months in the wrong order, missing out a winter page! So I've now put all the months, up to October, on a separate page, which you can view here. By the end of the year the whole calendar will be up and you can view them at your leisure.

Please click on the image to see full screen.

In place of my October calendar page I've posted the above haiku and image. The haiku is part of a rengay I wrote with Cara Holman on dreams, which was published in one of Aubrie Cox's Yay Words! projects. You can read the full rengay, "Dream Catcher" here, and download your own pdf copy of the ebook that it appeared in, Fox Dreams here. The photo is of the Kaimai Range (or My Mountain as I affectionately call it:) and was taken from my home on a misty spring morning last month.

Tomorrow begins a week of tanka and images here in collaboration with Margaret Dornaus and her blog Haiku-doodle. Our recently published tanka sequence, "Forever Home" (LYNX, October 2012) was written from our respective travel photos, and now we'll bring you the photos along with the tanka. Tune in each day as we bring you a pair of tanka and images between us. We hope you'll enjoy a further insight into our first tanka sequence together, as much as we enjoyed writing it. :)

September was a busy one for me: writing an essay on my favourite haiku for Haiku NewZ, sending in my huge submission of 100 haiku for A New Resonance 8, writing my November haikai column for a fine line, submitting to the 20th Anniversary Rengay Anthology, entering The 4th Kokako Tanka Competition and participating in a further two kukai. Hoping October will be quieter!