Poetry Journal cover art, and Alan Summers haiku shortlisted for the Museum of Haiku Literature Award, British Haiku Society, Blithe Spirit; and appearances in Haiku Society of America journal Frogpond, Asahi Shimbun, and Presence magazine

It's a wonderful experience for a poet to be published in journals that produce both fine editing, selection of poems,  and striking cover art.

Aubrie Cox is the new incoming editor of Frogpond, the journal of the Haiku Society of America, starting with vol. 39 : 1 Winter issue 2016 (printed Spring 2016).  

She suggested poets take a snapshot of the magazine in various surroundings.  What better than when two iconic British icons are involved!  That of bluebells, and a robin.


It was only fitting that today, when I received my copy of Frogpond, where my crow haiku was published, that another bird, a robin, came visiting.  The European Robin is a Winter/Christmas image in the U.K. and other parts of Europe.   

The robin haiku is unpublished, produced in honour of Frogpond being visited by this most friendly and iconic of birds in Britain.

Bluebells and Frogpond.

Such superb artwork for the cover of Frogpond by Christopher Patchel, that comes even more alive in outdoor photographs that I am reminded of this haiku in another publication, that of Presence magazine:

Presence magazine cover art and design by Ian Turner.

Another example of fine cover artwork is by Andrew Brown for the British Haiku Society journal Blithe Spirit.

An incredible delight and surprise was the fact that I was shortlisted for the Museum of Haiku Literature Award by esteemed artist/poet Debbie Strange via the British Haiku Society journal Blithe Spirit (Editor Dave Serjeant):

Commentary by Debbie Strange:

I am also honoured to be published by the Asahi Shimbun of Japan:

The haikai journals with web links:

Frogpond is the Haiku Society of America's journal edited by Aubrie Cox with Assistant Editor Jim Warner, artwork by Christopher Patchel: 

http://www.hsa-haiku.org/frogpond/aboutfrogpond.html

Presence is the U.K.'s largest independent journal of haiku literature with fine editors:

http://haikupresence.org/contribute

http://haikupresence.org/home

http://haiku-presence.50webs.com/guide/subscribe.html#_=_

Blithe Spirit is the journal of the British Haiku Society:

http://britishhaikusociety.org.uk/journal/

http://britishhaikusociety.org.uk/membership-new/

Asahi Shimbun, Japan, has a regular haiku column in English edited by David McMurray since April 1995, first for the Asahi Evening News: http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/

More about one line haiku:

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/all-those-red-apples-travelling.html

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/alan-summers-one-line-haiku-in-premier.html

Robinsong:

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/modern-haiku-alan-summers-robinsong.html

How Robins Became the Birds of Christmas

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/how-robins-became-the-birds-of-christmas/

A selection of haiku poems by Alan Summers in American magazine Modern Haiku

                     An Independent Journal of Haiku and Haiku Studies

"you ain't serious about haiku if you don't subscribe to Modern Haiku"
—Small Press Review, December 2004

www.modernhaiku.org/subscriptions.html

One haiku just published this Summer in Modern Haiku, and a selection of others from last year, plus a couple of oldies or mor from the 1990s.

night of small colour
a part of the underworld
becomes one heron

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Modern Haiku Vol. 45.2  Summer 2014

this small ache and all the rain too robinsong

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Modern Haiku vol. 44.1 winter/spring 2013

ants following invisible trials the children

Alan Summers

Publication Credits: Modern Haiku  issue 44:3 (2013)

mist and dark I hold onto Little Bear

Alan Summers

Publication Credits: Modern Haiku  issue 44:3 (2013)

woodfire

flickering in the silence

corralled horses

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Modern Haiku vol. xxvi  no. 3 (1995); Moonlighting  (Intimations Pamphlet Series British Haiku Society publication, 1996); sundog haiku journal: an australian year  (sunfast press 1997 reprinted 1998); California State Library - 1997; First Australian Haiku online Anthology (1999); First Australian Anthology (Paper Wasp 2000); haiku dreaming australia the best haiku & senryu relevant in and to Australia (2006); The Crow Walk haibun (HAIKU HIKE, World Walks, Crossover UK 'Renewability' project 2006)); Stepping Stones:  a way into haiku  (British Haiku Society 2007); Mann Library, Cornell University Daily Haiku (March 2013)

Far North Queensland

a dingo’s call picked up-

the moonless night 

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Modern Haiku (199-)

web link:

Far North Queensland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_North_Queensland




cool morning
birdsong
    light on a distant cloud

Alan Summers

Publications credits: 
Modern Haiku, (1999); Azami Haiku in English Commemorative Issue  (2000); Birmingham Words Magazine Issue 3 (Autumn 2004); Haiku Friends Vol. 3 ed. Masaharu Hirata (Japan 2009)

Modern Haiku Summer 2014 backcover.JPG

A selection of haiku short verse poems around BIRDSONG and the SOUND OF BIRDS

BIRDSONG and the SOUND OF BIRDS -
A Series of haiku around birds and birdlife 

sunflower heart

the chiffchaff sings

its name

Alan Summers

tinywords 13.2 2013  (ISSN 2157-5010)

eJournal/eMagazine San Mateo, CA : D.F. Tweney : El Camino Press

http://tinywords.com/2013/09/13/13405/

Chiffchaff song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_C2Z9PWEaM
http://www.bto.org/about-birds/bird-id/willow-warbler-chiffchaff


