Three Lights

I have two senryu in this season's show on Three Lights Gallery. Plenty of good stuff as always. Check it out at www.threelightsgallery.com/lightenup

following a pencil -

four pairs of eyes

follow mine

home from the dentist
my face
gurning from every mirror

Simply Haiku retrospective

I am honoured to have been included in the six year retrospective of the Simply Haiku website: http://www.simplyhaiku.com/SHv7n1/haiku/retrospective.html

My piece is on the "Place" page

sea mist ...
watching the seal
watching me


Raasay - Easter 1992

Published Presence #36

MS poem

............giving
..........a lift
........to something
......unseen -
....a hill
..i used to find
easy

For R (Happy Birthday! - can't believe you're 5!)

art gallery -
a toddler stoops
to watch a spider

(originally published Blithe Spirit 16:3 Autumn 2006)

MS Poems

I am currently putting together a sequence of haiku/senryu inspired by having multiple sclerosis. I have probably written 20-odd poems so far of which about four, maybe five I'm happy with, plus a couple of slightly longer tanka-like poems, which by their morphology won't make it into the sequence.

I was hoping to publish them somewhere in time for MS Awareness Week which is late April in the UK, but time is too tight. They probably won't see the light (together) until 2010. I would imagine I should have maybe another four poems that are any good by then.

It's difficult, because you can't really write about MS without wanting to write about individual symptoms, but when you do, it is invariably awkward and clunky. The best pieces so far tend to be about the wider implications of the illness. I have a couple of MS Society events coming up, so I will see if anything suggests itself while I attend these.

on the news
a terror attack...
my leg numb again

after I've gone
the widow next door
still talking

just missing my train -
the platform staff
slagging their workmate


I just had two senryu accepted for a forthcoming "show" at Three Lights Gallery. The one above wasn't one of them.

I thoroughly recommend the site for quality haiku and individual shows by some pretty big names in the world of haiku.

Offline / online

Hi

I've been busily being lazy over the last couple of months. I had a hectic year haiku-wise in 2008 starting with setting up the British Haiku Society online discussion group and culminating in getting published in Simply Haiku on my first attempt.

2008 was also quite a busy year on a personal / health level (see my other blog), so I needed to kick back and forget submission deadlines for a while.

Whilst worrying about updating my website, I thought it might be time to start making my life easier and to set up this blog instead.

So here we are...