Category Archives: haibun

Some Thoughts on Poetry and Editors

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I’m still working on the Gladstone story, just not very fast. However, I am writing plenty of poetry. If I were a scientist I would probably put forward the theory that freeing myself from the shackles of WP and numismatic writing, has made me feel more relaxed and has released my ability to write poetry.

However, other variables include lower temperatures, better sleep and reading a book on how to write better poetry. And coincidence. I have always written in a way I could compare to peaks and troughs. However, it used to take me longer to descend from a peak and the troughs just represented a lower level of output. Now I seem to drop off the peaks much more quickly and the troughs are deeper, and are often accompanied by a period of struggle to write.

A lot of the problem, I think, goes back a few years to the times when I had some serious infections. Each one stopped me writing for a week or so, then slowed me down, sometimes for months. Before the infections I used to submit my work on the first day a submission window opened. I like to have things ready. As I slowed down I slipped back until I was struggling to have enough poetry to submit. I often had to resort to submitting things written on the day of submission, and sending submissions to the USA after my midnight, because the time difference worked in my favour.  Sometimes, of course, I came unstuck.

And before you ask, yes, various people declare that you should leave poetry in a drawer for a month, or even a year, before sending it to an editor. I agree. It’s always better when you give yourself time, as early drafts can contain clunkiness, and even downright gibberish.  However, I can confirm that it’s possible to write a poem, send it off the same day and still have it accepted. It’s not a good working practice, but if that’s the only choice you have, you have to work with it.

I also believe that getting in first gives you an advantage. If you write well, someone has to write even better to displace you in the selection process. If two poems are submitted on the same subject, the first one is in a better position for selection. It’s not scientific, and it may not accurately reflect the actual way that editors select, but I always think any possible advantage is worth having.

I’m currently in a position to make five submissions now, instead of waiting until the end of the month. I will do that in the next couple of days and start work on next month’s submissions. Next month is a strenuous month and it will be good to approach it well prepared. I often say that of course, but this time I really feel I can mange it.

Another benefit, (and one I am sure about) is that if you submit early you can get early rejections, and they can be recycled. It’s possible, doing that, to submit the same piece twice in the same submission period. Very efficient and when, as sometimes happens, it is accepted second time around, a useful reminder that all editors have different opinions.

 

A Writer’s Guide to Non-Writing Things You Need To Do

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I’ve just caught up on several days worth of posts I hadn’t read. I’ve also allowed myself to divert into the shadowy byways of Wikipedia. One of those was necessary, the other occupies an anomalous position – it’s top level procrastination, but it’s also a source of inspiration (or so I tell myself).

Several of the posts I have read are poetry blogs, which is always useful. I like seeing what proper poets are doing.

I had a bit of research to do on a poem I was writing, so I ordered a book from World of Books on Amazon. It wasn’t expensive, just under £5 with P&P, but it was described as Used- Very Good. When it arrived, with bumped corners, mild staining, yellowed pages and an old sticky label, it looked more like Shabby would have been a better description. I was not pleased but will suck it up as it had the information I required. I’ll be looking at other companies in future. It’s not the first time they have over-claimed on a book’s condition.

I’ve now had the first of the emails about July Submissions. It’s an acceptance for a Haibun, albeit a frustrating one.

They liked all three but could only select one, which seems to be increasingly common. They went for one above the others because it covers current events. In due course i will let you know when it is published.

Meanwhile, I have been sorting out my poems. Everytime a deadline comes round for haiku, it becomes clear that I have some poems i could probably send, if only I had a better system of filing them. Actually, it applies to all my poems, but is worse with haiku. 

I have sorted a couple of years of haiku submissions and estimate I have thirty or forty I could retrieve from the rejected poems. That’s the frustration of the system where you send ten in to get one selected. Admittedly 5/10 are poor and better being deleted, but there is still usable material in the rejects.

It took most of a day, and there is a lot left to sort through. I’d better get going . . .

 

Kintsugi – Broken Pots and Gold Paint

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Kintsugi is the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken pots.

It’s fine to start with – it’s about mending broken pots, embracing the imperfections, adding to the history of the object and making it more beautiful. It can be extended to include personal qualities like working with your faults and bouncing back from adversity.  Broken items are put back together and the repairs are highlighted in gold.

In Japan it is an ancient art form.

