Feathered Poets

I'm very happy to be one of Angie Werren's 'feathered poets' this month as part of National Poetry Month and Couplets: a multi-author poetry blog tour. Yesterday one of my previously unpublished photo-haiga was hosted on Angie's blog, which you can find here. Angie is showcasing different poets everyday so pop on over to her blog and find someone you haven't heard from before. You never know where it may lead you! :)

All I have to do is Dream...

Click on image to enlarge

I've been writing a few more dream haiku just recently, inspired by Aubrie Cox's latest call for submissions over at Yay Words! She is putting together another project, this time with a focus on DREAMS and FOXES. Find out how you can be involved here.

I've just finished a dream rengay, especially written for the project, with Cara Holman. This is our third rengay together, and I find it a very enjoyable experience. The first two have been accepted to A Hundred Gourds, which comes out in June. I hope Aubrie likes our latest one, which we've titled 'Dream Catcher'.

Tanka Sonnets

I first heard about tanka sonnets last year when I read two on Claire Everett's blog, At the Edge of Dreams. You can read her beautiful examples lifting the veil and a crow's wing by clicking on the titles. Seriously, go and read them. They are amazing!

I started experimenting with tanka sonnets in January, writing three at that time and really enjoying the form. I plan to send two into New Zealand's Kokako magazine for consideration next month. The third saw the light of day when it appeared on Margaret Dornaus' blog Haiku-doodle yesterday as part of her National Poetry Month: Guest Post series.

You can check out The day the willow spoke by clicking on the title, and also read a bit about why I write haiku once you're there. Margaret is hosting many poets over the course of April so do check in regularly to learn more about writers you already know, and to meet new ones too.

How Close I Came...

                    today I thought about

                    how close I came

                    to dying...

                    another white camellia

                    falls to the ground

 

Kokako 16 (April, 2012)

Photography & tanka © Kirsten Cliff

My First Appearance For Poetry Month

Below is the link to Cara Holman's blog Prose Posies, where I'm first to appear this month in her April Poet Showcase for National Poetry Month. Keep checking in to be introduced daily to new poets and their writing. I will be! :)

Poet Showcase: Kirsten Cliff on Prose Posies

 

Happy April Fool's Day!

April 1st - when Daylight Saving ends in New Zealand and [Inter]National Poetry Month begins!

I'm far too exhausted in every possible way to do something daily on my blog this month. But I'm very excited to have been invited by three poet friends - Angie Werren, Margaret Dornaus and Cara Holman - to appear on their respective blogs with haiku, tanka, haibun, haiga and a few words about my poetic life. Tune in to Angie's feathers, Margaret's Haiku-doodle and Cara's Prose Posies this April to read lots of great poetry and be inspired!

Below is the April page of the calendar I made for my family. The haiku was first published in the taste of nashi - New Zealand Haiku (Windrift, 2008) and the photo was taken in the backyard of my old home in Papamoa last year. Remember it's autumn in New Zealand so monarch butterflies are in abundance right now! (Click on photo to see larger image.)

April 2012 - Kirsten's Calendar of Haiku & Photography

Speaking of New Zealand haiku - The Haiku Foundation's 'Per Diem: Daily Haiku' feature this month is being edited by award-winning Kiwi haijin Sandra Simpson and features haiku from Aotearoa (NZ). Check in to THF homepage daily to see a fresh poem on the lower right-hand side of your screen, including one of mine. Enjoy! :)

A Spring 'ku for my Northern Hemisphere Haikuists

                    first spring star...

                    the part of me

                    that wants to cry

Kokako 16 (April 2012)

  Photo & haiku © Kirsten Cliff

 

 

Mice and Jam and Poetry...

The cooler temperatures of our beloved Autumn are already encouraging the field mice to seek warmth inside country homes. Hubby and I have had three in our kitchen so far! An interesting winter it shall be :) And the perfect time to share this poem and recipe, which appeared in Narratives with Nosh: Stories, Poems & Recipes edited by Margaret Beverland with Jenny Argante (Tauranga Writers, 2009).

The rush

O, the rush of independence

on assassinating my first mouse

with a dollop of strawberry jam

and a state-of-the-art plastic trap

Four days on the hunt

bruised knees from searching under furniture

for a glimpse of something

I didn’t want to see

Nights, sleepless, waiting to hear SNAP!

instead a scratch a scuttle a squeak

Then at 4 p.m. on a rainy Thursday

I got it!

