World Haiku Competition, Lyrical Passion Poetry E-zine, 2020

Save Our World Haiku Contest judged by Lenard D. Moore


earth day
the shimmering wave
of a bee colony

2nd Place
2020 World Haiku Competition


rainless days
I make another cloud
in a bottle

Honourable Mention
2020 World Haiku Competition

Lyrical Passion Poetry E-zine, June 2020

A Selection of Tanka Art

Note: this tanka originally appeared in Blithe Spirit 28.2, 2018

Note: this tanka originally appeared in Presence 64, July 2019

Note: this tanka originally appeared in GUSTS 25, Spring/Summer 2017

Note: this tanka originally appeared in Mariposa 41, Autumn/Winter 2019

World Tanka Competition, Lyrical Passion Poetry E-zine, 2019

contest theme: "love"


crafted with love,
this table you made
from ash trees
planted for the children
we never had

Honourable Mention
2019 World Tanka Competition

World Haiku Competition, Lyrical Passion Poetry E-zine, 2018

sea canaries
we dip our paddles
into their songs


Honourable Mention
2018 World Haiku Competition

World Haiku Competition, Lyrical Passion Poetry E-zine, 2016

fog deepens
the sound of rabbits
nibbling night


Grand Prize
2016 World Haiku Competition

World Haiku Competition, Lyrical Passion Poetry E-zine, 2015

antelope
the humming of wind
in barbed wire

Honourable Mention
2015 World Haiku Competition


blue sea glass
a man of war decays
in the sun

Honourable Mention
2015 World Haiku Competition


Comments from Judge Alan Summers:

Five brilliant haiku receiving honourable mentions, from an imaginative use of parentheses during a time of heavy snow; to storm clouds that may be inside a tulip; an antelope that is the hum of the wind in barbed wire; to the blue filtered light as a man of war decays; to the iconic tumbleweed where perhaps it wishes to ride the now defunct railway line possibly by a long gone ghost town.

These are astonishing honourable mentions all worthy of winning competitions in their own right.

World Tanka Competition, Lyrical Passion Poetry E-zine, 2013

they called us
to collect her things
not knowing
what to do with her teeth
we left her smile in the trash


Honourable Mention
2013 World Tanka Competition

Lyrical Passion Poetry E-zine, August 2013

etched against
the star-stamped sky
arthritic branches
scrawl the naked poetry
of old-growth forests


by the lamp
of a full Thunder Moon
I wrote this storm
with lightning bolts
dipped in wells of rain


gritty life
shape-shifting into desert
thirst unslaked
the sand in my shell mouth
never becoming pearls


ice dancing
between frozen waves
on winter's lake
silver blades carve initials
in the diamond dust of snow


snow geese
scribe an ancient mystery
across the moon
their soft murmurs
catching winter's breath


migration
the last loon on the lake and I
ululating
our echoes vanish in that
sad impermanence of air


feed me words
from your quicksilver tongue
let them drip
into my dusty throat
and down the chin of longing


through the canyon
wild whinnying resounds
shattered echoes
bouncing off the humpbacked
shoulders of the desert night


those silent
bones of words
that mean goodbye
the distance between us
further than the crow flies


my hair
combed by wayward winds
silver webs drift
into the dreaming forest
capturing the song of sun