Random Blue Sparks
Random Blue Sparks - a haiku collection released by Snapshot Press on December 30, 2024
Winner of the 2020 Snapshot Press Book Awards
I'm beyond honoured to announce that my book-length haiku collection, Random Blue Sparks, winner of the 2020 Snapshot Press Book Award, was published by the press on December 30, 2024. Thank you to John Barlow for selecting and sequencing these poems, and to Chuck Brickley for his valuable insights. I'm also grateful to Chuck Brickley, Ron Moss, and Tom Clausen for their generous blurbs. Special thanks to my husband, Larry, who is my first reader and second pair of eyes.
Praise for Random Blue Sparks:
'Debbie Strange's first full-length collection of haiku offers a stunning display of sensory artistry inspired by the landscapes and ecosystems of Western Canada. Random Blue Sparks is a wonderfully vibrant gathering of moments to savour.'
—Chuck Brickley
Author, earthshine
'From finely tuned observations of the tiniest life forms to quiet reverence for open landscapes of earth and sky, this brilliant collection is a timely reminder of the relevance of nature haiku in today's climate.'
—Ron C. Moss
Author, The Bone Carver
'Illuminating the essence of experiences and things, Random Blue Sparks is a compelling love letter to the prairies, mountains and waters of the western provinces of Canada. These indelible haiku brim with poetic joie de vivre.'
—Tom Clausen
Author, Growing Late
Haiku
stormlight
a pronghorn outruns
the rain
meadowlarks
the grace notes that follow
me home
weaving light
into this day of mourning . . .
damselflies
submerged log
the descending sizes
of painted turtles
weathered oars
we fold our worries
into the river
(note: this collection contains sixteen award-winning haiku)
~~~
My thanks to the esteemed panel of judges for this honour, and to John Barlow of Snapshot Press!
April 3, 2025:
Thrilled to say that Random Blue Sparks is one of 76 books longlisted for the 2024 Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Books Award!
April 10, 2025:
Doubly thrilled to say that Random Blue Sparks is one 18 books shortlisted for the 2024 Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Books Award!
~~~
R E V I E W S
Random Blue Sparks - Review by Tim Dwyer in seashores, Volume 14, April 2025:
This first full collection of haiku and senryu by Debbie Strange is engaging from beginning to end, with no false notes. The experience of nature is specific and vivid and draws in the reader to have their own experience. The following haiku
mossy log
a ruffed grouse drums
up the dawn
illustrates her multi-sensory skill. There are suggestions of texture, scent and movement along with sight and sound that convey the lifefulness of this moment of loneliness, transition, mystery. Throughout the collection, Strange touches upon various aesthetics and is attuned to sound, rhythm, word choice, line endings, juxtaposition and flow. These are clearly poems in haiku form.
Random Blue Sparks includes a number of skillful monoku and vertical haiku. One of these
the ruts we slip into falling leaves
—how smoothly 'we slip into' hinges the beginning and end, conveying the natural scene and suggesting a life or relational issue with a pun of light humour.
Though all the pieces in this collection are rich in nature, her work is interlaced with human concerns, using subtlety, suggestion, ambiguity
circles of lichen
I thought we would have
more time
With the power of light touch, this piece conveys both togetherness and its loss, conveying anything from the end of a hike to the death of a loved one. The poet makes expert use of 'we' a number of times through the collection, suggesting a loving partnership sharing nature, as well as inviting us readers in. She also judiciously uses 'you' and 'I' which are well earned. There are none of what the late, great poet Michael Longley referred to as 'verbal selfies'. Strange never gives too much information.
How skillful Debbie Strange is with human presence in these poems, enhancing the reader's own experience. By the end of Random Blue Sparks, I had travelled through and connected with her Western Canada landscape through seasons, changes in weather, night and day and many feeling tones. This is a work I will come back to often, one from which to learn.
~~~
Random Blue Sparks - Review by Graham Bates for the online blog for the journal Kokako on June 4, 2025 & forthcoming in the autumn issue:
Debbie Strange is a Canadian poet who lives on the prairies of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her name is no doubt a familiar one to regular readers of Kokako and various other haiku journals. Random Blue Sparks is her much anticipated first full-length collection of haiku. In 2020 it won the Snapshot Press Book Award and in 2024 was shortlisted for the Touchstone Distinguished Book Award. In the acknowledgments there is a long list of journals within which this collection's haiku have previously been published. In the awards credits at the back, 16 haiku are listed as having won prizes, placings or honourable mentions. The design and layout of the book is tastefully done, with one haiku per page, typeset in Palatino.
The book has been called 'a compelling love letter to the prairies, mountains and waters of the western provinces of Canada,' and this is the kind of love that could only be felt by one whose years of hiking with her husband in the country's national parks have given her a deep awareness of their great and delicate beauty so threatened by extreme weather events.
As you would expect from such a seasoned haiku poet, every single word in this collection is earning its living, and there is also a nice variety of techniques at play. It may be necessary to have your phone or tablet handy to search definitions and images, as with the following haiku where, because I rarely encounter snow, I had a fun lesson in how pillow drifts are formed, and was so wonderfully transported by the comparison between its two images, along with its sensory qualities and the subtle wordplay in the last line:
pillow drifts
we pull twin calves
into morning
(10)
I was frequently impressed by Strange's ability to surprise me with her juxtapositions and phrasings. Her aesthetic sense is directly influenced by the Japanese masters, with images homely, rural and wild. All of the haiku consist of between five to ten words, making them easily utterable in one breath. The following seven-word monoku is a good example, where the form complements its subject and the reader is invited to play with where to place the kireji:
the ruts we slip into falling leaves
(73)
Juxtaposition has also been employed in the careful sequencing and layout, where haiku are set beside each other to add emotional depth without overly narrowing down the context:
a split keel
only these waves
of grass
(44)
blistered paint
the boat we named
for you
(45)
Within these pages you will find insights drawn from things as everyday as a dented kettle or a circle of lichen to phenomena as magical as an orca's breath or bioluminescence. This collection is a wonderful example of how nature haiku can speak so well to the joy, grief, love and loss of a life lived fully, while also showing how therapeutic and rewarding the path of haiku can be:
fireflies
so many reasons
to shine
(38)
I feel that Random Blue Sparks' emphasis on the healing power of nature makes it the perfect antidote to the stress, overstimulation and disconnection of our modern world. It is quite simply, as Seamus Heaney put it, 'the music of what happens,' captured and composed by one of Canada's very best.
~~~
No comments:
Post a Comment