My high short-lived

as I contemplated disposal of the body

Chocolate jam-drop muffins

Ingredients:

• 1 large (rounded) Dsp margarine
• ½ c brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 egg
• 1½ c flour (for gluten free use 1¼ c Tapioca flour, ¼ c rice flour)
• 1 tsp baking powder (for gluten free use baking powder that is gluten free too)
• ½ c cocoa
• ½ tsp baking soda
• pinch of salt
• ¾ c milk
• ½ c jam (your choice)

Method:

• Preheat oven to 150 degrees C with fan bake, or 180 degrees without fan bake.
• Line a muffin tin with muffin cups (or grease with margarine).
• In a large bowl, cream margarine, sugar and vanilla essence. Beat in egg.
• Sift flour, baking powder, cocoa, baking soda, and salt into the creamed mix.
• Fold in gently, adding the milk. Stir only to combine and stop once mixed well.
• Into each muffin cup, put about a Dsp of mix, enough to cover the base.
• Follow with a tsp of jam onto the top, and then use the remaining mix to fill the muffin cups so that each muffin is roughly the same size, and all jam is covered.
• Bake for about 10-12 minutes, or until well risen and springs back when lightly pressed.
• Cool on a wire rack, ice if you like them iced, or eat as is.

Chocolate butter icing

Ingredients:

• 1 c icing sugar  
• ½ c cocoa
• 1 Dsp margarine or softened butter
• 1-3 Tbsp milk

Method:

• Sift cocoa and icing sugar into a bowl. Mix in butter and milk, and then whip with a fork or spoon until icing is thick.

Straight From the Haijin's Mouth #2

'Straight From the Haijin's Mouth' is one of the features that makes up my haikai column in a fine line, The Magazine of the New Zealand Poetry. This edition is from the November 2011 issue, and is reprinted with the kind permission of Laurice Gilbert, Nola Borrell and Karen Peterson Butterworth.

Straight From the Haijin's Mouth

I asked the co-editors of the latest national haiku anthology the taste of nashi, Nola Borrell and Karen Peterson Butterworth, 'What is the most valuable piece of advice you have ever received about writing haiku?'

Nola Borrell's answer: At the risk of being contentious (or not published!), I think 'challenge' is a more useful word than 'advice'. Good haiku depend so much more on a way of seeing, or as Martin Lucas (Editor, Presence) says:

'To begin writing haiku, and to make progress to any significant extent, requires two gifts:

• The ability to be alert to the subtleties of sensory or psychological experience (i.e. to notice things)
• A sensitivity to the subtleties of language (i.e. to be able to express things).'
  

http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/node/460

A challenge from Martin Lucas stimulated me to look more critically at my haiku. He talks about making a 'magical utterance' or a 'poetic spell', something archetypal/ rare/ essential, and in poetic language (4th Haiku Pacific Rim Conference, 2009, Terrigal, Australia). This seems more likely to reduce the human focus frequently dominant or at least intrusive in many current haiku, as well as prosy statements masquerading as haiku. http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/node/456

A specific suggestion (just to keep in with Co-ordinator Kirsten!): Early in my writing I received this comment on a mainstream poem: How about avoiding weak endings to lines, such as 'of', 'the',' in'. Of course. Why hadn't I seen it! Thanks Harry Ricketts (V.U.W., Co-Editor, New Zealand Books). This makes even more sense in haiku - where each word and line ending is that much more significant.

Karen Peterson Butterworth's answer: First the foundation. My artist mother who trained my eyes. When a boring (to me) visitor arrived, ‘Watch her hands and do me a drawing afterwards.’ With her water colour tubes laid out on a white enamel tray, ‘Which colours would you mix for that sunset?’ Five minutes later, ‘Now which?’ My music teacher. ‘When it says “staccato”, leave a tiny gap between each note, and for “legato,” make the notes flow into each other.’ My Dad who sang while he turned the separator handle for the cream on our porridge. My bout with polio which gave me five months with nothing to do but read and observe. 

Then meeting haiku in my 50s. Reading, listening, attending workshops. No single piece of advice springs to mind, but gradually three pivotal messages crystallized. 1. Learn to recognise a haiku moment. 2. Note it down straight away. 3. Choose, change, chop, and chisel your words till you make them sing. 

Copies of the taste of nashi: New Zealand Haiku (Windrift Haiku Group, 2008) are still available for sale. Find all the deatils here.

What Are YOU Reading?

March is NZ Book Month in New Zealand - a celebration of books and reading and words. I thought I'd let you know what I'm reading this March: I always have at least one book each of poetry, fiction and non-fiction on the go at any one time so that I have something to read no matter what mood I'm in.

