Online internet courses by Call of the Page

Are you interested in a Call of the Page course? We run courses on haiku; tanka; tanka stories/prose; haibun; shahai; and other genres.

Please email Karen or Alan at our joint email address: admin@callofthepage.org
We will let you know more about these courses.

Call of the Page (Alan & Karen)

Monday, February 26, 2018

United Haiku and Tanka Society newsletter and results for the UHTS Samurai Haibun 2017



SEEDPODS

 

February 2018
Welcome to Seedpods

The e-newsletter of the United Haiku and Tanka Society

In this edition:

  • - News from Alan Summers -- UHTS president
  • - Results for the UHTS Samurai Haibun 2017
  • - Submission Period for the October 2018 issue of cattails
  • - Reminder --   “AHA” Haiku/Senryu Contest (the Annual     Hortensia Anderson Memorial Awards)



Alan Summers
President, United Haiku and Tanka Society


United Haiku and Tanka Society

UHTS journal Cattails:


Sunday, February 25, 2018

Haiku Walk (ginko) in Stamford, Lincolnshire, part of Verse 2018, Stamford Arts Centre festival

Live event, haiku walk, in Stamford which was voted the number town in Britain!



GINKO (HAIKU WALK)
12:00 PM Saturday 14th April 2018
We will all meet up at Stamford Arts Centre

Find us and how to get there:
Stamford Arts Centre's Postcode: PE9 2DL


A Haiku Walk is called a ginko in Japan  (ginko 吟行)
gin 吟 act of making a poem
ko 行 act of walking
The g is a hard sound “gain"

After a brief introduction to haiku, the very short poem genre, we’ll set out on a walk - known as a ginko (吟行) in Japan - looking for inspiration. He will also read a number of his haiku revealing how this poetry is different to what we might know.

Afterwards, in a relaxed session, Alan will show how our rough notes and drafts can become polished haiku. Directly sketching from nature, or life, is one of the most common approaches to haiku. We will also learn about combining two images that create surprising connections, that make the brief haiku verse go beyond the count of its words.To help capture the images that do this, Alan has designed an exercise that will add another dimension to pairing images.

Bring a packed-lunch, and Stamford Arts Centre will provide the sushi! 



Alan Summers is President of the United Haiku and Tanka Society; Haibun Editor, Blithe Spirit (Journal of The British Haiku Society); and co-founder of Call of the Page.
About Alan: https://www.callofthepage.org/about-1/ 



Useful filming of a haiku walk from start to finish:
NHK TV (Japan) filmed Alan’s Haiku Journey which includes a ginko in the last five minutes :  http://tinyurl.com/AlanHaikuJourney




We meet up first of all at the arts centre for a brief introduction to haiku, and then start our walk:

Stamford Arts Centre 
27 St Mary's Street 
Stamford 
Lincolnshire
Postcode: PE9 2DL
https://www.stamfordartscentre.com/whats-on/all-shows/ginko-haiku-walk#


Stamford lies near to Birmingham, Leicester, and Peterborough...

Further notes, webpages, and information:


Stamford Arts Centre

Really useful photographs inside and outside Stamford Arts Centre which is right next to Stamford Theatre:

Various. Photos of rooms and outside:
Visit information for Stamford

Stamford, Lincolnshire

In 2013, Stamford was rated the best place to live by The Sunday Times: 

1st. Stamford, Lincolnshire
The ducks are quacking and the river sparkles in the spring sunshine. Across the green of Stamford’s famous water meadows…sipping takeaway coffees from the cosy independent cafes, such as the Fine Food Store, that line the gloriously Georgian high street. 

The town has starred in period dramas from Middlemarch to Pride and Prejudice, just one lucky by-product of Stamford being named Britain’s first conservation area. The architecture and honey-stone streets really are magnificent, but that’s not all Stamford has to recommend…this friendly town offers…


haiku poem:

those who stop —
ducks taking colour
from the river

Alan Summers
brass bell: a haiku journal curated by Zee Zahava (January 2017)

n.b. For those of you who think haiku is only a 575 pattern of syllables, I also write them too. :-)



The Stamford arts festival “Verse 2018”
online brochure: http://stamfordartscentre.com/information/brochures/verse-2018/

Verse 2018  Brochure: 






United Haiku and Tanka Society:

Alan Summers is a previous General Secretary of the British Haiku Society:


Alan and Karen of Call of the Page regularly run online courses for haiku and related genres of writing: https://www.callofthepage.org/learning/


