Blithe Spirit, Vol. 30, Number 3, August 2020

Honoured to receive the Museum of Haiku Literature Award for best of issue 30.2, May 2020. My thanks to Anna Maris for selecting this haiku, and for her lovely commentary:

prairie town

rusted rails lead us

into sunrise

"A hopeful and very classic haiku, which brings distinct and suggestive images to the reader. This poem conjures memories of old westerns, carries a strong heritage of wabi-sabi or could be read as social commentary. The visual perspective is strong in this one, light and darkness follow the rhythm of the alliteration into a forward movement which carries on way past the poem itself."


rhubarb leaves
the rain-soaked spaces
between them


sea stacks
rise through the mist
ghosts
of long lost sailors
and impossible dreams


the tide leaves
a spiral of pebbles
at my feet
gone, before I can
call out your name

Blithe Spirit, Vol. 28, Number 4, November 2018

Honoured to receive the Museum of Haiku Literature Award for best of issue 28.3 (selected by Mary Weiler):

sun spider

I centre myself

in its web

At first I fell for the sweet alliteration in 'sun spider'. Then I looked it up. This is neither a spider nor a scorpion but a voracious little guy that can kill small vertebrates. Is she trying to intimidate him? Or maybe this is a form of meditation, centering herself. I had so much fun extrapolating around those eight little words!

Thank you for your comments, Mary!

storm watch

the sky crumples

in on itself

skeleton flowers

the things that rain

reveals

a loon dives

beneath the surface . . .

how clear

everything seems

in this moment

highland winds

ring the purple bells

of heather

as if to say, come home,

we are lost without you

Blithe Spirit. Vol. 26, Number 1, February 2016

dawn walk
a fog sylph takes
her shape


gulls hunched
along the shoreline
more bad news


diurnal tides
the ebb and flow
of grief


Museum of Haiku Literature Award


And the winner of this quarter's Literature Award, because of its startling image and enduring challenge to one's thinking:

split chrysalis
all the ways we learn
to become small

I feel fairly confident that Ken would have included particularly this one in his small green book into which he entered any published haiku which he felt would be deeply sustaining and inspiring in truly hard times.

—Colin Blundell