Alan Summers — 

Touchstone Award Winner

.

Alan Summers is a recipient of a Touchstone Individual Poem Award for 2016 for his poem

house clearance
room by room by room
my mother disappears

It first appeared in Blithe Spirit 26.1

Blithe Spirit (journal of the British Haiku Society):
http://britishhaikusociety.org.uk/journal/


From the panel of judges:

“When I read haiku, I’m looking for an unexpected view on the well-known. I’m curious to learn about an open secret (after Robert Spiess). I’m looking for a simple (but not banal) and lucid language that expresses something extraordinary within the ordinary, something which I never read before in that way as well as something that is of beauty beyond time. ‘house clearance’ represents the pure power of haiku. Layers of meaning ascending from deeper layers of the mind (‘room by room by room’) in relation to existential truth (‘my mother disappears’). Perhaps one finds a human contradiction: memories can only get preserved vividly after “clearance.”

“An emotional and vivid image that brings sadness at first reading while effectively pointing out that taking away the physical doesn’t remove the memory.”

Alan was one of five winners for the individual haiku category out of a record 660 entries.

More information about the Touchstone Awards: https://www.thehaikufoundation.org/2017/04/30/commentaries-for-the-2016-touchstone-awards/

More haiku, and tanka, from Karen Hoy

photo by Kathy Hogan

Two haiku, and a tanka poem, by Karen Hoy, and one about the dangers for hyena cubs further down:

Madame Camellia
a teabag discarded
in autumn leaves

autumn street
after the kiss
her white lilies

a tingling in my palm
from the hellebore seeds
this quiet
and you elsewhere
in company

Karen Hoy

Blithe Spirit 27.1 (2017)

British Haiku Society Members' Anthology 2016:

hyena cub cull
the alpha female’s calls
echo against the hill

Karen Hoy

Publication Credit: 

BHS 2016 Members’ Anthology Beginnings isbn 978-1-906333-05-8

British Haiku Society: 

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

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

See other haiku by Karen Hoy:
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/selected-haiku-from-karen-hoy.html

https://www.callofthepage.org/courses/

Karen Hoy is the Call of the Page Course Director for online courses in haiku; senryu; tanka; haibun; tanka stories (tanka prose+poems). 

For information please do not hesitate to email her:
admin@callofthepage.org

Portable words: The other side of the electric fence - Kate Hall's haiku collection "Irises"

A haiku collection by Kate B Hall, 
President of The British Haiku Society:
http://britishhaikusociety.org.uk

Irises 
by Kate B Hall, Hub Editions (2015) 

ISBN 978-0-9576460-5-6 Price £5

277 haiku, senryu and tanka and one 8 line poem including 7 haiku sequences

To purchase a copy, don't hesitate to email Kate: 

Kate B Hall <katebhall@hotmail.co.uk>

Book review by Alan Summers

Portable words:
The other side of the electric fence.

As I dived into, and inhabited this collection, I witnessed emerging haiku that go beyond a straight sketch from nature, which is often called shasei in regards to Japanese art.  The shasei technique or approach also tends to be the envisioned early stages of haiku that Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) suggested.  Too often we see straight sketches that both Japanese artists, and writers of haiku, alongside non-Japanese proponents initially misinterpret, and which Saitō Mokichi (1882 - 1953) puts so succinctly, that shasei is:

"...an expression of ‘animation’ or ‘the divine soul’ and never as a simple linear bordering of objects as contemporary Japanese artists and poets in general took the term to mean."

Paraphrasing from: 

”Saito Mokichi's Poetics of Shasei," 

Japanese Hermeneutics: Current Debates on Aesthetics and Interpretation, edited by Michael F. Marra (Honolulu : University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2002)

In a nutshell:

Masaoka Shiki - Three Ways of Sketching from Life

1. to copy reality as it is
2. to select carefully from experience (the next stage)
3. to include makoto, internal, psychological reality of what is truthful (the third development)

Modern Japanese Poets and the Nature of Literature

by Makoto Ueda (Stanford University Press; 1 edition 1983) 

We can still be objective, and not too subjective, otherwise we risk losing the resonance of the poem.  But we want to catch those invisible tensions that make haiku more than the sum of its parts.  And the visible text is, and can be, very much influenced by what is not there, by the invisible text, that negative space effect that powers the haiku beyond its ‘readable text’.  

