PRUNE JUICE is proud to present Prune Juice : Journal of Senryu & Kyoka : Issue 3.
The Winter 2010 edition features new poems from the likes of Sanford Goldstein, Alexis Rotella and George Swede to name just three. The journal is presented online free of charge courtesy of Scribd.com.
Submissions for issue 4 (to be released July 2010) are now being considered. Please visit the submissions page for details.
Click here to read Prune Juice : Issue 3 : Winter 2010.
Modern Haiga annual journal is dedicated to publishing and promoting fine modern graphic poetry. Writers and artists around the world have generously shared their work in Modern Haiga. Whether traditional or modern, delicately minimal or vibrantly complex, hand-crafted or digitally produced, the quality of contemporary haiga continues to astound … It is still a rare delight to discover a true haigaa visual moment in which poem and image seem to work with equal strength to create that spark for which we all strive. This 2009 final edition of Modern Haiga is a firework display of this year’s sparks, each produced by artists who not only exhibit distinct control over their words and pictures but also over their understanding for what marries the two art forms in order to create another.
The poets and artists included in this issue are: Marnie Brooks, Mary Davila, Audrey Downey, M. Frost, Judith Gorgone, Dan Hardison, John Hawkhead, Colin Jones, Jacek Margolak, Ruth Mittelholtz, Elena Naskova, Linda Pilarski, Carol Raisfeld, Sarah Rehfeldt, Violette Rose-Jones, Alexis Rotella, Manoj Saranathan, and Liam Wilkinson.
The full-color, letter-size, perfect bound paperback book is priced at $34.95 and is available at our Lulu store, http://stores.lulu.com/modernenglishtanka and at our MET Press website, www.themetpress.com/bookstore/journals.html
Thank you, all the fine poets and artists who submitted their work to Modern Haiga 2009, and to the very hard-working board of editors, Liam Wilkinson (chief editor), Linda Papanicolaou, Raffael de Gruttola, Carol Raisfeld, and Ron Moss. This is the final issue of Modern Haiga. It has been a great experience!
The submission period for issue 3 ends on Tuesday 1st December. All work submitted after that date will be considered for issue 4, which is due to be published in Summer 2010, but poets will not receive a reply until the new year.
Issue 3 will be published online on January 15th 2010. Many thanks to everyone who has submitted! I look forward to reading more of your work in the new year.
For as long as it has allowed people to share their writing with the rest of the world, the Internet has been bombarded with ‘headline haiku’ and attempts at combining current affairs with short-form poetry, often using the 5-7-5 model and therefore establishing itself as nothing more than a global word-game. It’s the kind of thing to which serious writers, readers and students of haiku and related forms would have a strong aversion. Their authors are easy to spot – they’re the ones at the office who, whilst scanning the online news, are counting syllables on their fingers and jotting down a three-line summary that has as much literary merit as a tabloid headline.
Whilst we can very easily dismiss these ‘haiku’ as tea-break puzzles, there is still something attractive about the idea of marrying haiku with current affairs. Any writer of haiku and related forms would agree that, from time to time, a poem might arise from seeing some harrowing story on the six o’clock news or, for those of us who are constantly looking for that first spark of a senryu, spotting some amusing article on a page of the local rag. How many of us considered picking up a pen shortly after the events of 9/11? Upon visiting the Tribute WTC Visitor Centre in New York last year, I felt it only natural to leave a tanka in the tribute comments box. Surely the coming together of haiku and the news could still offer some interesting avenues for those who take our haiku, senryu, tanka and kyoka seriously.
It’s a joy, then, to discover that Dick Whyte and Laurence Stacey have launched Haiku News – a website that calls itself “the newspaper written in the Japanese poetic form of haiku” and believes that “the personal is the political is the poetical”. Haiku News allows writers to share their personal reflections on the theme of a current news item in the form of a haiku or related form. Being seasoned writers of haiku and related forms, the project is in very capable hands indeed. For those wishing to submit a poem, along with a link to the related news story, a simple glance at the guidelines will assure you that the 5-7-5 format has been “abandoned, and with good reason”. This is no arena for cheap attempts at word-game haiku - this is a very serious literary journal that documents our current history in the short form poetry of writers across the globe. The poems that have already surfaced on the site, along with their related links, are well-written, incredibly moving pieces. As well as offering the challenge of writing to a theme – something many journals have already successfully explored – Haiku News also offers us the chance to see the current political climate in a new, often very personal light, as well as other news items that might inspire us to open our notebooks. For us writers of senryu, I believe that we have another exciting journal to explore and I wish Mr Whyte and Mr Stacey every success.
Haiku News can be found at
http://www.wayfarergallery.net/haikunews/.
I’m delighted to announce that I have taken over as editor of Prune Juice: Journal of Senryu & Kyoka. Founder of Prune Juice, Alexis Rotella, did a wonderful job with issues 1 and 2 and, although I have very big boots to fill, I’m looking forward to publishing the third issue in January 2010.
A couple of changes – Prune Juice will now be published entirely online here at its new website: www.prunejuice.wordpress.com and will no longer appear in hard copy. For submission details, please visit our Submissions page.
As editor, I look forward to receiving quality senryu and kyoka in English from across the globe. Make them funny, make them sad, make them intriguing, make them silly, make them angry…gulp back the prune juice and let it all out!
Best wishes to all,
Liam Wilkinson
Editor, Prune Juice
PS The website is still under construction, so please excuse the dust…
