Spaces available on the early bird rate for haiku and tanka poetry international online courses

There are still places on the haiku and tanka courses starting January 2015, available at the early bird rate (a £10 or US$16 dollar discount) until the end of this week.  

Please email karen@withwords.org.uk for more details.

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Special offer ends today on Rooster Moans online internet course The Poem as Portrait with Karen Hoy

This course has now sold out!

Thanks to everyone who was excited about this course, cannot wait for it to start, which is next Monday. 

The Poem as Portrait

The early bird rate is expiring soon for Karen's "The Poem as Portrait" course with The Rooster Moans Poetry Cooperative.

If you share Karen's fascination with the potential for poems as portraits, and might like to explore this in your own work, then click here for more details:

www.poetrycoop.com/poetry-workshops/poem-portrait

Poem:

Gauguin Girl

for Marre

Exotic-flower-girl,

out of the greenhouse,

past the bulbs, on your bicycle,

hair flowing,

and then rowing

on the IJsselmeer.

A work of post-colonial art,

indonesio-caribbean,

dreamt up by trade winds,

conceived by jet engine,

root-stock spliced from two continents

and grafted,

nurtured,

in a third -

you are your very own,

sitting in the prow,

brown legs drawn up,

bare-breasted,

talking office talk

in perfect mid-atlantic.

Karen Hoy

Publication credit:

My Mother Threw Knives: an anthology of poems about women's lives, Second Light Publications, 2006, editors Wendy French, Maggie Sawkins and Dilys Wood.  ISBN:  0-9546934-1-8

Image credit:

Paul Gauguin, Nave Nave Fenua (Delightful Land), 1894/1895 Print.  

Courtesy National Gallery of Art Washington.

Note: 

IJsselmeer: www.holland.com/global/tourism/article/ijsselmeer.htm

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Alan Summers : events, readings, online poetry courses including haiku online workshops and tanka online workshops

I'm a Japan Times award-winning writer with over 20 years experience in haiku and tanka poetry, and I enjoy working with people around the world who are intrigued by these two short verse genres.

Alan Summers, Director and Lead Tutor, With Words

International Online Haiku Courses:
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/online-haiku-course-early-bird-rate.html

International Online Haiku and Tanka Courses:
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/dates-for-next-online-haiku-tanka.html

For futher information about dates later in the year for online courses and workshops, both one-to-one and small groups please don't hesitate to send an email to Karen at: karen@withwords.org.uk

Live and Local (UK)
I also do occasional writing group presentations (talks; readings; workshops) and live events.  For further information drop Karen a line at: karen@withwords.org.uk






Alan Summers speaking about haiku at a TEDx event:
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/transcript-from-tedx-video-amazement-of.html


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Alan Summers headlining the Words & Ears Poetry Event (The Swan Hotel, Bradford on Avon) July 25th 2013

Plus Open Mic opportunities!

The Swan Hotel:

photograph: https://plus.google.com/photos/at/106904345684679385847?hl=en

The Swan Hotel Events:  
http://www.theswanbradford.co.uk/index.html

The Swan Hotel Location: 
http://www.theswanbradford.co.uk/location.html

Less than five minutes from Bradford on Avon train station, go over the bridge towards the town centre (left hand side of the bridge, and enter via rear entrance through car park, coach house annex on your right where you see the silver people carrier vehicle).

http://www.booking.com/hotel/gb/the-swan-bradford-on-avon.html?aid=329009

w. W
Words & Ears organisers:
Helen Murray: http://www.helenmurrayphotos.com/
Dawn Gorman: http://www.dawngorman.co.uk/AboutPage.html

Dates for the next online haiku & tanka courses in 2014

With Words regularly run online courses:

Online Tanka courses; Online Haiku courses;
Haibun and Tanka Prose courses; as well as a range of introductory, intermediate, and advanced group or one-to-one online courses and feedback.

Enquiries about the courses and our "early bird"rate if paying at least a month in advance can be answered by Karen at: karen@withwords.org.uk

Here is some feedback from our first tanka course, which finished at the end of last year:

"Thank you for your feed back. You make things seem so clear ...  So enjoyed reading the others' work too."  
Margaret Beverland (permission given)

"I have enjoyed the course tremendously and know that I will return to Alan's notes frequently as I continue to write tanka."  
Jan Harris (permission given)



Tanka are well-grounded in concrete images yet infused with lyric intensity, and an intimacy from direct expression of emotion tempered with implication. Tanka contain ingredients of suggestion colored by shade and tone, setting off a nuance more potent than direct statement. Almost any subject, explicitly expressing your direct thoughts and feelings can be contained in this short form poetry. 

Alan Summers, 
Decoding Tanka (Extract from Article in Progress)

Haiku: (plural and singular spelling)

The shortest of all short poems, yet containing enough that the result leaves enough for the reader to create a longer poem for themselves.

• Haiku (plural and singular spelling) are usually made up of three short lines in a short, long, short line order. They can be read out loud in about six seconds. 
• They're written in the present tense, in ordinary language, and work well including two different images that although are side by side, they spark off each other, creating new possibilities.
• Almost any subject can be caught by haiku. 
• Haiku are not sayings, opinion, aphorisms, or any other type of statement about how life is. 
• Haiku don't tell, lead, or instruct the reader what to think or feel; a haiku gives neutral facts (concrete images) that the writer has observed.
• The presentation of a partnership between two images allows the reader to reach their own conclusions about what the poem is describing, not the poet's viewpoint. The reader is an equal partner to the writer, and is the person who completes the poem.