Negative space in haiku: Writing Poetry: the haiku way

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/negative-space-in-haiku-writing-poetry.html

Why am I excited?   I feel Kate Hall is another poet getting away from the yoke of (perceived) shasei methodology, and that this is an emergent collection.  More later. 

The haiku in the collection are a variety of tones, styles, approaches, and the ones that sing out are often the ones where placement or misplacement of words lift them away from straight description. Whether Kate Hall intended this, I feel she has entered into using misprision (Old French: mesprendre, modern French: se méprendre, "to misunderstand”)… 

Misprision:

“A term used by Harold Bloom to describe the process by which strong writers misread or misinterpret their literary predecessors so as to clear imaginative space for themselves. According to Bloom, every poem is a misprision or misconstrual of a hypothetical parent poem.”

Quote by Greig E. Henderson and Christopher Brown, University of Toronto

…and making use of clinamen, the turn, bias, or twist: “[The] word that Lucretius, in his 2nd century book, The Nature of Things, used to describe how the world works. Instead of describing solid things as fixed and resting in space, he got his readers to imagine that the whole solid spatial world was moving along in the same direction.”

Paraphrased from Pennsylvania State University

Two groundbreaking books touching on this are by Harold Bloom: 

The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry and A Map of Misreading both published by Oxford University Press from his piece:

  

Clinamen or Poetic Misprision

Harold Bloom, New Literary History, Vol. 3, No. 2, On Interpretation: I (Winter, 1972), pp. 373-391 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Often by our mistakes we stumble into the very writing style we didn’t know we were looking for, and so it finds us and not the other way around.

This leads me onto the following haiku which reminds me of Rafal Olbinski whose work is similar to the work of Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte, and where Olbinski describes it as "poetic surrealism”.

I see this very clearly in this haiku:

reading a book

in the park café — through the trees

your blue top

Now Kate Hall could have easily have redacted this to:

reading a book

in the park café

your blue top

Which is a very serviceable haiku, though better with visual punctuation, a cut marker, thusly:

reading a book

in the park café…

your blue top

But by adding that M—dash and adding ‘through the trees’ which echoes Rafal Olbinski and many of his paintings, we have gorgeous fabulism more in step with cutting edge Japanese haiku poets, yet retaining a strong Britishness of its own, and echoing Western surrealism in general.

morning school run

on the back his dad’s bike

eating his lunch

n.b. There is perhaps a deliberate missing ‘of’ or other modifier.

Again this could have been just a perfunctory haiku yet is lifted by the improbable, as also seen in these enhanced imageries that are not just plain concrete but touch on the extraordinary. A lot of Hall's haiku do eschew a number of modifiers which lend that extra bit of poetic surrealism.   Think of a smallish boy buried in his backpack, and eating snacks, and it looks like the bag is eating him, or eating its own packed lunch:  Very British surrealism.

two men on bikes

pass each other singing

an open duet

The use of starlings brings these two haiku into another dimension, with the first dropping the sound of the sea into the reeds:

starlings

drop into the reeds

a sea of sound

And again, where the author has herself turned the starlings homeward:

full moon sunset

a swirl of starlings

I turn for home

And here we have dogs bouncing harebells into a wood:

someone else’s dog

bounces between us

bluebells in the woods

Here we have the playful and strangely forlorn beach scene transformed by the middle verse of the haiku sequence Three from Margate:

father

buries his twins

next to their castle

And partly using something akin to synesthesia via concrete imagery:

amongst the weeds

the pungent smell of fox

and a small leg bone

It’s all in that last line, and that small leg bone.

This childlike almost faerie like verse, where the first line can be read literally, or where dusk is camped, or placed by the author, or the pigeon whose call brings back an idyllic time of childhood between before the realism of adulthood:

camping dusk

pigeon calls echo

childhood bedtimes

Yellow has always evoked emotions for me and appear in many of my poems. The yellow house in a river, which we might logically correct or perceive as “by” the river and not literally within it, reveals something else happening: A parallel narrative, mysteriously conjuring more than the logical content of the sum of its words.  The double spacing between river and heron is intentional by the author, and is effectively used as another way to use white or negative space. 