Sunday, February 04, 2018

Helen Buckingham - latest haiku collection Sanguinella - now released and available to buy if you are serious about haiku and senryu


sanguinella
Text © 2017 Helen Buckingham ISBN 978-1-947271-11-1
Red Moon Press
www.redmoonpress.com

first printing 



The Touchstone Distinguished Books Award Committee Announces Its Shortlist for 2017

and from 80 books nominated for this year’s award which represent a rich variety of English-speaking books from many nations and haiku traditions Helen Buckingham's book is included: https://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2018/04/01/the-touchstone-distinguished-books-award-committee-announces-its-shortlist-for-2017/ 






Helen's haiku and senryu are brave and never "just raw" for the sake of it. As a human suffering great pain, great humour is either required, or just part of Helen's DNA.   Perverse fate comes in many shapes and guises for those with invisible diseases and chronic illnesses.

As the husband with a wife who has M.E. (officially) since we first dated, I know only too well at least some of the trials and tribulations. But Helen is a strong voice for those who did not come out of the other side. I salute you, Helen, and all the women, children, teenagers, and adults of any gender, who go through M.E. and the ignorance that abounds both by some professionals, and those not so professional.

Over 200 haiku and senryu, many of them known classics, and others that will become new classics, both of Helen's body of work, as well as in haiku and senryu globally.














Sanguinella, haiku of Helen Buckingham$15.00
<strong><i>Sanguinella</i></strong>, haiku of Helen Buckingham
Helen Buckingham says it herself: “Fifty-eight years since the seed was planted, Sanguinella provides a scrump back through the often bloody orchard that constitutes my life until now, from the rural pickings gathered over recent years in the bonsai city of Wells, to the tangled branches of a childhood spent battling various forms of blight in a mulberry-stained corner of South London.”




This book is available from Red Moon Press, and is highly recommended if you are serious about life and poetry, and how to communicate.
https://www.redmoonpress.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=32&products_id=279



Thursday, February 01, 2018

Blood and Blue - moon haiku by Alan Summers - British and Australian haiku published America/USA; Britain; India; Australia etc...



photo©Alan Summers February 1st 2018

super blue blood moon
the supermoon trilogy

The moon has always played a powerful part in haikai literature, from the time of the renga linked verses poetry to Matsuo Basho's renku linked haikai verses, and his 'standalone hokku'.

Here are a few of my own moon haiku



above the mountain
earth’s shadow
blocks a moon

Alan Summers

Note:  eclipse of the moon, Queensland, Australia, Friday 4th June 1993 

Publication credits: Frogpond (Summer 1994) ed. Elisabeth Searle Lamb
Paid Feature: Fellowship of Australian Writers, Queensland, Scope magazine feature (1994)



bleu roi
a thousand flying foxes
quarter moon

Alan Summers
Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac,
Kodansha International (1996)

Tribute: The Heron’s Nest Volume X, Number 4: December, 2008 Celebrating Bill Higginson http://www.theheronsnest.com/haiku/1004F2116/thn_issue.t1.html#POEM9



escape velocity
the moon pulls oceans
behind Apollo 11

Alan Summers
Commission: “Rocket Dreams”
Read/performed U.K. National Poetry Day October 4th 2007 with Space Historian Piers Bizony and NASA images, as part of World Space Week

photo©Alan Summers February 1st 2018


low over the hill
 a red moon waxes ...
   the empty road ahead

Alan Summers
Haiku International #22 (Tokyo 1996)
Pamphlet: Moonlighting,  Intimations Pamphlet Series BHS Profile, (1996)
Anthology: Azami Special Edition, Japan, ed. Alan Summers (1997)
Collection: sundog haiku journal: an australian year (sunfast press 1997 reprinted 1998)


february moon
not one flying fox
snared on its horns

Ipswich, Queensland, Australia

Alan Summers
Azami #55 (Japan 1999)


february moon
not one single flying fox snared
on its horns

Alan Summers
Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac, Kodansha International ed. William J. Higginson (1996)


Far North Queensland
a dingo’s call picked up-
the moonless night 

Alan Summers 
Modern Haiku (199-) ed. Bob Spiess


getting drunk
with the ripe moon
cadmium blues

Alan Summers
haijinx volume IV, issue 1 (2011)
Anthology: Does Fish-God Know (YTBN Press 2012)


blue moon
you believe there's nothing
up my sleeve

Alan Summers 
The Haiku Foundation haiku app for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch (2011)



