Haiku on the Horizon

Last Train Home is an anthology of haiku and related poetry about trains. Edited by Jacquie Pearce, it has been in the works for a while now. I should have three new poems and five previously published poems appear in this anthology. Last I heard it was scheduled to appear this spring, but I suspect Covid-19 has caused delays.

Robert Epstein is editing an anthology about “helping”, and he has accepted two of my previously published poems for this project.

A haiku I published last year is set to appear in Haiku 2020, edited by Lee Gurga and Scott Metz, an anthology to be published by Modern Haiku Press.

Very recently I received news that I will have eight previously published haiku appear in an anthology titled South Dakota in Poems edited by South Dakota Poet Laureate Christine Stewart-Nunez. The eight haiku will appear under the title “Haiku Suite”. The title is not meant to turn these haiku into a sequence, but rather to save space in the anthology.

Tanya McDonald has accepted three new haiku and senryu of mine for the new haiku journal she’s editing, Kingfisher Haiku Journal. Not sure when the first issue will appear, but I’m looking forward to it.

Until next time, stay healthy, stay safe.

Spring Cleaning

Two last bits of news to share, and then tomorrow I’ll write about haiku on the horizon.

In January, Charlotte Digregorio republished on her Writer’s Blog a haiku of mine that originally appeared in Frogpond back in 2017:

the prospector
tilts a pan-
shooting star

Many thanks to Charlotte for republishing my poem.

This year’s shortlist for the Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems from The Haiku Foundation included a haiku of mine originally published in Acorn #43 in 2019:

both tent flaps
tied open
morning solitude

What an honor it is for a haiku to receive such recognition. Many thanks to Susan Antolin, editor of Acorn, for publishing my haiku, and to the members of the Touchstone Awards panel for recognizing my haiku.

Poems copyright Chad Lee Robinson.

New Haiku in Frogpond

The Spring/Summer edition of Frogpond, the journal of the Haiku Society of America, came in the mail just the other day, and I am pleased to have one new haiku in its pages. Due to Covid-19, some carnivals and state fairs have been cancelled, so for some people the only way to visit one this year will be in poems like this one:

her lip gloss
the night a blur
of carnival lights

Many thanks to editor Michael Ketchek for publishing my poem.

Poem copyright Chad Lee Robinson.

New Haiku in Wales Haiku Journal

The Spring 2020 issue of Wales Haiku Journal was published in April, and I am thrilled to have three new haiku in it. Here they are:

a breath of frost
on the grass plumes . . .
sleeping buffalo

the arc
of a high fly ball
summer romance

cold dawn
a bison laboring to lift
its bulk

For clarification, the words “buffalo” and “bison” in the poems above are referring to the same animal, the American bison. By “buffalo”, a word which I have used in many other haiku before, I do not mean the water buffalo, but the American bison. Where I live these words are used interchangeably.

Many thanks to editor Paul Chambers for publishing these poems.

Poems copyright Chad Lee Robinson.

New Haiku in The Heron’s Nest

In March I had a new haiku published in The Heron’s Nest, and it’s not a Halloween one! This one gets back to what I most like to write about, which is South Dakota, the great plains, the prairie:

spinning infinity-
the trick roper’s lasso
wobbles slightly

Many thanks to the editorial staff at The Heron’s Nest for publishing my haiku.

Poem copyright Chad Lee Robinson.

wind flowers anthology

One of my Halloween senryu published last year in Prune Juice (a senryu journal) was anthologized earlier this year in wind flowers: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2019 (Red Moon Press, 2020):

bobbing for apples-
the she-devil’s skirt
comes up short

Many thanks to editor Brent Goodman of Prune Juice and to the editorial staff of the Red Moon Anthology series for selecting my senryu for publication.

Poem copyright Chad Lee Robinson.

New Haiku in bottle rockets

Issue number 42 of bottle rockets came out last February, and I am happy to have a new haiku in its pages.

the pumpkin’s light blows out . . .
I leave the owl
to its asking

Many thanks to editor Stanford M. Forrester for publishing my haiku.

Poem copyright Chad Lee Robinson.

New Senryu in Failed Haiku

Back in January I had four new senryu published in issue 49 of Failed Haiku.  Two of the four are Halloween senryu:

All Hallows’ Eve-
she digs up
something I said

Halloween-
she chases off the kids
she could never have

Many thanks to editor Michael Rehling for publishing some of my work.

Poems copyright Chad Lee Robinson.

Rewind: Haiku Highlights from 2019

I’ve been a bit quiet on my blog this year. That’s not to mean I haven’t been actively writing and publishing and whatnot, it just means I got lazy and didn’t post any news with the exception of a post last April. There’s lots to catch up on, so here is my 2019 in haiku, the facts, the figures and a few thoughts for good measure.

I published eighteen haiku and related forms in 2019, and I fell short of my goal for the year which means I have to adjust my goal for 2020. No big deal, really. I set goals to help keep me writing and to stay focused. I try to keep my goals reasonable; 2019 was just a down year. Compared to what I’m used to, 2019’s eighteen poems is a bit disappointing. At any rate, I am grateful for every poem published, and for every opportunity. Here is a list of the journals my work appeared in and how many appeared in each one: Acorn (1), Chrysanthemum (2 tanka), The Cicada’s Cry (1), Failed Haiku (4), Haikuniverse (1), The Heron’s Nest (2), Mariposa (2), Modern Haiku (2), and Prune Juice (3).