yellow house

in the river  a heron

walks on water

Kate Hall doesn’t just do one style as these three haiku show, and they remind me of Carol Ann Duffy’s Rapture (Picador; 1st edition 2005), her seventh collection, and book-length love-poem, and her refusal to simplify the contradictions of love:

chilled through

I come home to eat toast

with you

your toothbrush

gone with the slam

of a door

Milky Way night

you see a shooting star

I miss it

Humour is an important device in both haiku and senryu, and brings out the fun in a slightly  surreal image where dogs and their owners are almost interchangeable:

warmer weather

new haircuts for the dogs

and their owners

Her other poetry background comes into force with alliteration and strong use of verbs:

deep dark dusk

on the last day of the year

blackbirds mither outside

Here we have the succinct beauty and yugen bringing out an atmosphere stronger than the sum of words alone:

first long dark evening

I thought I would mind

rain on the window

Alongside this hauntingly intimate image:

in the dark

I cradle snow

on my tongue

As well as haiku and senryu there are tanka that employ subtle changes in the turning of the poem into another one, especially with these two examples:

at the hospital

she doesn’t recognise us

but winks anyway

outside we break the ice

in a muddy puddle

our garden covered

with thick snow

squirrels dig

in the window box

for things they didn’t bury

There is also an eight line poem using well hefted enjambment with ‘on a cliff path’ which again is worth the admission of a journey into her world.  I won’t spoil the enjoyment by quoting this non-haikai poem, although its use of haiku tension at its best makes it so strongly effective.

This is one of my favourite monostich, those last five words resonate deep in my bones:

almost forgotten in a drawer — a photo of sea mist

And the half-said bitter-sweetness of a memory of a mother:

talking about my mother

I bite my thumb

until it bleeds

Although this next haiku appears just to be concrete, the two parts although not distant juxtaposition, yield a richness despite its plainness, and just cheers me up by reading it yet again: 

cold wet day

bright red seats

on the train

I am now excited to anticipate Kate Hall’s next collection, which I hope is already in its embryonic phase.  Perhaps the next collection could be a “New and Selected Works” with great potential titles if two of Kate Hall’s haiku were selected as part of that idea for her next collection.

e.g.

Waiting for Pain Killers

waiting for pain killers

to work — a fall of snow

down the chimney

This haiku is just sheer magical juxtaposition at its best, with ‘waiting for pain killers’ partnered with this phrase:

a fall of snow

down the chimney

Either part of the haiku on its own doesn’t carry the power but coupled together they bring an incredible sense of synesthesia via concrete imagery.

The other great title for a collection, a strong contender as my favourite potential title, would be 

The Other Side of The Electric Fence:

the other side

of the electric fence

always one sheep

Those first two lines apply so strongly for haiku writers, and other poets, who go beyond,  tentatively at first, and I see that is just what Kate Hall is attempting to do, whether beknownst to her or not.   

That last line isn’t as simple as it appears:   As haiku poets we sometimes feel the pressure to conform, to bow before our peers, yet we push ourselves just a little, a little more and a little bit more, until we are fully realised on the other side of that electric fence.

Although as I said this collection has weaknesses, I urge you to buy a copy.   It’s a bridging the gap collection until the anticipated third collection by this writer evolves. 

Review by Alan Summers for Blithe Spirit, journal of the British Haiku Society: http://britishhaikusociety.org.uk/journal/

To join The British Haiku Society see:
http://britishhaikusociety.org.uk/membership-new/

You can find Alan at Call of the Page where he is co-founder along with Karen Hoy. They run online courses in haiku; haibun (prose+haiku); tanka stories (prose+tanka); shahai (photography+haiku); ekphrastic haiku & tanka; senryu etc...
Call of the Page: www.callofthepage.org

all those red apples | travelling the monorail - haiku travelling in one line - one line haiku aka monostich aka monoku

photo©Alan Summers

all those red apples | travelling the monorail

haiku travelling in one line

by Alan Summers

also see:

Travelling the single line of haiku

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/travelling-single-line-of-haiku-one.html 

images©Alan Summers

So what is it about one line haiku and did you know it's common to see haiku (and hokku) within the Japanese language in just one line?

A lot has been said, and will continue to be said about one line haiku aka the monostich or the monoku.

Here is my piece regarding techniques, devices, and examples.

A longer version appears in a new anthology called Yanty's Butterfly with examples from both established and very new writers in the haiku publishing world:
  

http://jsalzer.wixsite.com/yantysbutterfly

http://jsalzer.wixsite.com/yantysbutterfly/buy

And an article about one line haiku in English will appear in my book “Writing Poetry: the haiku way”.