Blue Moon we don't do one-sided conversations

Alan Summers 
Prune Juice issue 9 July 15th 2012


the camp fire burns the misty moon halved by thin cloud

Alan Summers
Presence # 4   (May 1997) ISSN 1366-5367
Anthology:
Stepping Stones:  a way into haiku ed. Martin Lucas
ISBN 978-0-9522397-9-6  (British Haiku Society 2007)


the moon is broken
Battersea Power Station 
from a train window

Alan Summers

Award credit: 
1st Prize, World Monuments Fund 2012 Haiku Contest winner 


Magnetic Island–
possums take the winter moon 
from tourists 

Alan Summers
Sea Bandits ed Aubrie Cox (2012)


night jasmine
trying to find it...
the yellow half moon

Alan Summers 
Presence 14  (2001) 
Feature: Mann Library, Cornell University, U.S.A. "Daily Haiku" poet October 2001


photo©Alan Summers February 1st 2018


chestnut moon shifting in my memory ghost floors

Alan Summers 
Roadrunner 12.3 (December 2012); LAKEVIEW International Journal of Literature and Arts Vol.1, No.1 February 2013


night-entangled moons treading judas floors

Alan Summers
Dark Pens, a journal of moon haiku ed. Chase Gagnon (1.1. 2013) 1st Issue March 2013


Blood Moon
my Rhesus positive rising

Alan Summers 
Does Fish-God Know (YTBN Press 2012)


different utopia
Quasimodo’s private moon
over Notre Dame

Alan Summers 
Does Fish-God Know (YTBN Press 2012)


Sailor Moon
your first sērā fuku
saves the world

Alan Summers 
Does Fish-God Know (YTBN Press 2012)


day moon
a first burn scar
off the oven tray

Alan Summers 
Does Fish-God Know (YTBN 2012)


photo©Alan Summers February 1st 2018


Perilune

               Cheshire Moon the cat grins in Farsi

          eight thousand li of cloud and moon questions mark

    Oak Moon the carpenter's calluses chafing

              butterfly dreaming man the Black Butterfly Moon

                     window-rattling moon I stay up and turn blue

Black Moon my finders keepers Valentine
  

Alan Summers 
Blithe Spirit 23.2. 2013



falling snow moon
the slowness of shadows
caught in branches

Alan Summers 
Presence #47 (2012); Brass Bell Showcase: Alan Summers (July 2015)


a little curve
when the buffalo bellow
dying moon

Alan Summers
Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts Vol.1, No.2 August 2013
Article: The Moon is Broken: Juxtaposition in haiku article Scope vol. 60 no. 3 (FAWQ  magazine April 2014)


night-tide
the rook takes back
its moon

Alan Summers 
Acorn #31 2013
Article: The Moon is Broken: Juxtaposition in haiku article Scope vol. 60 no. 3 (FAWQ  magazine April 2014)



an up-too-late moon
the blackbird whispers its song
as I stumble home

Alan Summers
Yamadera Basho Memorial Museum, 
2013 Yamadera Basho Memorial Museum English (Japan)



Night clouds
a spider shows me
the harvest moon

Alan Summers
October 04, 2013  ASAHI HAIKUIST NETWORK (Japan)


bomber moon–
all those hiding places
within you

Alan Summers 
Tribe issue 22 (October 2013)



the limbs of trees broken Snow Moon

Alan Summers 
Derafsh-e Mehr Issue #4 Winter & Spring 2014

photo©Alan Summers February 1st 2018


how does this swan
         sleep like a diamond
     frosted moon

Alan Summers 
Frozen Butterfly (October 2014)


falling clouds
the snow gathering
bits of moon

Alan Summers 
hedgerow: a journal of small poems (Issue 1, September 2014)


the rhythm of rain
a toad sleeps deep
with her moon

Alan Summers 
Brass Bell: a haiku journal
Moon Haiku issue: Wednesday, October 1, 2014


Ganesha's moon
the cabbie’s last customer
smells of mint tea

Alan Summers
brass bell: a haiku journal Tea Haiku / Haiku Tea issue November 2014


blue moon-
my sweet potato curry
song to the moths

Alan Summers 
Scope vol. 60 no. 9 (FAWQ  magazine October 2014 Australia)
Anthology credit: EarthRise Rolling Haiku Collaboration 2016 Foodcrop Haiku



derelict church the moon showing its bomb damage 

Alan Summers (Hedgerow 100) 

hunter's moon
the runes of mice
in its wake

Award Credit: Best of Mainichi 2014 (Japan)


night crows
the haystacks lose
their moonlight

Publication Credit:   
Wild Plum Spring & Summer 2015 issue of Wild Plum (release date - March 1)

