Bend Haiku Weekend and Issa's Deep Resonance

A couple of notes: above is a flyer for a haiku weekend in Bend, Oregon, that was passed along by site friend and artist/poet extraordinaire, Ed Baker. The full details are here.  Time to book!

In addition, there is a call for submissions for a Haiku Wall that they are creating for the event:

Haiku Oregon CALLS FOR YOUR HAIKU to be displayed at the HSA Quarterly National Meeting & Haiku Art Walk Wall at the historic Liberty Theatre in downtown Bend, Oregon on June 3, 4, and 5, hosted by Haiku Oregon, co-sponsored by the City of Bend, and proclaimed “Bend Haiku Weekend” by the Mayor. Please see full details in Ripples, and at the HSA Website www.hsa-haiku.org plus more at the Haiku Oregon Website http://sites.google.com/site/haikuoregon/hsa-meeting 

Our goal is to exhibit 1000 haiku and we have almost that many already, but please take a moment to email your own favorite haiku that you have written to date, (published with credits or unpublished), under the subject heading "HSA haiku Wall" to an'ya at haikubyanya@gmail.com and just be sure to include your name, city, state and country. We would like to have everyone present one way or the other. We are also displaying haiga and other forms of artwork that include haiku, so please feel free to contact an'ya if you are interested or want to exhibit or know more about this part of the project as well.

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In the news department, here's a link to a fine article on the work of Issa that makes a very personal, resonant connection. The author, Toni Bernhard, published it in Psychology Today and passed along the link in a comment to a previous post.

It is recommended reading to help all of us to keep our hats on straight.  Thanks, Toni, and all the very best to you.



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stillness--
in the depths of the lake
billowing clouds

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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An Award for Gary Hotham, Franz Kafka, and The Other Place

Cover art by the late, great Harland Ristau

Some great news: Missed Appointment by Gary Hotham has been awarded an Honorable Mention in this year's Haiku Society of America's Mildred Kanterman Memorial Merit Book Awards. The awards were announced at the June meeting of the Haiku Society of America and the full list of award winners will appear in the autumn issue of frogpond. As a publication of Lilliput's "Modest Proposal Chapbook Series," it is a great honor for the press.

Most importantly, however, this award highlights the unflagging quality of one of the best artists writing in the haiku form today. Gary has always been extremely generous with his work with the micropress that is Lilliput Review and it means a great deal to me to see him so honored. Congrats, Gary! Stay tuned for additional news about the awards as it becomes available.

As part of a comment to Wednesday's post about Hermann Hesse, I've posted some info on the 4 poetry books translated into English (in the post, I said 3 and I was only partially right) as a comment to that post.

In other Lillie news, I think I neglected to mention that the always informative Poet Hound posted an insightful review of issue #161 on June 24th. The Hound regularly features markets for poetry and interesting poems from around the web and is worthwhile reading on a regular basis.

Since the bad news on the bookstore front about Cody's, here's some positive news about a poetry bookstore in Seattle.

A wonderful little poem by Naomi Shihab Nye about outdistancing loneliness was posted yesterday on the Writer's Almanac, along with the news that it's Franz Kafka's birthday. Celebrate the later (well, the former, too, come to think about it) by reading something from this parcel of translations from The Kafka Project. Today's poem on Writer's Almanac really set me back on my heels: it's a public domain work entitled "Quiet After the Rain of Morning" by Joseph Trumbull Stickney, a poet I didn't know. It reads the way you would expect a public domain poem by an "unknown" poet to read, perhaps a bit above average: lyrical, wistful in an almost nostalgic way, all the way down to the very last word. But, oh, that last word!

Lastly in the news department, if you are interested in the creative process, do not miss the Lynda Barry interview at The Comics Reporter. If you don't know her work or even if you do and don't like her, you just have to read how she describes getting to that "other place" from which the work flows. Absolutely spot-on.

This week's feature issue from the Lilliput Review archive is #82, from August 1996 (can it really be 16 years ago?!). The issue opened with a one-two punch:



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Reality

reality is
the metal all
the maya is
made of

Steven M. Thomas

w/only the moisture of our breath
against the metal of it,
eventually the beast, he'll rust away.

scarecrow

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Wayne Hogan reels us back in with a statement that could serve as his manifesto of the art we've come to know and love:

More Black-And-White Checks

One of my
jobs in life as
I see it is to put more
black-and-white checks
in things, and fish, and
starry night skies with
quarter-moons, too.

Wayne Hogan

It seems this was one of those issues that was just packed with moment after shining moment:

Caboodle

Start with some sort of a rock
plant grows from rock
animal eats plant
person eats animal
person gets incinerated
Start with some sort of rock

Beaird Glover




Eclipse

I leave grief behind
No more than crescent thumbnail
on a soft-skinned pear.

Marianne Stratton

And a final one-two:

My webbed fingers
wave in recognition--
air is melted water.

Doug Flaherty




Cherokee

she smokes a teakwood pipe
dark pond eyes laugh
-----------water
-------------hit by wind

Tim Bellows

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Posted July 4th, started July 3rd, hence the erroneous header date, courtesy of Blogger, in case you like to keep your "yesterdays" and "todays" straight.

Till next time,
Don

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