Here we are again with another highlight reel of all things haiku from my neck of the woods in 2023.
In my estimation 2023 was another successful year. I published 39 brand new haiku and senryu. Here’s a shoutout to all the publications my work appeared in last year: Acorn (1), Akitsu Quarterly (3), Autumn Moon Haiku Journal (1), bottle rockets (1), Failed Haiku (4), Frogpond (1), haikuNetra (1), Haikuniverse (1), Hedgerow (3), The Heron’s Nest (4), horror senryu journal (9), Kingfisher (3), Modern Haiku (2), Scarlet Dragonfly Journal (1), Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational (1), Wales Haiku Journal (2), and Whiptail (1). My thanks to the editors and contest judges who chose my work for publication last year.
Each year I try to submit work to a publication that I’ve never published in before. There are so many haiku publications to submit to, and more popping up all the time, that I wish I could submit to, but I’m just not that prolific. So I choose at least one each year to send poems to. In 2023 I submitted to two venues, haikuNetra and Whiptail, and had poems published in both. My thanks to the editors for their selections.
A number of my previously published poems were republished in various places, including the following anthologies: Bird Whistle: A Contemporary Anthology of Bird Haiku, Senryu, & Short Poems (bottle rockets press, 2023), Fractured by Cattails (Haiku Society of America, 2023), Haiku 2023 (Modern Haiku Press, 2023), the high lonesome: The Haiku Foundation Volunteer Anthology 2023 (The Haiku Foundation, 2023), and skipping stones: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2022 (Red Moon Press, 2023). Many thanks to the editors for republishing some of my haiku.
In late summer of last year, Cherie Hunter Day interviewed me for Juxtapositions Nine, the haiku research and scholarship journal of The Haiku Foundation. She asked some tough questions about my writing, in particular my haiku and senryu about the Lakota. She asked me things that I had never been asked before, and so my answers are, in my opinion, rough. I struggled to articulate my answers, but I tried my best, and I hope that those who read it will at least find it interesting, and maybe it will help others to think about their own writing on a deeper level. If you’re interested, the interview is called Walking in a Sacred Way, and you can read it here. My thanks to Cherie and the Juxta editors for interviewing me and including it in such a prestigious publication.
A few of my haiku won awards last year as well. My vertical haiku that appeared in Whiptail received second runner-up in the journal’s readers’ choice awards, and it will be included in an anthology of selections from the journal’s first seven issues. Here it is. It’s also inverted, which means you need to read it from the bottom up:
song
bird
yond
be
ing
reach
hand
my
wind
the
ing
scal
I also had a haiku receive an honorable mention in the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational:
maybe
just maybe
cherry blossoms
And my senryu that was published in Prune Juice in 2022 won a Touchstone Award for Individual Poems from The Haiku Foundation in April:
a bookmark
where my son
grew too old
My fourth chapbook of haiku was also published in 2023. The White Buffalo was the winning selection in Backbone Press’s haiku chapbook contest in 2022. I have received many compliments on it. I heard that it sold well at the Haiku North America conference in Cincinnati last summer, and I have sold quite a few copies locally as well. I appreciate all the compliments and enthusiasm for The White Buffalo! If you are interested in reading it, you can purchase a copy for $10 plus shipping through the Backbone Press website here. To those who have a copy, thank you for your support!
Here’s a handful of haiku published in 2023:
the cowboy orchestra
gathers round
coyote moon
bottle rockets #48, 2023
*
recipe card
the stains also
in my mother’s hand
Modern Haiku 54.1, Winter-Spring 2023
*
swarming moths . . .
the voice on the other end
of a dead telephone
horror senryu journal, 1/30/2023
*
advice for my son–
the tissue paper
protecting each pear
The Heron’s Nest XXV:1, March 2023
*
horizon variations of the meadowlark’s song
Frogpond 46:2, Spring/Summer 2023
*
company of horses
my opinions all
well-received
Akitsu Quarterly. Fall/Winter 2023
*
horses and the dust of horses just passing through
Hedgerow #142, 2023
*
Lakota dawn
the horse’s natural pace
and the fragrance of pine
Wales Haiku Journal, Summer 2023
*
at the core
of a deep heart
trout stream
Kingfisher #8, 2023
*
by pumpkin’s light
a lonely corner
of a little town
Autumn Moon Haiku Journal 7:1, 2023
*
What’s Next
You will see my work next in bottle rockets, Akitsu Quarterly, and Roots – a digital zine (The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press). I have work being republished in Sea Change: An Anthology of Single-Line Poems (Whiptail Press x Red Moon Press, 2024) and in the next Red Moon Anthology from Red Moon Press.
As always, my thanks and gratitude to the editors and judges who have published my poems. I certainly appreciate the support!
Poems copyright Chad Lee Robinson. Poems cannot be used or reprinted without the author’s consent.
The Deep End of the Sky 