Anthology Credits:  
  
Behind the Tree Line 
(Selected haiku from the Wild Plum - a haiku journal and the Wild Plum Haiku Contest 2015)

Haiku 2016
ed. Scott Metz & Lee Gurga
Modern Haiku Press, 2016

photo©Alan Summers 2018


old tales
moon-bright leaves
jostle the breeze

Alan Summers   
Wild Plum 1:1 (Spring & Summer 2015)



corn moon
the jackdaw shifts
its iris

Alan Summers  
Asahi Shimbun (International Haiku Day April 17th 2015)



a packet of souls
the day moon becomes
a harbinger

Alan Summers  
Ekphrastic response to Installation by Fairley Barnes
May 26, 2015


stick moon
we move our bones
in unison

Alan Summers  

Feature: Brass Bell: Alan Summers
July 2015 issue of brass bell, featuring poems by Alan Summers

Ekphrastic response to an Installation by Fairley Barnes 
May 26, 2015

Out of Many, One
By Jacob Salzer

The old saying: “a picture is worth a thousand words” has an inverse statement that seems equally true: “a word can paint a thousand pictures.” To better illustrate this: I just googled the word snow and found: about 851,000,000 results (0.51 seconds). Part of the beauty of haiku is how many different images can arise from reading a single word. In turn, the practice of reading and writing haiku has individual and universal aspects that I see as two parts of one life. It turns out, our sense of individuality is not as concrete as it may seem. Here is the beauty of haiku and collaborative poetry: the writer and the reader have become one, through Being, through haiku. We realize we are connected. It is a connection that bypasses the whole mind:

stick moon
we move our bones
in unison

— Alan Summers
Brass Bell, July 2015




small-hours-train the pink suitcase of moon shadows

Alan Summers
Brass Bell September 2015 Issue: One-Line Haiku


war moon haiku &photo artwork©Alan Summers 2015-2018



war moon
the flickering of humans
at birdsong

Alan Summers
Asahi Shimbun (Japan 2015)
the blood moon issue, Oct 2 for the eclipse of 9/28

David McMurry:
“brilliant haiku”

Under the Basho Poets' Personal Best (November 2015)

Anthology Credit: Heart Breaths: Book of Contemporary Haiku ed. Jean LeBlanc
ISBN: 9789385945038



seed moon
the other side
of the wind

Alan Summers
Publication Credit: Frozen Butterfly issue 3 October 2015
Anthology credit: EarthRise Rolling Haiku Collaboration 2016 Foodcrop Haiku


crow-flecked
the jack of all moons 
rising rising 

Alan Summers 
Scope Vol 62 No 1 (The magazine of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (Qld) Inc February 2016)


limned clouds
the beat of regular rain 
on moon-gentians 

Alan Summers 
Yanty’s Butterfly 2016
ed. Jacob Salzer and The Nook Editorial Staff



spider silk...
to catch a river
moon shifting

Alan Summers
hedgerow: a journal of small poems issue  #53 (October 30, 2015



moonlighting crows in other colors

Alan Summers
Publication Credit: Frogpond (39:1) Winter Issue
Anthology:  Full of Moonlight: Haiku Society of America 2016 Members' Anthology (Feb 2017) ed. David Grayson


Ticking Moon photo©Alan Summers 2018


Ticking Moon

conjugating verbs
across a battlefield
matins moon 

a child looms large
in collerateral damages
hunkered moon

transcribed notes
in every hymn sheet
politicians moon

a people’s moon
the song of blackbirds
in every trench

cobweb moon
a man’s opening lines
fill with mortar

a list of people
paper the tunnels
neglected moon

cullingmoonmanycolorsuniform

we learn to adjust
the clocks of our hands
borrowed moon

Alan Summers
Publication Credit: Bones - journal for contemporary haiku no. 7 July 15th 2015
Anthology Credit: Heart Breaths: Book of Contemporary Haiku ed. Jean LeBlanc
ISBN: 9789385945038




day moon
a crow slices
half of it

Alan Summers
moongarlic issue 5 November 2015



everyone went to the moon
a softness of morning stars

Alan Summers 
Yanty’s Butterfly 2016 Haiku Nook Anthology
ed. Jacob Salzer and The Nook Editorial Staff


photo©Alan Summers February 1st 2018


Alan & Karen run online courses in haiku; haibun; shahai; tanka; tanka story (aka tanka prose); senryu; and ekphrastic courses