Friday, July 11, 2025: Two Haiku by Barbara Anna Gaiardoni

 

dog-day cicada a fence post

*

view of the sea and sunset an asterisk

(Haiku Girl Summer, Aug 03, 2024)

© 2025 Barbara Anna Gaiardoni

Barbara Anna Gaiardoni is among the winners of the 7th Basho  -  an international English Haiku Competition and has been nominated twice in the Touchstone Award 2023 and 2024,

She has been recognized in The Mainichi’s Haiku in English Best list for 2023 and 2024 and received an Honorable Mention at the Fujisan Tanka Contest 2024.

Her Japanese-style poetry has been published in 250 international magazines and translated into 12 languages.

Drawing, swimming in the sea and walking in nature are her passions.

"I can, I must, I want" is her motto.

http://barbaragaiardoni.altervista.org/blog/haikuco-2/

Friday, June 7, 2024: Two haiku by Barbara Anna Gaiardoni

 

- dying ants

a small cloud

of cinders

*

flower moon

darken me

erase me

                                                                                    photo by Andrea Vanacore

Barbara Anna Gaiardoni is winner of the First Prize 2023 “Zheng Nian Cup” National Literature Price and finalist of the Edinburgh “Writings Leith” contest. She received two nominations for the Touchstone Award 2023, recognized on the Haiku Euro Top 100 list for 2023 and on The Mainichi’s Haiku in English Best 2023. Her Japanese-style poems has been published in 163 international journals. They are been translated on Japanese, Romanian, Arabic, Malayalam, Hindi, French, Chinese, Korean, Turkic and in Spanish languages.

Drawing, swimmer and walking in nature are her passions.

"I can, I must, I will do it” her motto.

http://barbaragaiardoni.altervista.org/blog/haikuco-2/

Review of Deborah P. Kolodji's "Tug of a Black Hole"

shelter in place

the days when I feel 

like an astronaut

(from Tug of a Black Hole, Deborah P Kolodji)

     Deborah P. Kolodji’s new chapbook Tug of a Black Hole (© 2021, Title IX Press), is a chronicle of the author’s journey through the Covid 19 global pandemic. There are numerous other Covid 19 inspired poetry books being published, or coming out this year, but none that I’ve read, so far, contain the intimate and powerful verse Kolodji, a master haikuist, has crafted in the last 14 months.

   Tug of a Black Hole contains 20 scifiku, a form similar to haiku, but with science fiction as the theme, instead of nature. I would argue that most of these are still haiku, since many of the poems contain nature references, and space, while not considered a part of Mother Nature, is a part of nature. The 20 poems are composed in a tight and swiftly read sequence, with references to isolation, illness, and the frustration engendered from the feeling of not going anywhere, which are some of the obstacles many people encountered during the pandemic.

   The best thing about this, to me, as a poet, and lover of poetry, is that Kolodji takes these awkward muses, and employs them to her advantage. Each scifiku is crafted to perfection, with amazing visuals, which makes it easy to envision oneself as a passenger, on planet Earth, traveling the solar system. Tug of a Black Hole is both nostalgic and melancholy, as the farther the reader, as passenger, travels away from the center of ther origins, and themselves:

lace curtains 

in a spaceship window

things we can’t leave

ten years in space

the dish garden

in my cabin

    In the spaces between the scifiku, there’s much to ponder. Everyone will get something out of this little gem of an e-chapbook, but the wonder, and the inviting nature of Kolodji’s poems make this a book to go back to, if for no other reason than it’s excellent poetry.

Tug of a Black Hole, Deborah P Kolodji, © 2021 Title IX Press, Free to download, 16 pages

© 2021 marie c lecrivain

 

Monday, March 16, 2020: National Women's Month: Beverly M. Collins’ two haiku and photographs

Wolves calling night sky

Proud legacy circling-

Sounding half-moon’s voice

© 2020 Beverly Collins

Single raindrop fell

Down upon night soaked pavement-

Final child of storm

© 2020 Beverly Collins

Bio: Beverly M. Collins is the author of the books, Quiet Observations: Diary thought, Whimsy and Rhyme and Mud in Magic. Her works have also appeared in California Quarterly, Poetry Speaks! A year of Great Poems and Poets, The Hidden and the Divine Female Voices in Ireland, The Journal of Modern Poetry, Spectrum, The Altadena Poetry Review, Lummox, The Galway Review (Ireland), Verse of Silence (New Delhi), Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine (London), Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), The Wild Word magazine (Berlin), Indigomania (Australia) and many others.

Winner of a 2019 Naji Naaman Literary Prize in Creativity (from Lebanon). Collins is also a prize winner for the California State Poetry Society who has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, once for Independent Best American Poetry and “short listed” for the 2018 Pangolin Review Poetry Prize (Mauritius).

Women's History Month: Keiko Amano's Two Senryu and Photographs

side by side

eyes never meet

fight stopper

a beauty

among other beauties

called pretty

poems and photos (c) 2019 Keiko Amano 
Keiko Amano was born and reared in Yokohama, Japan. She writes both in English and Japanese. Her first book, Ocha Teacher, was published in 2015.  Some of her short stories and essays have appeared in magazines. In order of publication, most recent first, they have appeared in Poeticdiversity (US), the East Jasmine Review (US), the Bicycle Review (US), Contemporary Literary Horizon (Romania), and Eye-Ai (Japan). She was an infrastructure systems programmer for Farmers Insurance Group in Los Angeles for thirteen years and worked mainly at the data centers of various corporations in Japan and the U.S. She took many creative writing classes at UCLA Extension and attended Writers workshops. This is her second book.