Also highly recommended:
  

http://www.albapublishing.com

monoku

One of the many devices I employ is the abrupt method of syntax: It's a deliberate subvert technique, as I’ve keenly noticed that both syntax and semantics can be utilised in a manner not possible or accepted in normal modes of writing, and certainly not in the classic/traditional way of writing haiku in the English language (EL).   

Japanese-language haiku themselves are actually one-line haiku, vertically written, and when read in transliteration rather than translation into English, they do not work in a linear English language manner, but carry their own power outside of attempts to translate them into a translator’s version of smooth English grammar and syntax.

So why not use that power for English Language haiku into one line?

It’s also been said that if it's a one-line haiku you are aiming for, that they work best when they cannot be remade into three line haiku.  I’m not sure that’s always the case, but it’s a useful guideline to go by, or work around.

I'd suggest introducing "abruptions" aka abruptive methods, as one method which is my term for breaking up normal syntax/semantics.

Abruptive techniques is my term for sharp changes in directing the reader, and I often subvert the adjective 'abruptive' into a noun i.e. look for abruptives in your haiku.

*

Abruptive: suddenly disruptive
Urban Dictionary

*

merriam-webster.com:

abruptive (adjective) : showing a tendency to be abrupt

abruptitude (noun) : the quality of extreme suddenness
Ryan Muller

*

“Sometimes one-line haiku are, or appear to be, a little subversive in order to tell a greater truth. If it's too smooth it could be just a line of poetry, or a statement.” Alan Summers, With Words

*

Jim Kacian touches on this:

"Multiple stops yield subtle, rich, often ambiguous texts which generate alternative readings, and subsequent variable meanings.

Each poem can be several poems, and the more the different readings cohere and reinforce each other, the larger the field occupied by the poem, the greater its weight in the mind.”

Example:

    walking among old stone cattle out in the rain

     Jim Kacian

Extract from The Way of One by Jim Kacian (Roadrunner X-2 -July 2010 ISSN 1933-7337)

Reproduced with permission from Jim Kacian.

*

The one-line haiku in English is perhaps the speedier cousin of the more common poem over three lines, and its velocity - rather than the slow thoughtful pauses in three line haiku -can be one of the major features across the various qualities to one-line haiku. Whether the author wants these monoku read rapidly or a little slower, we touch on just some of those where velocity with quality of language as sound, not just meaning and content, can play its part, and produce from velocity and quality something I will call veloquality.

We can have either multiple interpretations or misreadings and misdirections, as well as thoughtful verses that lead you to places you didn’t know about.

One line haiku can appear in varous guises but always need to contain some aspects of: The gaps between the fragmentary sections of haiku

Does one-line haiku echo the one line image of the fragment/section and phrasal (two line imagery) sections that creates sparks, bringing together an altogether different and extra overall image? Or does it do something different to the technique of juxtaposing imagery?  

Above all it’s the invisible text that counts as much as the visible text, as a catalyst for everything, including the vertical layers of alternative, additional, and complementary meanings from the horizontal surface meaning.  

Haiku is like the Tardis, it appears small at a first glance, but when you walk through its doors, it’s bigger on the inside:

http://weirdthings.com/2011/07/why-is-the-tardis-bigger-on-the-inside/

Examples of one line haiku (monoku)

written by Alan Summers

Here are just a few more of my one line haiku travelling the monorail over the years:

eye of the song a blackbird touching the void

Award credit:

Winning haiku 

The British Haiku Society Awards 2018

Haiku Section judge: 
Scott Mason (author, The Wonder Code)
Judge's commentary: https://area17.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-layering-of-meaning-beyond.html

each window its own night train

Award credit:

Honourable mention 

The British Haiku Society Awards 2018 

Haiku Section judge: 
Scott Mason (author, The Wonder Code)

at the end of the night snow fox

Publication:  Leaf-fall, Issue 1.1 ed. Akira Yagami (June 2019)




childhood river the sunlight as it falls

Publication: Presence #62 (November 2018)

http://haikupresence.org/subscribe

shadows and first light chimney rooks

Publication: Presence #62 (November 2018)

http://haikupresence.org/subscribe

fainter stars the bluebells shake out a morning

Alan Summers

Sonic Boom, Issue Thirteen 2018
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/61020d_1712d51103d94ed4be98f6b3470e2e9d.pdf