Poetry:

• Stepping Stones: a way into haiku by Martin Lucas (British Haiku Society, 2007)
• And poetry journals that have arrived in March - Kokako 16, paper wasp: a journal of haiku 18:1, Ribbons 7:4.

Fiction:

•  The Carpathians by Janet Frame (First published in 1988)
• And I have just finished reading The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker (Simon & Schuster UK, 2009)

Non-fiction:

• Dreams and the search for meaning by Peter O'Connor (Methuen Haynes, 1986)
• And I'm reading aloud to hubby Marie-Louise von Franz: The Classic Jungian and The Classic Jungian Tradition edited by James A. Hall and Daryl Sharp (Inner City Books, 2008)

I've also bought five books so far this month (all 2nd-hand). At the NZ Book Month website you can download a $5 book voucher to discount your next book purchase. That’s for ANY book you choose priced over $10 from participating bookstores. Get all the details here.

I'd love to hear about what you're reading. Please feel free to share in the comments section, whether it's a book, journal or blog!

The 4th KOKAKO Tanka Competition

The 4th Kokako Tanka Competition

Closing Date: 31st October 2012

First Prize: NZ$200

Second and Third Place prizes of NZ$50 each

Judge: Tony Beyer

Send entries to:

The Kokako Tanka Competition,

Patricia Prime

42 Flanshaw Road

Te Atatu South

Auckland 0610

New Zealand

Please make cheques out to Kokako

Overseas entrants may send cash at their own risk

               Conditions of entry

1. Tanka must be previously unpublished and not under consideration elsewhere.
2. Entry fee is NZ$2 per tanka or 3 for NZ$5; for overseas entries: US$1 per tanka, or 4 for US$3. Any number of entries may be sent.
3. Send two copies of each tanka, or group of tanka, with your name, address and email on one copy only.
4. 1st, 2nd & 3rd tanka, 3 Highly Commended and 3 Commended entries will be published in Kokako 18 (April 2013).
5. Winners will be notified by email or mail.
6. Any theme is acceptable.

Any queries, email: Patricia Prime

New Dress

          shopping

          for a new dress... 

          blisters

  

paper wasp, 18:1, summer 2012

  Photo & senryu © Kirsten Cliff

One Year On... Kia Kaha Christchurch & Japan

Click on photo to see enlarged image.

Christchurch, 22 February 2011 ~ Japan, 11 March 2011

She's Going To Do It!

About 18 months ago, my little sister asked me if I knew of a haiku about family to go with the tattoo she was planning to get done. The tattoo (her first) is a representation of our family in the form of seven birds. See my first post about it here, and then come back. I'll wait :)

Well, we never got far with this at the time. I suggested one of my haiku, which I'd originally written for Cameron when we were dating, and thought it could encompass what she was after:

          thinking of you...
          the light
          on a paua shell

This under seven birds would be like thinking of our family, and the paua shell set the scene firmly in New Zealand and at the beach, one of my sister's favourite places.

After getting her tattoo (sorry I don't have a picture) she continued to carry around this haiku in her wallet, pulling it out every now and then to read and ponder. She liked it a lot. Meanwhile, as time went on, I forgot about the whole thing.

Until a couple of weekends ago, when she texted me asking if I'd write a haiku about our family for her tattoo: she is getting some little birdie additions done (to symbolise our two nephews and niece) and, as she's about to go and live overseas, thought it a great time to finally get a haiku inked.

So, I came up with this:

          family gathering
          the many sounds
          of laughter

It came to me quite quickly once I got the first line. It took a few slight changes to get here, and after sitting with it for two days (I couldn't rush something that someone was going to get tattooed on them!) I texted it to her...

She really liked it! She had something in her head about being together and laughter, though she hadn't given me any clues at the time about where she'd wanted it to go. However, she wasn't sure about having the word 'family' in the haiku, and suggested a change to 'gathered together'. And funnily enough, the word 'together' keep popping in my head over the weekend but I couldn't see how to use it. It was great to hear we were on the same page, so to speak.

So, she is booked in to get this haiku tattooed soon:

          gathered together
          the many sounds
          of laughter

I just can't get over how cool this is! I'll definitely get a photo to share when it's done. Stay tuned :)

Don't Miss Out!

Just because I can't keep up with all the cool things going on in the haiku world, doesn't mean that YOU should miss out! This month Aubrie Cox is hosting a Doodleku fest on her blog, Yay Words! Each day in March she will post a new doodle (sketch) and anyone who's up for it can post a haiku about the doodle in the comments section. At the end of the month she'll be putting together a .pdf book of the best. So get into it! You'll find the first one here where you can check out how it's done. And here is today's doodle. Enjoy!