Callander Haiku

Cover photo © Angela Topping
One of the latest publications from diehard press is CALLANDER HAIKU edited by Sally Evans. No it isn't a monthly calender but an anthology of haiku based on the Scottish town of Callander.

photograph © Gerald England
Many of the haiku are by poets who have attended the annual Callander Poetry Weekends hosted in September each year at the King's Bookshop.

Light in the bookshop
Sets each gilded spine aglow
against jewelled colours of hide

Angela Topping

L-R: Margaret Gillies Brown, Ian Blake, Andy Robson, Elizabeth Rimmer, Gerry Singh and his wife, Sally Evans, Colin Will, Christine England, Maureen Weldon, Sally James.
Photo © Gerald England
My own contributions are from the 2005 weekend and were published alongside reports of the event on the Poetry Scotland website. Although no longer live it can be accessed via the Internet Wayback Machine archives.

photograph © Gerald England

clack clack of hens
breeze through the garden
a poet speaks

Charlie Gracie

photograph © Gerald England

level bowling green
a perfect square -
too hot to play

Colin Will

the pavement
is at war with the trees
roots are winning

Christine England

photograph © Gerald England
CALLANDER HAIKU
ISBN 978-0946230-93-8
Price £5 (including postage) from
diehard at the Callander Press
Kings Bookshop
91-93 Main Street
Callander
FK17 8BQ

The Haiku 100 new edition

sunday-morning sex
lasts only as long as the
children's video

© Gerald England.

was my contribution to THE HAIKU HUNDRED.

The Haiku Hundred represented the outcome of the largest haiku event ever staged in the UK. IRON Press, in collaboration with the British Haiku Society, received more than 5,500 submissions when they invited work for this small anthology.

videos are now yesterday's technology and my contribution isn't the only one to reference pre-millennium technology:

On the VDU,
a bright ray of sunshine falls,
and the message fades.

© John Light.

This historic little book was published initially in 1992 and ran to six prints. It sold more than 10,000 copies making it the biggest selling book of English language haiku in the UK. It has been out of print for many years but is now published in a new format with every one of the 100 haiku intact.

Most of the haiku are timeless and some of the authors are no longer with us. One of my favourites is:

drawing a home
with a fenced in yard
the deaf boy

© Francine Porad

ISBN: 978-0-9931245-0-1
Price £5.00
Published in October 2015 by Iron Press
Edited by Peter Mortimer
Cover design by Kate Jones.

Evening Energy

evening energy
reaches out across sand
and silent sea

words & image © Gerald England

This is one of two of my haiga that are included in International Master Festival, a project by SARM's Astropoetry Master Club coordinated by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe and Valentin Grigore in partnership with Astronomers Without Borders with the support of some members of the Science Fiction Poetry Association
and International Meteor Organization, the astronomical circle of Bucharest National Children Palace and SRCSTV ("Youth for Future" Romanian Society for Culture and Science)

The project celebrates 20 years of existence of the Romanian Society for Meteors and Astronomy (SARM).

The pages contain a wealth of photography, poetry, haiga from all over the world.

A contribution to ABC Wednesday.

International Olympicosmpoetriada

EARTH AND SKY

This astro-photo-art-poem by Arlene Carol (USA, residing in Turkey) precedes my astrohaiku in the latest web production by SARM MASTER FESTIVAL (PART II OF MASTER OLYMPICOSMOPOETRIADA)

***

across light years
googols of radio waves
oscillate

Gerald England

The anthology of super photographs and poetry also includes

ESCAPING QUESTION

Whispers her dream snake
tongue licked up from pyramid
peak caught fly wise fall
of meteor swallowed spark
reawake mummy's goodbye smile

by Steve Sneyd

SIGNALS, DEDICATED FROM THE SKY

In the picture above, on the bottom left, you see the lunar disk. Ufo Analyzer software has classified the fireball as belonging to the class "J5_And" Andromenidi with estimated magnitude, but perhaps underestimated: - (minus) 4.5!
Latitude and Longitude of observing station:
Lat 46.933300 North
Long 26.366600 East
Date of sighting: 19th November 2011

image © Alfredo Caronia (Italy,
co-discoverer of 5 asteroids, established in Romania)

is followed by

3.3.12

I missed the fireball streak across the sky
That set alarm calls ringing across the land
As people thought a plane was crashing, or
A UFO had brought aliens from on high
(Their mission to invade had long been planned)
But, most likely it was just a meteor.