where the river runs I glitter fish scales

Alan Summers

Sonic Boom, Issue Thirteen 2018

https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/61020d_1712d51103d94ed4be98f6b3470e2e9d.pdf

whale footprints the day begins in earnest 

Alan Summers

Sonic Boom, Issue Thirteen 2018

https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/61020d_1712d51103d94ed4be98f6b3470e2e9d.pdf

sunrise the gulls segue into the light

Alan Summers

Australian Haiku Society Summer Solstice Haiku String 2018 theme: change

courting foxes in midwinter the security of imagined daisy chains

Alan Summers

pins on a map: 3rd haiku anthology (Inhaiku Mumbai anthology) 

Inhaiku Mumbai ed. Rohini Gupta (November 2nd 2018)

from haibun: Batwoman

ground zero into the new friend's story

Alan Summers

Publications credits:

Masks 4 (Roadrunner 12.3 – December 2012) 
https://roadrunnerhaikublog.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/rr-12-3.pdf

Anthology credits: in fear of dancing: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2013 www.redmoonpress.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=182 ISBN: 978-1-946848-24-9

Haiku 2014 ed. Scott Metz & Lee Gurga, Modern Haiku Press, 2014 (Joint Winner, The Touchstone Distinguished Books Award 2014)

www.modernhaiku.org/mhbooks/Haiku2014.html

under and over the river crossing bridges

Alan Summers

Honorable Mention

2018 Monostich Haiku Poetry Contest judged by John Stevenson

former president of the Haiku Society of America

http://lyricalpassionpoetry.yolasite.com/2018-monostich-haiku-competition.php 

train sitting:facingpeoplei’drathernot   

Publication credits: Raw NerVz (Summer 1995)

crowded train a dozen yellows crackle

Publication Credits: Does Fish-God Know (YTBN Press 2012)

ISBN-10: 1479211044 / ISBN-13: 978-1479211043

Does Fish-God Know:  https://www.amazon.com/Does-Fish-God-Know-Alan-Summers/dp/1479211044/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478105696&sr=8-1&keywords=does+fish-god+know

this small ache and all the rain too robinsong

Alan Summers

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

the blue note I turn to wind-spun snow

Alan Summers

Publication Credits:  

Blithe Spirit 23.4 (November 2013): The Haiku Calendar 2015 (Snapshot Press, 2014)

Award Credit: Runner-up, The Haiku Calendar Competition 2014

all those red apples amongst the blue tit

Publication credits: Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku Issue 0.1 2012 reissued 2013; Does Fish-God Know (Yet To Be Named Free Press 2012); Roadrunner 12.3 MASKS 4 (2012) https://roadrunnerhaikublog.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/rr-12-3.pdf

Blue Tits, related to Chickadees: http://www.rspb.org.uk/discoverandenjoynature/discoverandlearn/birdguide/name/b/bluetit/

after rain midnight dreams a hedgehog 

Alan Summers

Publication Credit:   brass bell: a haiku journal

One-Line Haiku curated by Zee Zahava (Monday, September 1, 2014)

tearing up snow falls slowly a kind of blue

Alan Summers

Publication Credit:  Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku No. 3 (December 15, 2013)

Red Sea beat my heart still hydrozoa

Alan Summers

Publication Credits: Does Fish-God Know (Yet To Be Named Free Press 2012)

Does Fish-God Know:  https://www.amazon.com/Does-Fish-God-Know-Alan-Summers/dp/1479211044/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478105696&sr=8-1&keywords=does+fish-god+know

petrichor this green sunsets in yesterday

Alan Summers

Publication Credits: Does Fish-God Know (YTBN Press 2012)

petrichor: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/petrichor

intermittent rain I shed another crow 

Alan Summers

Publication Credits: Frogpond autumn 2013 issue (36:3)

irezumi the river coils into heron

Alan Summers

Publication Credits: Frogpond autumn 2013 issue (36:3)

nautiluses who remember useful things for only a day

Alan Summers

Publication Credits: c.2.2. Anthology of short-verse ed. Brendan Slater & Alan Summers 