Chiffchaff/Common Chiffchaff:
http://www.garden-birds.co.uk/birds/chiffchaff.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Chiffchaff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Chiffchaff

roll of the apple…

I decide to let birdsong

back out of the box

Alan Summers

Under the Basho Vol 1.1 Autumn 2013

http://www.underthebasho.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=70&Itemid=90

an up-too-late moon

the blackbird whispers its song

as I stumble home

Alan Summers

Yamadera Basho Memorial Museum (Japan 2013)

this small ache and all the rain too robinsong

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Modern Haiku vol. 44.1 winter/spring 2013

         cool morning

birdsong

light on a distant cloud

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Modern Haiku, (1999); Azami Haiku in English Commemorative Issue  (Japan 2000); Birmingham Words Magazine Issue 3 (Autumn 2004); Birdsong - a haiku sequence  Together They Stood, Poetry Now (2004); Haiku Friends Vol. 3 ed. Masaharu Hirata (Japan  2009)

down side streets -

gulls turning the sky

in and out

Alan Summers

Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years. Ed. Jim Kacian, Allan Burns & Philip Rowland (W. W. Norton & Company 2013) http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=4294972241; The Disjunctive Dragonfly, a New Approach to English-Language Haiku by Richard Gilbert (Red Moon Press 2012) [Elemental Animsim p80] http://www.redmoonpress.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=32&products_id=179

cumulus clouds

a clattering of jackdaws

rearrange their pattern

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Blithe Spirit  vol. 20 no. 3 (2010)

note:

An archaic collective noun for a group of Jackdaws is a "clattering."

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Jackdaw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackdaw

First recorded in John Lydgate's Debate between the Horse, Goose and Sheep, c.1430, as "A clatering of chowhis", and then in Juliana Berners Book of St. Albans, c.1480, as "a Clateryng of choughes."

A "clattering" of Jackdaws:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thekrankis/4375039089/

Other names for Jackdaws include caddesse, cawdaw, caddy, chauk, college-bird (from dialectal college "cathedral"), jackerdaw, jacko, ka-wattie, chimney-sweep bird, from their nesting propensities, and sea-crow, from their frequenting coasts. ..or just plain "Jack"

talkwildlife.com: http://www.talkwildlife.com/photo/a-clattering-of-jackdaws

four rosellas distant sounds to blue

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Azami #34 (Japan 1996)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosella

through an open window

a kookaburra laugh

enters

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Frogpond (Haiku Society of America journal, Summer 1994); Scope Feature (FAWQ, Australia, 1994); Micropress magazine; Micropress: best poems Ed. Kate O'Neill, Micropress NZ (1997; Moonlighting; sundog haiku journal: an australian year  (sunfast press 1997 reprinted 1998);   California State Library - Main Catalog Call Number : HAIKU S852su 1997

Kookaburra calls:   

http://www.soundboard.com/sb/KooKaburra_sound_clips

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feJZ7heOK2I

Seven Sisters the call of owls either side

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Blithe Spirit (British Haiku Society journal, March 2012)

train whistle
a blackbird hops
along its notes

Alan Summers

Publications credits:

Presence #47 (2012): The Haiku Foundation Per Diem (September 2012): The Elements

V to U

a parliament of rooks

shift their flight

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Icebox, Hailstone Haiku Group, Japan (2010)

Selected by Hisashi Miyazaki

fading last note

torresian crow sounds

the darkening sky

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Paper Wasp (Australia 1997); Azami (Japan 1998); Blithe Spirit, (June 2004); Shamrock Haiku Journal, Irish Haiku Society, Spring 2006; Sketchbook, A Journal  for Eastern & Western Short Forms Nov. 2007; Haiku Hike; THFhaiku app for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch (2011)

Calls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=079uBwOi2w8

Torresian Crow: http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/speciesfactsheet.php?id=5786

http://www.graemechapman.com.au/library/viewphotos.php?c=85

the names of rain

a blackbird’s subsong

into dusk

Publications credits: Haiku News Vol. 1 No. 35 (September 2012); featured poet at Cornell University USA (Cornell University, Mann Library haiku showcase March 2013.)

haiku news: http://www.wayfarergallery.net/haikunews/?p=4018

http://www.wayfarergallery.net/haikunews/?tag=alan-summers

subsong soundtrack: http://tinyurl.com/blackbirdsubsong

 

A Blackbird in the rain...

Al.

Alan Summers, a Japan Times award-winning writer, regularly runs online classes and workshops on haiku, and related genres such as tanka, haibun, and tanka prose.  

For further information, please don't hestitate to contact Call of the Page Course Director Karen Hoy, who will only be too delighted to send you information about these intriguing short verse poetry genres.

Karen's email: admin@callofthepage.org

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Modern Haiku, Alan Summers robinsong haiku (European Robin) one line haiku

this small ache and all the rain too robinsong  


one-line haiku by Alan Summers
Published: Modern Haiku vol. 44.1 winter/spring 2013




image information:

	English: A European Robin singing near Doolin, Ireland
	22 February 2009, 22:51:43
Source	Own work
Author	Scott Wieman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:European_Robin_Singing.jpg

 

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