1 November 2024
New on Graceguts for the month of October 2024 are several essays, reviews, poems, and other goodies. Please take a look!
Earlier in 2024 I started writing a new series of essays, titled “Five Favourites,” in which I celebrate five poems selected from particular haiku books. The first of these essays to be published, in Frogpond, is “Five Favourites: John Brandi,” now available on the Essays page. Look for other similar essays in the future.
Freshly added to the Introductions page is “Enlarging the Circle,” my introduction to Glimmering Hour, Haiku Northwest’s new 35th anniversary anthology, which I also coedited (the page also features my three haiku contributions to the book). The Blurbs page now includes my uncredited back-cover blurb, and I’ve added a listing for the book to my Books page and added it to my Sortable Book List page.
New to the Reviews page are my comments on Curtis Manley’s Climbing the Volcano, published earlier this year in Modern Haiku, and my thoughts on Dan Curtis’s First Notes, just published in Frogpond.
Every year I produce one or two new trifolds, giving them out at events such as the Seabeck Haiku Getaway, Haiku North America conferences, or other haiku events. For 2024 my latest is “River Walk,” which I’ve just added to the Trifolds page. On the Trifold Downloads page, you can click to view or download a PDF of this selection of my haiku and senryu published in the last year.
Speaking of Seabeck, I’ve written a summary of the 2023 retreat on the Haiku Northwest website. I’ll be adding a summary for 2024 soon too. It has been my pleasure to direct these annual autumn retreats since I started them 17 years ago, and the most recent retreat took place 24–27 October 2024 at the Seabeck Conference Center on Washington’s scenic Kitsap Peninsula. Seabeck is always a highlight of my poetic year.
New on the Reports page are my selections and commentary for the “2024 Lyrical Iowa Haiku Contest.” Results were announced in October 2024, and Lyrical Iowa, an anthology with all the poems (not the commentary), was published by the Iowa Poetry Association that same month.
On the Poems by Others page, look for “Relax” by Ellen Bass. And on Poems About Haiku, check out the addition of “The Matter of Huts” and “The Grave of Ryōkan” to Hayden Carruth’s “While Reading Bashō.”
In early October 2024, it was my honour to be featured as the Robert Sund Memorial Poet in the 2024 Skagit River Poetry Festival in La Conner, Washington, where I gave several readings and participated in a panel discussion. Consequently, my Venues, Clients, and Partners list (available through Workshops) now includes two new entries in La Conner, Washington: the La Conner Swinomish Library and the La Conner Inn. I read at other nearby venues, too, but they were listed previously.
Another privilege for me in October was competing in the Inland Empire Pro/Am Racquetball Tournament at the Spokane Club in Spokane, Washington, a tier 1 tournament as part of the International Racquetball Tour. I won third place in my age division, and also got to meet Kane Waselenchuk, the greatest racquetball player in the history of the sport. Amazing, too, to watch him and other pros play. I’ve added a photo of the two of us on my Racquetball page, available through Digressions, where there’s also a video of Kane’s championship match at the end of the tournament (I appear in the background during Kane’s interview at the end of the match).
On the Haiku and Senryu page, I’ve created a new subsection for my poems in various journals. This is just a bit of restructuring, which I plan to add to, but the following is one new addition on the “My Poems in Tinywords” page, recently published:
yellowing maple—
I feel
for my bald spot
New to the Commentary page is a listing for the following poem featured in the Triveni Haiku India spotlight page in October 2024:
morning bird song—
my paddle slips
into its reflection
A new issue of First Frost is out! I’ve been coediting this smart little journal (with colour photographs throughout) twice a year since it began in 2021. Issue #8 is now listed on the “First Frost” page, available through Digressions. Subscribe!
It’s just cosmetic, but throughout the Reviews section, I have added a grey background to all the publication information at the top of each page, to match how I treat this information on the Essays page and elsewhere.
Finally, a bow of thanks. On the Donations page, I’ve added the names of people who have made generous donations to help keep Graceguts going. Most donors are anonymous, but I’m happy to publicly thank John Budan, Claire Vogel Camargo, and Dale Wisely.
And thanks to everyone for reading Graceguts!