by John Francis Haines

Another contribution by Steve Sneyd is

TANKA

Twin suns death dancing
tear gobbets of hot flesh : shared
world pretends nothing
much just presents a gain who
hurl harmless lost meteor dreams


Valentin Grigore's VENUS AND JUPITER OVER TARGOVISTE, 15th March 2012

is followed by

twilight
an incoming jet flies by
Venus twinkles

Gerald England

All of this is just a minute part of the International Olympicosmpoetriada coordinated by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe and Valentin Grigore of the Romanian Society for Meteors and Astronomy.

Online Translation

On my Collected Poetical Works blog I recently posted a Valentine's day haiku.

just a single dove
atop our back garden tree
on Valentine's day

The poem has been translated by four Russian translators on the Version website.

I thought it would be interesting to see how they back-translated and I found the Paralink translation site which offers two translations of any text.

The results were

1. просто одинокий голубь
   на верхушке нашего черного садового дерева
   день Валентина

   translates as

   Simply lonely pigeon
   On a top of our black garden tree
   Day of Valentine

   or (via Google translation)

   just a lone dove on top of our black wood garden Valentine's Day

2. голубь - одна штука
   на обуглившемся дереве в нашем саду
   в Валентинов день

   translates as

   The pigeon - one piece
   On the charred tree in ours to a garden
   In Valentines day

   or (via Google translation)

   dove - one piece at charred tree in our garden in the Valentine's Day

3. стонет белый голубочек
   на черном-черном дереве -
   Валентинов день

   translates as

   Groans white голубочек
   On black-ebony-
   Valentines day

   or (via Google translation)

   moaning white dove on a black-black tree - Valentine's Day

4. ...а всего-то одинокий голубок
   на верхушке чёрной яблони в саду
   да Валентинов День

   translates as

   ... And only lonely голубок
   On a top of a black apple-tree in a garden
   Yes Valentinov Den

   or (via Google translation)

   ... And just a lone dove on top of a black apple in the garden so Valentine's Day

Quite fascinating to see the variations. Do they understand Valentine's day in Russia?

ABC Wednesday: J is for the January 2011 Partial Solar Eclipse

The story is told on the Cosmopoetry website by SARM's Astropoetry Master Club and Friends.

On January 4, 2011 the old continent and large zones of Asia and Africa were spoiled by such an eclipse. although the sky did not break anywhere the winter clouds, an entire world vibrated for this phenomenon.


Moon and Venus over Targoviste © Valentin Grigore

*****

A Jubilee For The Foucault Pendulum
by Dimitrie Olenici

I made a jubilee experiment with the Foucault Pendulum at Iasi University, 50 years after a similar one made by Ghe. Jeverdan, Ghe. Rusu and V. Antonescu to the solar eclipse of February 15, 1961 when they discovered that the oscillation period of a pendulum changes during an eclipse. My experiment, made by a pendulum of 17.78 meters installed in an inferior room, confirmed their results one more time. A high moment, although I observed this eclipse at the subsoil.

*****

The Partial Solar Eclipse In Europe
by David Asher (Northern Ireland, UK, astronomer at Armagh Observatory, famous meteor shower predictor, discoverer of asteroids, co-star in Hollywood movie Armageddon)

At dawn on the New Year's fourth day
The sun was part eaten away.
The eclipse was quite deep,
But I was asleep -
What will other astronomers say?