(Yet To Be Named Free Press 2013):  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1479304565

long hard rain my compass your true north

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Frogpond 36.1 • 2013

h=k=l=0 each love number sleeps

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku Issue 0.1 2012 reissued 2013; Does Fish-God Know (Yet To Be Named Free Press 2012)

rain on the river the jesus star shifting

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Janice M Bostok Haiku Prize 2012 Anthology Evening Breeze

sloe-eyed horses in Lichtenstein bubble gum wrappers

Alan Summers

Publication Credits: Roadrunner 12.3 MASKS 4

giallo this restricted area my birthplace

Alan Summers

Publications credits: 

bones journal Pre issue - Single haiku & Sequences (2012); Does Fish-God Know (Yet To Be Named Free Press 2012)

city of glass the immobilised man small stone counting

Alan Summers

Publication Credits: Blithe Spirit 23.3 (August 2013)

recurringdream#16.333iso/overbreakfast

Alan Summers
Publications credits:

fox dreams (April 2012) ed. Aubrie Cox

n.b. There's a great exchange with Aubrie Cox, now Frogpond editor.  Just ask in the comments box and I'll reply. :-)

blues change the colour rain

Alan Summers

Publication Credit:   brass bell: a haiku journal

One-Line Haiku curated by Zee Zahava (Monday, September 1, 2014)

ants following invisible trials the children

Alan Summers

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

n.b. The word 'trials' is intentional, a case of subverting the expected, as in readers expecting 'trails' but 'trials' suggests a deeper context.

wildflowers adding a little evening to the daylight

Alan Summers

Publication Credit:  Presence #52 (2015) 

dandelion wind swallows spin a chimney

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Presence #53 2015 

green alkanet between the whispers rain

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Blithe Spirit 25.4 (November 2015)

green alkanet: http://www.wildflowerfinder.org.uk/Flowers/A/Alkanet(Green)/Alkanet(Green).htm

I dream of swimming office blocks

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Blithe Spirit 25.4 (November 2015)

cullingmoonmanycolorsuniform

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: 

sequence: Bones - journal for contemporary haiku no. 7 July 15th 2015

small-hours-train the pink suitcase of moon shadows

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Brass Bell September 2015 Issue: One-Line Haiku:

Escher's apple escapes the mercury

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Blithe Spirit 25.4 (November 2015)

From the haibun The Beat Is Back: 

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-beat-is-back-haibun-prose-and-haiku.html

lost childhood cars moonlight a rookery

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Blithe Spirit 25.4 (November 2015)

From the haibun The Beat Is Back: http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-beat-is-back-haibun-prose-and-haiku.html

far off Helvellyn snow the nouns of verbs 

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Blithe Spirit 25.4 (November 2015)

Helvellyn in snow:

1. http://www.stridingedge.net/walks/6108/
2. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Helvellyn+snow&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjf2Jvow4rQAhWlD8AKHQfSAVEQsAQISg&biw=1260&bih=752

I once was this stone home for another

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: 

Bones - journal for contemporary haiku no. 7 July 15th 2015

dragonfly army I slip off the skins of men in pain

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: 

Bones - journal for contemporary haiku no. 7 July 15th 2015

Unforgiving rain I write my next epitaph in a dream

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Asahi Shimbun, Japan, July 31 2015

a red kite whistles haymaking tractors

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Muttering Thunder, volume 2 (November 2015)

RED KITES, and that eerie call:
At 10 minutes 33 seconds into this recording you get a fairly good capture of the unusual and eerie call of a red kite. I heard over half a dozen kites at one instance making these calls, like a haunting and spooky melody or film soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1SyluTQfHk

juniper the tether end of larksong 

Lake District, Cumbria, England, U.K. September 2015

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Poetry & Place anthology issue 1

ed. Ashley Capes and Brooke (Close-Up Books, April 2016)

• https://poetryandplace2015.wordpress.com 
• http://www.amazon.co.uk/Poetry-Place-Anthology-Ashley-Capes/dp/0994528922/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1460795095&sr=8-1&keywords=Poetry+%26+Place+Anthology+2015 
• http://www.amazon.com/Poetry-Place-Anthology-Ashley-Capes/dp/0994528922 

the mountain ash birdsong lichens

Lake District, Cumbria, England, U.K.