I republished some work in five different anthologies in 2019. I had a haiku voted into a hole in the light: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2018 (Red Moon Press, 2019). Three haiku appeared in Local News: Poetry about Small Towns (MWPH Books, 2019). Five haiku appeared in All the Way Home: Aging in Haiku (Middle Island Press, 2019). One haiku appeared in The Art of Reading and Writing Haiku: A Reader Response Approach (Brooks Books, 2019). And while it’s not really an anthology, I had one haiku appear in A History of Modern Haiku by Charles Trumbull (Modern Haiku Press, 2019).

I republished some other haiku in the following places: Charlotte Digregorio’s Writer’s Blog (4x), reVirals 196 (The Haiku Foundation), and in the following Per Diem features (The Haiku Foundation): Parents and Their Kids (edited by Dave Read) and Death (edited by Anna Maris).

I received some awards in 2019 as well, including a couple mentions in The Heron’s Nest Readers’ Choice Awards for having a popular poem and for being a popular poet in 2018, and in March I also received an editors’ choice from The Nest editors for the following haiku:

moving through
a fog of breath . . .
snowy buffalo

 

And my haiku that appeared in The Cicada’s Cry Special Edition for Halloween was picked as editor’s choice:

prairie Halloween–
room in my costume
for a snowsuit

In April, two of my haiku were honored in The Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems for 2018. The first one was shortlisted (original publication in Mariposa), and the second one (original publication in Frogpond) was chosen as a winner of the prestigious Touchstone Award (click on the picture for a better view of the poem):

the heartbeat
of a painted pony
winter prairie

 

 

 

 

 

 

One other notable activity was that I was a judge along with Dan Schwerin for the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Awards for books published in 2018.

I filled 20 notebooks in 2019.

All in all, 2019 was a good year for my writing. Many thanks to all the editors who read and considered my work.

Looking ahead to 2020, I’ve already had four senryu published in the January issue of Failed Haiku. I’ve got a haiku pending publication in the next issue of bottle rockets and another in the March issue of The Heron’s Nest. I’ve also got three new haiku (and five previously published ones) accepted for publication in the anthology Last Train Home, which is scheduled to appear sometime this year. 2020 is off to a great start. I hope I can keep it going.

All images and poems copyright Chad Lee Robinson.

 

International Haiku Poetry Day

Today is International Haiku Poetry Day, and I thought it would be a good day to share what I’ve been up to since the start of the year.

My writing has slowed a bit, more than a bit. Between illnesses, digging out of blizzards, work and family, I haven’t been able to find my flow yet this year. Despite the lack of new material, there has still been quite a bit of haiku activity.

In January, I published four senryu in Failed Haiku. Here is one:

the crunch of a pickle punctuates her point

I also republished a haiku on Charlotte Digregorio’s Writer’s Blog in January:

prairie darkness–
what a child’s breath reveals
on the train window

One haiku that originally appeared in Wales Haiku Journal in 2018 was voted into a hole in the light: the Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2018 (Red Moon Press, 2019):

paper snowflake . . .
my dead brother’s name
hangs in the air

In March, I published a haiku in The Heron’s Nest, and it was an editors’ choice:

moving through
a fog of breath . . .
snowy buffalo

The Heron’s Nest Readers’ Choice Awards were announced in February, and I was listed among other popular poets, and this haiku, which won The Heron’s Nest Award in June 2018, was listed among other popular poems:

tornado siren
the wind lifts a sneaker print
from home plate

Today, as part of the celebration for International Haiku Poetry Day, I participated in the Earthrise Rolling Haiku Collaboration via The Haiku Foundation. The theme for this year’s Earthrise is indigenous languages, so I offered this haiku which was originally published in The Heron’s Nest in 2004:

summer grasses
the Lakota sings
of a white buffalo

Two of my haiku published in 2018 were shortlisted for The Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems, the first in Mariposa and the second in Frogpond:

the heartbeat
of a painted pony
winter prairie

deep night sky
the dashboard lights too bright
for this loneliness

And today I learned that “deep night sky” was among the winners of the Touchstone Award for Individual Poems! This is my second Touchstone win in this category. My first was for a haiku published in The Heron’s Nest in 2011:

migrating geese
the things we thought we needed
darken the garage

Looking forward, I will have haiku republished in All the Way Home, an anthology of haiku about aging edited by Robert Epstein. An anthology of poetry about small towns is still forthcoming from editors Tom Montag and David Graham, and now has the title Local News: Poetry about Small Towns. I will also have a haiku republished in a forthcoming Per Diem on The Haiku Foundation’s website. I recently heard from Jacquie Pearce, editor of the forthcoming train anthology, and I will have three new haiku and five previously published haiku appear there. And I will have a new haiku in the forthcoming June issue of The Heron’s Nest.

Many thanks to the editors of the journals, anthologies and awards mentioned above. It’s been a pretty good year for haiku so far!