In the hands of the west it has become a handicraft, the philosophy has been cheapened and it is now possible to do courses and buy kits. I checked with one of the courses. Step One of the course is to break a pot, which does not seem true to the original intention (though there were accusations of collectors doing this in Japan in previous centuries). It is also possible to buy kits, one of which gave me a moment of amusement. The feedback indicated that one of the tea bowls in the kit had arrived broken, but went on to point out that this saved a job. Probably the only time an item broken in transport has been well received.

I’m not knocking it, because it can still produce a lovely and artistic piece of work, but I am pointing out that if you are happy with that, don’t dress it up. And if you want to be true to the spirit of kintsugi, don’t break a pot on purpose. Meanwhile, I got a poem out of it. I may get another. Released from the tyranny of submissions deadlines I find I can, once again, write. Definitely time for a rethink.

This is a haibun which mentions kintsugi, though only in  small way. More of it is about Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and being married. And, of course, specifically about being married to a woman who stabbed herself in the jugular vein with a piece of broken plant pot because she wouldn’t ask for help. I originally posted a link to it from this post so if you remember it, sorry for being repetitive.

Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940)

 

A Necklace of Thorns

Despite their fame, their paintings and their place in history, Diego and Frida (we are on first name terms in my imagination) still had to chat about the weather, and bicker about who forgot to buy more milk for breakfast. I imagine the weather was mostly sunny, and that it was Diego who forgot the milk. With his affairs and all those frescoes, it must have been difficult to fit the shopping in.

My wife’s throat, spiked with black sutures, is less inflamed today. I check each morning, trying not to let my worries show. Across the toast crumbs, she reminds me that we need more bread today, and I have to paint the garage doors this spring. For a moment my mind flits to a glorious picture of doors featuring Leon Trotsky and Emiliano Zapata against a backdrop of moustachioed revolutionaries. My wife suggests we stick with green.

today
she has her stitches out
I joke I will buy
gold paint to mend the scar
shared history

First Published cho 22.1 (2026)

Zapata and Trotsky seemed to disappear when I wanted them.

 

Another Day, Another Poem

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My apologies, I have been a bit erratic and those of you who notice such things may have registered my absence for part of the week. It is simply a case of me using my time unwisely. I have caught up with some of it but have decided to let slide.

My apologies, too, for two poems in two days. There’s something tedious about poets publishing their own poetry in quantity, but these two fit together so I thought I’d do them both.

In the meantime, I have had a poem accepted, submitted a few more and had a piece used in a local newsletter. It was based on Major Becher. I have written about him before in several places. I really should go back and make a correction – his son was not killed in a plane crash, but in  an Italian bombing raid. Same result, but different details.

I said, in a previous post, I was going to publish my other, unsuccessful, nomination for the anthology. In a number of ways I prefer this one and would be interested in hearing what people think.

It is 105 words and it is complete. That as i keep saying to people. is the beauty of writing poetry compared to novels.

Autodidact with Knife and Fork

Workmen drag temporary traffic lights into place as their companions spray bright colours on the road. An old lady stoops suddenly, pulls a plastic bag from her pocket, picks up the mess her ancient dachshund made. A scowling mother with a double buggy, swerves around the crouching woman, forcing a teenager to jump aside. He almost drops his phone. A shopkeeper and a builder stand outside a shop, point to a green vee on the wall, discuss the leaking gutter. 

as a child
Breughel’s busy peasants
lived on my place mat
the things my father taught me
over Sunday lunch

For those of you who like context, I “wrote” most of it whilst I was in a queue caused by roadworks where Edwards Lane and Mansfield Road meet outside the Sherwood Manor pub. Sometimes poems just come to me.  The people were all people I saw that day, though not all while i was waiting – the men looking at the shop cropped up later. I missed out the blind man who got mixed up in it all as it was too complicated to explain how he swerved round the lady with the dog and thus showed he had more sight than his white stick suggested. Sometimes less is more. One day I might give him a poem of his own.

It’s a very different process to the previous poem, which was much more engineered and less spontaneous.

It was accepted by Ribbons, first time out, though there was a heavy edit – the final two lines (31 words) were removed and the story of the mats was contained in the rewritten tanka.

Again, no photo. I really am falling down on the job.

A Poem and a Commentary

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That is the haibun that I mentioned yesterday. It’s 98 words, which is why I don’t mind describing myself as a poet, but hesitate to claim to be a writer.