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Blithe Spirit 26.1 (March 2016)

colour book the cat becomes marmalade

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Right Hand Pointing issue 95 (h a i k u edition, February 2016)

http://www.righthandpointing.net/#!95-alan-summers-ii/cj4i 

moonlighting crows in other colors

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Frogpond (39:1) Winter Issue 2016

Anthology Credit: 2016 HSA Member Anthology

the rain in our fingers return journey

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Blithe Spirit 26.2 (May 2016)

not yet light the wall its black cat

Alan Summers

[earlier version] pub. brass bell: a haiku journal: April issue: one-line haiku 

sun off stubble a train in its landscape

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: 

otata 4 (April, 2016) An e-zine of haiku and short poems, Otata ed. John Martone

https://otatablog.wordpress.com/2016/04/29/april-2016/

cusp month the housemartins field a meadow

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Blithe Spirit 26.3 (2016)

haibun: Growing Pains Of The Fairy Tale Train

re May into June 2016

Note: haibun: http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/alan-summers-appears-in-new-haibun.html

meadow borders the river clouds

Alan Summers

Publication credit: Presence #56 October 2016 issn 1366-5367

a river surreptitiously the heron

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: otata 11 (November 2016)

https://otatablog.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/otata-nov-2016-2.pdf

https://otatablog.wordpress.com/2016/10/30/november-2016/ 

wolf rain my taste maps a cloud

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: otata 11 (November 2016)

https://otatablog.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/otata-nov-2016-2.pdf
https://otatablog.wordpress.com/2016/10/30/november-2016/ 


she carries the warm gun's child

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: is/let magazine (January 2017)

https://isletpoetry.wordpress.com/2017/01/21/950/

an intercessory prayer to endless blue string

Alan Summers

Publication credit:   Blithe Spirit 26.3 (2016)

(haibun: Growing Pains Of The Fairy Tale Train)

Anthology credit:

EarthRise Rolling Haiku Collaboration 2017 Reconciliation (April 2017)

https://www.thehaikufoundation.org/earthrise/earthrise2017.pdf

the chalk outline around a ring a ring a bag of jellybeans

Alan Summers

Publication credit:  MG8 (moongarlic issue 8 May 2017)

http://www.moongarlic.org

Habeas corpus I hold the other ghosts

Alan Summers

Publication credit:  MG8 (moongarlic issue 8 May 2017)

http://www.moongarlic.org

first swifts the sky turns out of its own blue

Alan Summers

Publication credit:  The Other Bunny (August 7, 2017)

The House On The Hill (ekphrastic haibun)

https://theotherbunny.blog/2017/08/07/the-house-on-the-hill/

the war she never returned Vergissmeinnicht

Alan Summers

Publication credit: 

Haiku Canada Revew vol. 11 no. 2 (October 2017)  ed. LeRoy Gorman 

A literary allusion, as well as a comment on the brutality of war.

See:

https://interestingliterature.com/2017/08/31/a-short-analysis-of-keith-douglass-vergissmeinnicht/

"Vergissmeinnicht" by Keith Douglas, read by a young boy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsTDMTiBSxg

and 

"Vergissmeinnicht" by Keith Douglas (read by Tom O'Bedlam): 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0T2DCLoCDA

lily-filled snoozing ducks the river is sky

Alan Summers

Publication credit: 

Presence issue #59 (November 2017)

wishbones the ritual with my mother

Alan Summers

Presence issue #59 (November 2017)

Note:

About Thanksgiving and turkey wishbones:
http://www.startribune.com/no-bones-about-it-breaking-the-wishbone-is-a-family-tradition/283837301/ 

Daily Haiku:

https://charlottedigregorio.wordpress.com/2017/11/22/daily-haiku-thanksgiving-nov-23-2017/#comment-5647

river-moss the mallards feeding the day slowly

Alan Summers

Wales Haiku Journal issue one March 2018

Issue One https://www.waleshaikujournal.com/spring2018

(Chippenham, Wiltshire, UK)

fledgling moon stars slip thru bedroom windows

Alan Summers

ephemerae vol. 1 (April 2018)

in between the river denizens hurtling notes around

Alan Summers

A Sense of Place: THE SHORE – hearing ed. Kathy Munro (The Haiku Foundation)

where the butterflies went trailing fingers there

Alan Summers

Sense of Place - The Shore - Touch  ed. Kathy Munro (The Haiku Foundation)

For anyone wanting to know more about writing one line haiku we can one-to-one sessions on one line haiku (monostich) aka monoku.
so do email Karen and myself:

https://www.callofthepage.org/learning/

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photo©Alan Summers

all those red apples | travelling the monorail

haiku travelling in one line©Alan Summers 2014-2015