It is without doubt one of the highlights of my year: to sit down with all four editions of the Wales Haiku Journal, and take time to choose ten powerful, poignant poems from each season to submit to the Haiku Foundation Touchstone Awards. This year I'd like to share these with you, with the aim of giving such evocative pieces another opportunity to be read, to be thought about, to be delighted in. Here are the haiku chosen... Winter  first light the kangaroo’s yawn holds the sun Marilyn Humbert  meadow wind— this urge of becoming a butterfly Hifsa Ashraf snow on the rice paddy the ..read more

Jerome Berglund explores the emerging kinetic approach to haiga/shaihai The short form umbrella is broad, has a wide reach, and if we are tolerant and open minded can comfortably accommodate multitudes. The diverse ways in which one to nineteen (31 if we extend our search parameters into territory of waka and renga from which traditions originate) syllables may be inventively deployed are innumerable. Certain distinguishing factors including concreteness and natural subject matter, seasonality and evidence of comparison, contrast, or alternative manners of cutting between, juxtaposing differe ..read more

Daipayan Nair's book 'tilt of the winnowing fan' instantly captivates with a graceful title that gathers together poems on different themes of family, ecology, politics, conservation, and culture. strolling on broken sea shells a deep whisper Haikuniverse, June 6, 2022 The opening poem swirls my consciousness into more magical moments, whispering from the depths of being. On reading further, I feel each escape moment shimmering with an ardor of the poet's remarkable sense of perception. Daipayan not only crafts a miniature world in and around each poem but also delicately unfolds the richness ..read more

Hifsa Ashraf, Author, and Touchstone Award winner, delves into Goran Gatalica's new release, Night Jasmine. 'from childhood to old age, from peace to war, from the outer world to the inner world, from farm to cities, from sadness to happiness, from mysteries to mysticism, from simplicity to complexities...' Night Jasmine, as a title, symbolically tells about the intricacies of life one can see through the lens of profound observations and personal experiences. As a multilingual poet, this book came as a big feast for my eyes that widened the span of my perception of various aspects of life I ..read more

Earl Livings tells a very personal tale of self discovery and explains the idea of transcreating When I was a child, I discovered my Welsh heritage. My father’s mother was born and raised in Shire Newton. One side of her family was Welsh through and through, while the other side had come to Wales from Scotland two generations before. When she was seven years old, her family moved to Australia. Twelve years later, she married a man who had come to Australia from Hertfordshire with his family. Even though my mother was Belgian and my father had English roots, I identified with my Welsh ones. I ..read more

Pravat Kumar Padhy provides an in-depth study into the world of one-line haiku Introduction Monoku is a one-line poem featuring brevity and clarity of expression. The term was coined by Jim Kacian in his essay “The Shape of Things to Come,” and weds a Greek prefix (mono, one) with a Japanese suffix (ku, poem) to create a new English term. The concept of one-line haiku in English developed in the 1970s. Japanese haiku are written in a single vertical line with 17 on (sound units, not syllables). There may be subtle pauses in monoku corresponding to speech rhythm. (In conventional 3-li ..read more

Alan Peat explores the liminal spaces between worlds in Celtic folklore, and their connection to the practice of haiku We were holidaying in Scotland in the early seventies, I think in Fort William. I remember the two old Scottish sisters who were staying in the caravan nearest to ours, mainly because they taught my father how to dress a crab, and I watched. It’s not every day that you get to see someone dress a crab. Dad told the sisters that he’d spotted a plover’s nest in the shingle and was taking me to see it. I can’t remember the name of the beach but I remember clearly the manner in wh ..read more

Every time I compile an edition of the Wales Haiku Journal, I learn things. As well as entering into the unique moment of every haiku, each something new in and of itself, each submission period brings shiny new words, concepts, ideas, and deeply personal stories behind the poems written by our global community of contributors. Whether it be learning about the 'Harmattan', the cool, dry, dusty desert wind that seasonally blows from the east into the Sahara; or 'petrichor', that pleasant, earthy smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather; or 'thin ..read more