The Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival is the city’s annual springtime event celebrating the Japanese tradition of flower viewing. Each April, Vancouver organises an extensive program of indoor and outdoor community events including concerts, cultural events and The Big Picnic in Queen Elizabeth Park. As part of the Festival, Vancouver runs a Haiku Invitational inviting poets… Read More 2019 Vancouver Haiku Invitational
Sandra Simpson and Margaret Beverland have edited Number Eight Wire: The Fourth New Zealand Haiku Anthology which was released earlier this year by Piwakawaka Press. Number Eight Wire presents poems by 70 New Zealand poets from the period 2008 to 2018. The third New Zealand anthology, The Taste of Nashi (2008), was a much-loved collection showcasing… Read More Number Eight Wire: New Zealand Haiku
Each year, the New Zealand Poetry Society runs an international poetry competition with sections for haiku and for longer poems. This year I had the pleasure of judging the haiku section of the competition. More than 500 haiku were submitted for consideration. As many of the entries were from New Zealand writers, it was common… Read More 2019 New Zealand Haiku Contest
Issue 10 of Christine Villa’s twice yearly video combining short-form poetry, art and music is now available from her Frameless Sky website. This current issue features black and white images by English photographer, Phil Openshaw, together with music by Tim Beek from the Netherlands and Benjamin Tissot from France. The music and art provides an… Read More Frameless Sky: Issue 10
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following material contains the name of a person who has died. Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu (1971-2017) was a highly acclaimed Indigenous Australian singer/songwriter. He was blind since birth. Gurrumul Yunupingu’s songs, usually sung in the Yolŋu languages of his land, have a calming, contemplative quality… Read More Indigenous Australian Culture in Haiku
Recent posts on this site have referenced haiku from Africa, Chinese translations of English-language haiku and poems from the Irish Haiku Society competition. This time the Aussies take a turn. Windfall is an annual haiku publication that portrays the landscapes and life of Australia. It is the premier publication for haiku about Australia, by Australians.… Read More Windfall Issue #7: Australian Haiku
Each year the Irish Haiku Society conducts an international haiku competition. The 2018 competition was judged by Anatoly Kudryavitsky and the results were announced in December. Anatoly is Chairman of the Irish Haiku Society and editor of the Shamrock Haiku Journal. For the 2018 competition, over 300 haiku were submitted by poets from 14 countries.… Read More 2018 Irish Haiku Competition
Poet and essayist, Chen-ou Liu, runs a bilingual English-Chinese haiku and tanka blog titled NeverEnding Story. You can find his blog here. Born in Taiwan, Chen-ou migrated to Canada and now lives in Toronto. Hence, his interest in translating English-language haiku and tanka into Chinese and sharing them via his blog. Chen-ou certainly keeps his… Read More NeverEnding Story: bilingual English-Chinese Haiku
