Haiku from Alan Summers's recently launched pamphlet The In-between Season (With Words Pamphlet Series)

colourwash
the first autumn rain seeps
through cartridge paper




          

The In-Between Season

With Words Pamphlet Series (2012)
www.withwords.org.uk


             Toshugu shrine pines
              I try to stay as still–
              mist and dew

              東照宮の 松静か 霧と露


Japanese trans. Hidenori Hiruta, Akita, Japan


My haiku pamphlet was launched at the Royal Crescent Hotel as part of the Quest Gallery talk and event, as a result of the highly successful Haiku at Quest Gallery workshops:
http://www.questgallery.co.uk/index.php?id=489

Alan Summers is a Japan Times award-winning writer; a recipient of the Ritsumeikan University Peace Museum Award for haiku; Foundation Member, Australian Haiku Society; and General Secretary of the British Haiku Society (1998-2000).

Alan is a haikai literature editor for two online magazines, and the founder and lead tutor of With Words.


“astonishingly moving haiku”
   Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan (2005)



Other haiku poetry collections by Alan Summers:

sundog haiku journal: an australian year
(sunfast press 1997 reprinted 1998): archived at the California State Library - Main Catalog Call Number : HAIKU S852su 1997

Moonlighting
Intimations Pamphlet Series, British Haiku Society (1996)



colourwash
Publications credits: Haiku International #33 (Japan 1998)

Toshugu shrine pines
Publications credits: World Haiku Review Japan Article - Vending machines and cicadas (March 2003); Hermitage (2005); Travelogue on World Haiku Festival 2002 Part 1 (Akita International Haiku Network, Japan 2010)




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"Water on the Moon" haiku collection by Helen Buckingham

 

water on the moon 

by Helen Buckingham
original plus
Maryport, Cumbria, UK 2010
ISBN 978-0-9562433-5-5
£8.00 inclusive of U.K. post and package
To purchase a signed copy contact Helen - helenb47@googlemail.com


 

"I have long been a fan ... the haiku and senryu experiences in this collection run the gamut from soft and beautiful to humorous, some with an acerbic wit ... this is an ample serving of enjoyable poems by a strong, original writer."
Paul MacNeil, (USA) Associate Editor, The Heron's Nest: http://www.theheronsnest.com/journal/

"Helen Buckingham is one of those great haiku/senryu writers whose work invites us to revisit it again and again. I highly recommend Water on the Moon; it should be in every poet's library." 
Pamela A. Babusci (USA), internationally award winning haiku/tanka & haiga artist; and logo artist for Haiku North America conferences New York City 2003 and Winston-Salem, NC USA 2007.
 
"...an important part of the process of collecting together...(is)...that some should just mark time, the meaning loose, less focussed, waiting, or in preparation, for the next really startling event.  One could call this a process of constriction and dilation–a tying together and a loosening up. I have to say that reading Helen's book had me clicking files to check my own preparation of a collection of 'my' haiku...this is an excellent collection." Colin Blundell, editor of Blithe Spirit, journal of the British Haiku Society. Review published June 2010.

"Like the best wordsmiths, Helen Buckingham possesses what seems to be a wholly natural talent for translating the modern world and contemporary living, often in their minutest detail into exquisite poetry.  What's most striking about Helen Buckingham's poetry is its immediacy and proximity - each breath of poetry seems to exist within the moment of its making."
Liam Wilkinson, (Yorkshire, England) founding editor and curator of the 3Lights Gallery of Haiku and Tanka.
 

From the review by Colin Stewart Jones, (Aberdeen, Scotland) 

Managing Editor of international Notes from the Gean haiku online magazine and The Gean Tree Press.

"...water on the moon is a major collection by Buckingham which contains 250 poems over 84 pages set out in four sections which correlate to the seasons. The back page blurb contains endorsements by such haiku luminaries as Liam Wilkinson, Pamela A. Babusci and Paul MacNeil and a wonderfully comprehensive introduction by Alan Summers, in which he states:

"Honesty is a potent instrument and we have plenty of that: a life is brought to the microscope, with humour never far away, never a stranger to pain. We all like to think we have a keen sense of humour, and a strong streak of honesty; and Helen's collection is like a litmus test to our own pH."

Full review from Notes from the Gean:
http://www.notesfromthegean.com/archives/2010-003-march/indexreview3_10.html


Helen's work has previously been published in A New Resonance 5: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku, Redmoon Press USA 2007, ISBN: 978-1-893959-65-1, edited by Jim Kacian and Dee Evetts:
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The work of seventeen poets from seven different countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States) comprises the latest volume of up-and-coming poets working in the haiku form in English. This biennial project has now helped launch 85 poets into the haiku community, and each volume has received critical acclaim.


 

Alas,  I've noted A New Resonance 5: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku is now SOLD OUT.

Helen's collection 'water on the moon' is now on the With Words suggested reading list for our sell out residency courses based in Surrey U.K.

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