1 September 2024

I’ve been picking up a bit of speed in adding new content to Graceguts in the month of August 2024. Check out these additions.

• Freshly added to the Commentary page is Mark Danowsky’s generous “Notes from Michael Dylan Welch’s “Haiku Targets” Workshop.” Also new is “Silent Hospice,” with brief assessments of a poem of mine selected for special commendation in Geppo.

• New to Haiku and Senryu is “My Poems in Tsuri-dōrō,” collecting all my contributions to this online journal since it began in 2021 (I’ll keep adding poems here as more are included).

• I’ve added three poems to the Memorial Haiku page, for Jerry Kilbride, Peggy Willis Lyles, and Pat Shelley, respectively:

after the service,

carrying home

his grandmother’s brogue

summer night—

I close Peggy’s book

to hear the rain

April comes

and now you are gone,

you, who told your guardian angel

each year on your birthday,

not yet

• “My Poems in Haiku Society of America Anthologies” (available through Haiku and Senryu) now includes my contribution to the 2024 collection, Hauling the Tide:

beauty is truth

the beached whale

sinking into sand

• Also available through Haiku and Senryu, “My Poems in The Heron’s Nest” includes an image of an earlier poem that was just featured on the Haiku Foundation website as a “Haiku of the Day” on 3 August 2024:

missing you—

slowly the ceiling fan

comes to a stop

• New to the Videos page is “Discover Haiku in San Francisco,” a short 2025 Haiku North America promotional video by Tazuo Yamaguchi, which starts with a haiku of mine, plus my script and voice-over. Also added is “Briar Haus Writes Conversation with Michael Dylan Welch,” a half-hour interview conducted by Becky Parker about me and my poetry.

• On the Sequences page, check out “Silver Light,” recently published in Presence.

• The Blurbs page now includes my commendation of Witness Tree by paul m. Snapshot Press published this book in 2020 but I’m just now adding the blurb.

• On the Poems About Haiku page, look for “Poem Starter #1644” by Chris Jarmick.

• The Digressions page now sports my latest spiffy update to “Speed Stick Deodorant.” And check out the “Haiku North America” digression for the latest details on the 2025 HNA conference to be held in San Francisco. I’ve also added our 2025 HNA promotional video.

• As (almost?) always, I’ve made new additions to my Appearances page.

• And on the Essays page, a small addition to “The Haiku Gatekeeper: An Interview with Robert Spiess” is a photo of Spiess’s Smith-Corona typewriter.

Meanwhile, my Rengay website features three new additions:

• “Growing on Trees,” written on Zoom with Lanka Siriwardana, from Blithe Spirit

• “Hunger” solo rengay, from Solitary Plover

• “Playing Chicken,” written on an Oregon road trip with Tanya McDonald, from Prune Juice

Thanks for your eyes and ears.