A new Per Diem poem appears every day at the top right corner of The Haiku Foundation Home page. Each poem is part of a monthly, themed collection created by a guest editor.

As I noted in an earlier post (which can be found here), The Haiku Foundation kindly asked me to be guest editor of their Per Diem poems for the month of June 2020.

The theme I chose was Sunset. As I said in my introduction to the Per Diem poems:

Being evanescent, being ephemeral by nature, sunset is all about the moment. All about fleeting beauty and impermanence.

Whether the sky is filled with colour, or the light is merely fading, writing about a transient subject like sunset encourages us to live in the moment and take note of our surroundings.  This is precisely what we need to do when writing haiku. You can read my full introduction to the Sunset poems here.

Poets from Australia and a range of other countries kindly agreed to have their Sunset haiku featured on The Haiku Foundation Home page across the 30 days of June. Here are two examples:

autumn sunset
I take the rickety stairs
three at a time

(Kathy Kituai)

last light
haystacks edged
with golden lace

(Hazel Hall)

You can read all 30 Sunset haiku in The Haiku Foundation’s Per Diem archive for June 2020 which can be found here.