*****

Tanka
by Gerald England (UK, Editor of New Hope International, honorary member of the International Writers and Artists Association, laureate of the Ted Slade Award)

an eclipse tonight
posted a friend on Facebook
but by then too late
out of my window blackness
others' visions seen online

*****

Pse 2011 In Magurele (Romania)
photograph © Andreea Fazacas

*****

Brief Escape From A Hysterical Town: Bucharest, January 4, 2011
haiku by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe

Over a park
the eclipse like a
bird of fire.

*****

Hanne’S Object
or
A Parallel Thought During A Partial Solar Eclipse When The Sky Is Cloudy
by Steve Sneyd (UK, director of Hilltop Press and editor of Data Dump, laureate of the Peterson Trophy)

You praise blue gas ball
galaxy - big 10° K hot
yet no stars in it to
heat this mystery you smile
"as puzzling as me to you"

*****

Vampires And Eclipses
by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe

Dracula is a vampire,
said someone,
falsifying the historical truth.

In this Romanian brave ruler's Capital,
Targoviste,
no observer of the 2011 partial solar eclipse
saw Vlad Tepes Draculea
(his real name)
eating our star.
Only the Moon's "body check"
to the Sun.

*****


Eclipse Among Snowflakes In Targoviste
photo © Cristian Daniel Grigore (age17);
haiku by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe

among smowflakes
which are never twins
another unique eclipse

*****

So many potential observers were frustrated by the weather conditions but they manage to contribute some superb photographs nonetheless. The above are just a small sample. See them all at European Winter Astro-Story Of The Partial Solar Eclipse 2011.

For more J posts visit ABC Wednesday.

For more views of the heavens visit Skywatch Friday.

Haiga for Leslie Moon

The people at One Stop Poetry are featuring haiku on their site.

They reproduced my article How to Write Haiku with permission.

They also credited me with three haiku I DID NOT WRITE! I've since discovered that the mis-attributed work is by Don Baird.

Anyhow readers were encouraged to use Leslie Moon's photo as an inspiration to write a haiku so here is mine combined with Leslie's photo to form a haiga.

glimmer of light
behind dark clouds
a storm brews

© gerald england

Shamrock #16

A new issue of Shamrock is now online. Shamrock (No 16) has a big selection of Hungarian haiku in English translation, as well as an international section, an essay on haiku and copyright, as well as a haibun and a book review. It also features the winning poems from the IHS International Haiku Competition 2010.

Well worth reading.

XI Calico Cat Contest Entry

across the pond
to an unknown friend
fond kisses

© Gerald England

was my entry for the recent Calico Cat Contest where authors were asked to compose a haiku to complement Origa's sumi-e "Sympathy. Orang-utan and Lizard".


Rice paper 'Double Shuen', Japanese sumi ink, Chinese watercolours, Copyright © Origa .


is the Russian translation of my haiku.

The contest attracted 134 poems by 58 poets from 20 countries and mine didn't make the last 28 selected for the final.

The winning poem and comments on the winner and runners-up can be found at Results of the XI Calico Cat International bilingual haiku contest.

Global Astronomy Month 2010

The latest anthology page from our friends at SARM is Global Astronomy Month.

Valentin Grigore writes

Many people wanted another international year of astronomy because they felt that astronomy is not only a simple science and the sky is not only a simple study object, so the Global Astronomy Month came naturally.

GAM meant a special living under the starry canopy connected to the coming of the spring, when the sap of the Earth meets the sap of the Sky, and this union arouses all and gives life.

We had a month with many celestial events:
a splendid lunar circuit
(begun and ended with the full moon),
the planet Saturn like a "planet with handles"
(just as Galileo Galilei had seen it four centuries ago),
beautiful conjunctions,
and a supplementary sky gift,
the Lyrid meteor shower.

And sky lovers also organized a solar week, a lunar week, star parties and even remote astronomy programs.

We felt more,
although we had to confront
the barrier of light pollution,
a measure of human ignorance.

Our souls should reflect the light of the stars
just as it really is,
because astronomy is not only a simple science,
and the sky is not only a simple study object.

The sky is all!

The website has hundreds of photographs of the events they organised plus contributions from around the world.

UK contributions include:

Pluto is turning red
they tell us. Warns us of what
force melts its cold face?

