haiku published by Mainichi Shimbun, Japan

St Pancras Station
John Betjeman's waistcoat
catches the breeze



Alan Summers
Selected by Isamu Hashimoto

Publications credits: Mainichi  Shimbun, Japan  (July 2012)





.

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)




.

ekphrastic haiku - Quilting Bee by Henry Mosler circa 1916-1917

Quilting Bee by Henry Mosler circa 1916-1917 

Henry Mosler
New York, New York 1841-1920 

Quilting bee–

an expert with the needle

she forgets her loss 

Alan Summers

Published: Asahi Shimbun, Japan (2012) 

Biography of Henry Mosler 

Gustave Mosler brought his family, including young Henry, to the United States in 1849. The Moslers, like many of their fellow German Jews, escaped the political unrest in their homeland that followed the revolutions of 1848 by settling in Midwestern communities, in this case Cincinnati, Ohio. There, the Moslers became leaders in their community and eventually developed a national reputation based on the family business—the manufacture of safes. 

Henry Mosler studied in Cincinnati with portrait and genre painter James Beard for two years and covered the Western theater of the Civil War as an artist-correspondent for Harper's Monthly. He studied for three years in Düsseldorf and Paris before returning home to begin his career. In 1874, Mosler again traveled to Paris, but remained for twenty years this time and developed a reputation for his paintings of Breton peasant life. Mosler's final homecoming to his adopted country came in 1894. In that year he set up a studio in New York City and turned his attention to historical genre with the same eye for detail that marked his earlier work. Paintings such as Pilgrims Grace (the painting that won the artist life membership to the National Arts Club of New York) and Quilting Bee draw upon Mosler's Breton experiences to create a realistic vision of the preindustrial past for modern America.

 

William H. Truettner and Roger B. Stein, editors, with contributions by Dona Brown, Thomas Andrew Denenberg, Judith K. Maxwell, Stephen Nissenbaum, Bruce Robertson, Roger B. Stein, and William H. Truettner Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory (Washington, D.C.; New Haven, Conn; and London: National Museum of American Art with Yale University Press, 1999)

Information by Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery
.

Alan Summers Honourable Mentions for haiku in the Best of Mainichi Shimbun, Japan

I didn't get round to submitting often to Mainichi Shimbun aka Mainichi Daily News in 2011 so it was a delightful surprise when I received two Honourable Mentions selected by the (Tokyo) Museum of Haiku Literature's Isamu Hashimoto:


April 30, 2011


rain clouds
conversations shift around
the train carriage

— Alan Summers (Bradford-on-Avon, England)


Isamu Hashimoto:
All the passengers must be afraid of a delay. The train continues to run along the steep precipices under the rain clouds.



May 28, 2011


netsuke...
the hare with amber eyes
jumps back in again

— Alan Summers (Bradford-on-Avon, England)


Isamu Hashimoto: 
Netsuke (small Japanese art sculptures) are attached to purses as stoppers. They are valuable and are often made of ivory or chased gold.

Cities of Green Leaves Ginko-no-Kukai, and International Haiku Competition

  

As a blogger-inspired initiative to honor the spirit and sacrifices of the people in Japan’s stricken Tohoku region, we are pleased to announce:

Cities of Green Leaves 
Ginko-no-Kukai

May 14 and 15, 2011

We encourage everyone to join in an international nature walk to be held May 14 - 15 followed by an international haiku contest.

image©With Words
artwork by Dave Alderslade

The address to submit your poems will be posted here this third weekend of May. 

Please return often until then for further updates and poetry.

We look forward to walking with you!

Just a bit more information below as well.

 

We invite you to walk with us on those days, collaborating with like-minded poets and bloggers in combining their skills and talents, enter your haiku in a peer judged contest, and take the opportunity to offer aid and support to our friends in Japan in a consensus of thought, well wishes and kinetic energies to occur simultaneously around the globe.

It’s no surprise the kukai’s topic will take its cue from Sendai, Japan’s annual Aoba Matsuri Festival, an event held originally to honor the city’s founder, Date Masamune. 

The date has now become an annual celebration with thousands of visitors, a parade, sparrow dance and tree lined streets as part of the festival each year to rejoice in the arrival of spring’s new greenery and rebirth.

You may choose any place to hold your ginko walk, as long as it holds the attributes to inspire many to compassionate action in the beauty of poetry, and the celebration of the renewing power of nature’s seasons.

Chin P'ing Mei
my sorrowing heart in need
of plum blossom 

Alan Summers

Charitable Donations

Architecture for Humanity
Ngo Jen Official Website

Salvation Army in Japan

Participating Blogs

Area 17

Green Tea and Bird Song

Haiku Bandit Society

Red Dragonfly

.

Alan Summers' "lazy afternoon" haiku in a Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku) created by Kuniharu Shimizu (Tokyo, Japan)

lazy afternoon-
I drift along with the breeze
and dandelion seeds

Alan Summers

publication credits:
1.   Haiga artwork by Kuniharu Shimizu (Tokyo, Japan) published at 'see haiku here' (2010)
2.   Writing Events Bath ekphrastic challenge (2010)
3.   'Aesthetics' Bath Spa University literary journal, (Summer 2007)
4.   'Haiku Friends 2'  Editor: Masaharu Hirata, Osaka, Japan (2007)

   

{inspiration: red lipstick + glossy hair}

{images: via moussy, japan}

{alix in wonderland}

Have been following Alix's adventures in Japan, where floating among the cherry blossoms at the Shinjuku Gyoen garden is like being " . . . lost in a fantasy world . . . wishing it could last forever."

{photography by the cherry blossom girl}

Royal Festival Hall

'With Words' at the Royal Festival Hall as part of the Thames Festival.

We launched our 'The Haiku Journal' notebooks by offering mini-workshops and challenging everyone to write a haiku!

Here are just a few photos from the occasional 'quieter' times we had.