Emerald13 POETRY

 After a zoom session with Michael Dylan Welch I posted pt1 here. WHAT IS HAIKU ANYWAY? LISTEN to the poems and notice how each one makes you feel Consider which poems you like the most, or which ones might puzzle you Share your thoughts on haiku you hear - what are come of the strongest characteristics they share in common. KEY TARGETS - NOT RULES IN THE WRAPUP A BIG THANK YOU to Michael and Japan Fair. ©Notes taken directly from the session with Michael

What a fabulous 2 hour session on the subject of haiku we had with Michael on a zoom call organised by Japan Fair.   Participants from many countries including Wales, Canada, India, many states across the US, Australia and Tasmania and beyond. I have been writing haiku for 25 years and still come across something 'else' to consider within this short form, as well as solidifying targets in my own writing.   'Targets' as Michael put it.   not rules which are obligations, but 'targets' which are opportunities.   Choose to make a poem better.   KEY TARGETS NOT RULES As Mary Oliver says : Pay attention   be astonished and tell about it SHARE HAIKU Haiku is to be shared - it is the core purpose of the art form   Sharing haiku is sharing what it is to be human WHAT IS NOT A HAIKU   - This is not an haiku.   >>>>>> - this is an instruction. >>>>>> you cant take a photo of the phrase it is non-sensory   cl...

  ©Regina Piroska (Gina) Echidna Tracks #15 Open Theme

  ©Regina Piroska (Gina) Catchment Australian Haiku Society   21 June 2025

  ©Regina Piroska (Gina)

so good - 'Beached' has been accepted for publication - by Abstractaphy ... previously published by Drifting Sands (2022) https://abstractaphy.org/category/community-voices/regina-piroska/ the poem  posted here previously 

 ~ Forget-me-nots still self-seed under the dogwood you planted. Tall and straight now I wish you could see it before it's shadow bends in the winter wind.  Its bare, red branches house a high-rise of vacant webs where fog lingers in the empty nest. The long arms of a conifer sweep wide and low, catching itinerant leaves. Half frozen, flicking around empty spaces. nothing of you -- a pressed rose whose story I forget The fog lifts as midmorning disperses into blues and yellow-lime greens. This time of year, the garden is mostly bare except for the daffodils. That one Rhoddo, tight with bud, holding colour close. A delicate point shifting emphasis, a promise. a blackbird tugs at the worm -- both stretching ~ ©Regina Piroska (Gina) Drifting Sands Issue 31 2025 (14 March- page34)

After a long hiatus of submitting writings anywhere, in 2021 I decided to enter a few poems to various publications and was thrilled to win 3rd prize in the Betty Drevniok Haiku Award run by Haiku Canada.  with this poem Here are the published winning poems and Judges comments.  

3rd prize winner Betty Drvevniok Award (Canada) 2021

 ~ BEACHED (Haibun) Heat hangs, torrid, pressing upon tired shoulders. Touched by the occasional warm starfish an ancient, patchy, bird-shit monument kneels in puddled sand beneath a sky stitched to the sea. below blue sails billow over blue Ripples circle the rock where, in the tide's cloud-crawl, tiny crabs get on with their crabby lives and I wonder how words can convey this sense without images to the eye. On this slow, tedious, amplified afternoon, I lean against the colossus baffled by the clamour of these idiot gulls, ignorant in the art of give and take, because it's perfectly clear who should yield. crushed shell in a footprint empty beach ~ ©Regina Piroska (Gina) published Abstractaphy April 2025 published Drifting Sands   January 2022 - ed:  Adelaide B Shaw