Alan Summers, Writing Poetry: the haiku way (Extract from the Book in Progress) 

An updated biography of Alan Summers, lead tutor of With Words can be read at the following weblink, scroll down: 
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/entry-details-that-wed-like-for-haiku.html

To find out more about what the courses involve and how they run, please email karen@withwords.org.uk for an information sheet and quotes from participants who have taken the courses over the years.

Many thanks!

Karen at With Words


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"A must-have book for any haiku fan": Amazon review of Does Fish-God Know, gendai haiku and experimental short verse collection by Alan Summers, published by Yet To Be Named Free Press

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 Gratifying to see a review of my latest poetry collection (gendai haiku and experimental short verse) Does Fish-God Know at Amazon (UK).

Extract: 

" Beautiful and sometimes startling imagery is wrought throughout these thought-provoking pieces. Anti-pigeon spikes on cemetery gates and dirty moons inhabit the dark side of the soul, while tipsy/philosophical frames of mind are vividly conjured in haiku such as "vodka chilli cocktail" and "Sunday drunk".

So, Does Fish-God Know? Whether he/she does or doesn't, the quest to find out leads you on a compelling journey. A must-have book for any haiku fan."

weblink:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Does-Fish-God-Know-Alan-Summers/dp/1479211044/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1357334929&sr=8-1




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Online haiku course starting this week

UPDATE:
Spaces for online workshops have been filled for this year. 

Please check with us again in 2013 for a With Words course, by emailing karen@withwords.org.uk, or check out my haiku and tanka poetry course with Rooster Moans workshop which starts in January 2013:  http://www.poetrycoop.com/poetry-workshops/haiku-and-tanka-amazement-intensity 

Dates for the Rooster Moans online course :

Haiku and Tanka: Amazement & Intensity

Dates: Jan. 7 - Feb. 1, 2013 

weblink:

http://www.poetrycoop.com/poetry-workshops/haiku-and-tanka-amazement-intensity 


Previous message read:

We need another participant for the With Words online haiku course starting this coming week.  Any takers?  We'll give the same as the early bird discount.  This year's online courses have been really well received, but this will be the last one run in 2012.

Please email karen@withwords.org.uk for more info, including comments from previous participants.  (Or call Karen on 07789 787909.  She's happy to chat to see if the course would suit you.  If you're dialling from outside the UK, please use country code 44, then 7789 787909).  Many thanks!

Rose Hip Curry and the Sound of Poets Cooking - Book Release!

The Sound of Poets Cooking

editor Richard Krawiec
Jacar Press, 2010, 172 pages
ISBN: 9780984574001

http://jacarpress.com/books.html#sopc

Featuring work by five dozen poets, including NC Poet Laureates Fred Chappell and Kathryn Stripling Byer, and dozens of other nationally celebrated writers. The poems alternate with recipes written by the poets, their family members, lovers and friends. The writing is at turns sensuous, hilarious, elegant, and playful. The recipes range from Asian, through European, to Middle Eastern dishes, as well as regional favorites from across the U.S.--tiramisu, homemade curry, vegetarian meals, exotic seafood, some simple, some complex. There is something here for every palate, literary and culinary.

Proceeds from the sales of this book will be used to fund writing workshops in excluded communities. 
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Click for review:

Review: The Independent, in Durham

  

"The first step in Alan Summers' Rosehip Curry recipe (yum!) is to write for several hours in a walled garden in direct sunlight."

Wild Goose Poetry review says:
 
"The Sound of Poets Cooking  is a new, 172-page anthology of poems about food accompanied by related recipes, from Krawiec’s fledgling press, Jacar Press. And it is an impressive debut, featuring wonderful work from poets both familiar and new, including two NC Poets Laureate, Fred Chappell and Kathryn Stripling Byer ... and more, wrapped in a clever cover with an image of Buddha cradling a pomegranate, eggplant, carrots, tomatoes, sweet potato, chef’s knife and some spiky yellow fruit I’m not familiar with, appealingly conveying the mixture of spirituality and whimsy one might expect from poetry about food."

North American Readings for 2010 and 2011 

by Richard Krawiec and other poets

Oct 23, 3pm Greensboro Barnes and Noble,– Mark Smith-Soto Coordinator

Nov 6, Bookwalk Washington, NC – Marty Silverthrone

Nov 7, 3pm Quail Ridge Books Raleigh – Richard Krawiec

Nov 13, 7pm – Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill – Richard Krawiec

Nov 14, 3pm Malaprops, Asheville – Pat Riviere-Seel

Nov 18, 8pm ECU – John Hoppenthaler - Richard Krawiec if you want to carpool

Dec 3, 7pm – The Regulator – Richard Krawiec

Dec 10 (possibly) 6pm, Accent on Books, Asheville – Pat Riviere-Seel

2011

April 3, 3pm City Lights Books, Sylva, April Poetry Month kick-off – me for
now but someone else will be handling the local aspect

April 14, 7:30pm.  Central Piedmont Community College Literary Festival,
Charlotte.  This will be a big event, combined with culinary students there
cooking recipes – Richard Krawiec for now

April 23 all day event at Barton College, including readings, workshops, and
a concert by Fleur de Lisa – Richard Krawiec for now

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