Steve Sneyd

My own haiga which first appeared on Spring Haiku 2010.

and

BENEATH THE ASH CLOUD

Across a clear sky
Unsullied by vapour trails,
A meteor streaks.

John Francis Haines

24th April 2010 was

INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMY DAY

Let's celebrate cosmology,
planetology and astrometry,
galactic and extragalactic astronomy,
astrophysics and astrochemisry,
stellar astronomy,
astrobiology and astrophilosophy.

Aesthetically,
this itemization of the profound branches
of the "queen of sciences"
appears like a succession of rhymes.

But only watching and feeling the sky
we can celebrate astronomy
through astropoetry.

Andrei Dorian Gheorghe

The Coordinator's Last Words are

SARMs Astropoetry Master Club tried successfully to release this project before May 18th and May 24th, the birthdays of Steliana Gheorghe (1934-2009) and Costica Gheorghe (1927-2007), in order to honour their decisive role in the existence of the international contemporary astropoetry movement.

SARM's Astropoetry Master Club and Friends tried to make in this project not only the largest-ever web page of astropoetry and astropoetic images, but also a record of beauty regarding the cosmic reflection in the human soul.

And after all Astropoetry to the Global Astronomy Month 2010 represented the most beautiful gift for when I turned 50 years.

Andrei Dorian Gheorghe,
2010 May 14th

See it all by visiting Global Astronomy Month

Haijinx is back

haijinx was an international web-based journal that focused on "the hai in haiku". It was created by Mark Brooks in 2001 and staffed by an international band of editors. It featured haiku, articles, reviews, poet spotlights and detailed author bios.

In March 2004, the original issues of haijinx were pulled from the web due to broken links.

On February 14, 2010, Mark relaunched the haijinx portal with a new haikai twitter feed, @haijinx.

Now the pages from the original issues have been archived, as I discovered when Google alerted by my haiku published on page 3 of Vol.1 #1 Spring 2001.

To find out more about putting the hai back in haiku visit haijinx.

ABC Wednesday: A is for Astropoetry

2009 was the International Year of Astronomy and the Romanian Society for Meteors and Astronomy (SARM) have published a series of some 15 different pages on their Astropoetry site.

The page celebrating the 4th Quarter of the year has a whole host of photographs, cartoons and poetry including

MOON-JUPITER CONJUNCTION OVER TARGOVISTE
(2009.11.23)
astro-photo-poem by Valentin Grigore


The Moon and Jupiter gave again
a show in the evening sky,
a small present for those who
live in towns.

***

ICARUS ON LUNA
by Steve Sneyd

In crater deeps where
sun never reaches comet
head crashes dreams reflight

***

ACCELERATOR
by John Francis Haines

Particles hurtling towards one another
At the speed of light -
Just hope your planet isn't one of them.

***

COURTSHIP RITUAL
by Steve Sneyd

"Prove it" she said "bring
me from black hole's heart Hawking
radiation to
shine on my finger, show your
love", stroked Schrodinger's cat.

***

LAST ECLIPSE OF 2009
by Gerald England

five hours before
the end of the decade
above my window
the cold earth is eating
a piece of blue moon


PARTIAL LUNAR ECLIPSE OVER THE NORTH OF ROMANIA
photo by Constantin Psenitchi

In the Epilogue Andrei Dorian Gheorghe writes

If you daily watch the skies
and admire both
the people and the heavenly bodies,

if you respect and use sciences, techniques, arts and poetry
as means for enriching
knowledge, generosity, feelings and creativity,

and if for you
the celebration of astronomy
does never end,

then you are a
REAL SKY LOVER,
my dear friend!

For more A posts visit ABC Wednesday.

Astropoetry to the International Year of Astronomy 2009 2nd quarter.

MOON AND VENUS IN THE MORNING AURORA, 23rd April 2009 photo © Valentin Grigore.

The 2nd quarter issue of Astropoetry to the International Year of Astronomy has just been released.

It includes many photographs, artworks and poetry related to all aspects of astronomy.

Alastair McBeath (UK Vice-President of the International Meteor Organization) reports

April 4 brought another widely-seen fireball to the British Isles,
around 23:32 UT, the magnitude -8/-10 object probably moving roughly south to north over western Wales or the seas nearby. ... May 11 produced a magnitude -9 fireball at 21:35 UT or so ... Being up all the short night in June has much to recommend it (though not the unexpectedly late, patchy frost on June 17/18...), particularly when the crescent Moon starts or ends the night, and still more so when the Moon slips by a planet or two, like the brilliant Venus and the binocular-bright Mars on June 19.

Ion(ut) Moraru contributes HEAVENLY PARTY

The Moon, Mercury and the Pleiades
thought to make a party:

The Moon turned off the light on her surface,
Mercury turned to the Sun,
and the Pleiades exploded:
fireworks!

Alin Iosif wrotes about how he SAW VENUS DURING THE DAYLIGHT

At about 12 o’clock,
my boss asked me again what happened with me.
I tried to show him the reason, but he could find only the Moon.
It was enough:
he didn’t note me as an absent at the job office.

My own contribution is the haiku

something stirs
on one of the moons
of Saturn

Gerald England

John Francis Haines contributes ALONE, AGAIN

After the fury of the tsunami subsided,
We saw the Moon was gone,
Wrenched out of its orbit and flung
Across the sky, to become
Just another minor planet.

There are highlights of an Astro-philosphical debate on Global Warming.

Andrei Dorian Gheorghe in LIMITS writes

Using a lunette,
Galileo showed that
the sky of the fixed stars
is not a stellar limit.

Discovering the planet Uranus,
Herschel showed that
the planet Saturn
is not a planetary limit.

We still have to discover that
love and passion
are not human limits.

Marge Simon writes of THE AMERICAN SOLAR SYSTEM

Pluto remains number nine
in primary schools where
teachers must use manuals
updated time to time.

Astrophysicists may
change their minds...

Arlene Carol is

.. angry with the stars.
They are such liars.

Appearing to be there, when in reality,
They may have gone millennia ago.

Another page is dedicated to VISIONS OF A SUMMER SOLSTICE EXPEDITION, Bucegi Mountains, Romania, 18-21, June 2009.

This has even more photographs of the Milky Way, The Moon-Venus Conjugation, sunsets and many other astronomical phenomena captured amid magnificent scenery.

The Sons of Camus Writers International Journal #6

Laboratooriumi --
grass in cracks under wooden doors
so quiet

Russia's Venice
from this one bridge
eight to be seen

fish market
next to the herring stall
second-hand books

These are just three of my contributions to the latest issue of this journal for writers over 55. You'll find in it nine "charcoals" based on photographs of Tallinn, Saint Petersburg and Helsinki.

John Light contributes a story which he says is extracted from a novel under construction. It is an enthralling piece and I enjoyed

I distrust experts. They see everything with a trained eye and the trained eye sees only what it has been trained to see ...

Raymond Humphreys has an essay on Poetry in Translation whilst Herbert Williams asks Who are the British?.

There is more artwork with a series of collages by Alan Perry as well as short stories, reviews and poetry to be found in the journal's 200 pages.

Editor, Ann J Davidson, is currently considering submissions for the next issue by email at scwijournal@gmail.com

Read the review of issue #5

Read reviews of issues ##1-4 on NHI Review

The Sons of Camus Writers International Journal
Rubini Publications
Gropious St #30
Limassol 3706
Cyprus
ISSN 1705-429X
CY£5 [€9; UK£6; US$10; CAN$15 including shipping]

Beneath Thin Snow

Included in the latest issue of Simply Haiku: A Quarterly Journal of Japanese Short Form Poetry, Vol.7 #2 is Beneath Thin Snow, a triparshva renku by Carole MacRury, Colin Stewart Jones, Gerald England, Alison Williams, Susan Shand, Kathy Earsman, Norman Darlington and Mary White, composed in the Facebook Renku Group during December 2008 and January 2009.

There is also another version which includes Notes from some of the participants which gives a little insight into how the work was composed.

ABC Wednesday - Y is for Yorkshire (again)

words © Susan Shand; photograph © Betty Longbottom.

A year ago I posted Y is for Yorkshire in the first round of ABC and introduced you to haiku in Yorkshire dialect.

I now bring you the work of Susan Shand.

kids laikin'
next doors do a moonlight flit
t' 'uddersfield

up Bingley 5-rise
roses spred all ovver t' walls
even on t' barges

dawn on t' Otley Chevin
747s off t't' sunshine

I have combined the first of these haiku with a photograph of Houses at bottom of Outcote Bank by Betty Longbottom, used here with permission, to create a haiga.

You can find a dialect haiga of my own on Winter Haiku 2008/09.

More Y posts can be seen on the ABC Wednesday Anthology blog.

Others can be found via the ABC Wednesday with Mister Linky which carries a registry of participants.

building

The theme for the British Haiku Society's Members Anthology 2008 was BUILDING.

My contribution was West window first published here as a haiga.

87 members contributed to this year's anthology which was edited by Charles Christian.

Copies of the 28 page chapbook are available (UK price £3:00 inc p&p – Rest of World price £4:00 inc p&p – payable via PayPal) from the publishers Ink Sweat & Tears.

Favourite Constellations

Crux over Gemini Observatory, Mauna Kea, Hawaii
Photo: © Ovidiu Vaduvescu

This is taken from Favourite Consetellations, the latest offering from SARM’s Astropoetry Master Club and Friends coordinated by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe and designed by Florin Stancu after an idea by Mihai Petrache.

Ovidiu Vaduvescu writes

What do you say about the Southern Cross seen in other conditions (4200 m altitude, 12000 km and 12 h distance from Romania)? Aloha

My own contribution to the project is

in a cold field
on the other side of my world
the southern cross

Gerald England

a reflection from the day I went Stargazing in New Zealand.

Other contributions include

CONSTELLATIONS

88 optical illusions crawl across the sky
Trailing myths and legends in their wake,
As Gods and monsters slowly fade away
We'll find new shapes among the points of light
And tell ourselves new stories round the fire,
New myths and legends for a star-struck age.

John Francis Haines
(U.K., Leader of the Eight Hand Gang - British network of SF poets and Editor of its newsletter Handshake)

and

ALSO HER NAME'S INITIAL

Three she sky-traces
Cassiopeia's W
for woe, love-ending

Steve Sneyd
(U.K., Director of Hilltop Press and Editor of the Data Dump newsletter)

Perhaps my favourite though is this tanka

dogs bark
under Canis Major
I feel hunted
by a cell phone's
distant ringing

Deborah P. Kolodji
(U.S.A., President of the Science Fiction Poetry Association)

Haiku Scotland #18

The latest issue of Haiku Scotland is #18.

£1 for four pages of A4 is not bad value. Despite its name the magazine is limited neither to haiku nor Scotland, publishing a variety of short verse from all over the world with Ireland and the USA predominant in this issue.

Featured poet is Devin Wayne Davis whose contributions include

perspective: overpass

rome of tomorrow;
parthenon off-ramps;
swap-meet coliseum;
car lot catacombs
beneath the freeway.

A couple of my favourites here are Helen Buckingham's update of Stevie Smith's famous image:

kids on the beach--
not waving
but phoning

and John W Sexton's

unsettled night
catching the cat's tail
in the kitchen door

The issue also includes a report on the results of the 2008 International Haiku Competiton by the Irish Haiku Society.

Haiku Scotland
2 Elizabeth Gardens
Stoneyburn
West Lothian
EH47 8BP
UK

ISSN 1744-7232
£1
cheques payable to "F. Henderson"

email Haiku Scotland

Read reviews of earlier issues on NHI Review.

...

Autumn into Winter

autumn mist
slipping and sliding
towards winter

© 2008, Gerald England

This was my last contribution to the Autumn Haiku 2008 blog. The follow-on blog is Winter Haiku 2008/2009.


...