I’ve just been reading a book on writing poetry.  It is very scornful about Japanese forms, and about tanka in particular. And about the sad old men, he says, that write them. I checked the internet but, so far, have been unable to find evidence of the book’s author setting the world of poetry aflame. This is so often the case.

There is an expression that those who can, do, and those that can’t teach. Or criticise. But teachers and critics both have important places in the world, and both have sets of skills related to the job. People who write books about how to write poetry (and I have read a few now) seldom have much to offer. In the old days you could at least have given the book to charity or used it as emergency toilet paper, but in the digital age these satisfactions are no longer available.

Anyway, the poem – first published in Blithe Spirit, the journal of the British Haiku Society, in 2025 and then anthologised in Contemporary Haibun 21.

Living Art

In the lull between lunch and the afternoon shoppers, one cup of coffee is all it takes to secure two hours of peace. The cafe does not do “cheerful” but you can’t have everything for this price. For happiness and choice you need the more modern American-style coffee shops. Here the choice is limited to “with” and “without” milk. Sometimes I imagine myself in one of Hopper’s paintings, or stare at Rodin’s Thinker on another table. Today, sagging in in summer heat, Dali comes to mind.

bitter coffee
and the radio news
—rehearsing for The Scream

 

Tomorrow, I will publish the other poem that was nominated for the anthology. I actually think it was better than this one, and would be interested in what people think.

For people who like to know a bit more, the idea came whilst I was reading about the life of Edward Hopper. The idea of the half-empty cafe came from Nighthawks and the coffee cam from some tanka i had written on the subject after submitting some tanka written around a theme. I can’t remember the theme. In my hands it became about disappointment, though it may have been something more cheerful originally. I imagined myself in a typical English cafe, rather than an American diner, re-used the coffee/disappointment motif, and thought of Dali’s melting clocks. It was July and heat was on my mind. From there I added a bit more art and that was it.

I had previously submitted it to another magazine. The original version had a different title, a different haiku and 31 more words.  It also only mentioned Hopper. I took out about 60 words, replaced them with 30 different ones and added the extra artists.

Looking at it now, I don’t know how I thought the original version was good enough to submit, but that’s the way it happens. That’s why poems need time to mature. However, if you don’t send them out, you don’t always have the urge to improve.

No photos today. Can’t think of anything suitable to use.

That Whisper in my Ear

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Yesterday I received my copy of Contemporary Haibun 21. I may have mentioned a few months ago that I wanted to buy a poetry book from the USA but didn’t want to pay $30 for postage on top of the $30 cost of the book.

My Orange Parker Pen

However, I checked an old email account and found an email with the offer of a $10 discount on the book, because I am in it. Vanity got the better of me, and despite the combined costs being enough to buy two takeaway meals for the two of us, I gritted my teeth and paid the price.

It is “an annual anthology of English-language haibun (and haiga) gleaned from the best practitioners from around the world”. (Haiga are pictures paired up with a haiku for those of you who are lost in the sea of foreign words that begin with hai).

It’s not a bad thing to be in, but when I look, I can’t help thinking about the people who are in it three times where I am only in it once. Are they three times better than me?  How much better do I need to become? Three of them are editors who have been very active in rejecting me over the years. They are also editors of the anthology, so it makes it miraculous that I actually made the cut. One of them seems far too enthusiastic in rejecting me when I submit to the journal where he is a newly appointed editor. He’s new to this job, but I wonder if his zeal will be reflected in the selections next year. If it is, I may be able to save a lot of money.

Two pens – one made by my wife

On the other hand, if they left out the last 50 pages, which are reprints of articles I have already read, it might have been cheaper to print and post.

Tricky.

How much do I crave publication? How much is it worth? Is it worth worrying about when a significant number of the editors are generally not keen on my work? Why does something I should be happy about become a matter for deep thought and depression? If I were Roman general I would have someone next to me whispering in my ear to bring me down to earth, but I don’t, and I can do it all by myself.

Philip Larkin and Moral Judgement

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He looks a bit like Eric Morecambe in some of his photos – which is probably not a good comparison.

I wrote this after watching a YouTube clip of Philip Larkin riding a bicycle. I can’t exactly remember what he was doing but association with An Arundel Tomb has always made me think he was visiting churches, even though I’m not convinced that a church features in the clip. It started out as a longer piece and I pruned it and polished it every time it came back, which was often. I think it was sent out at least four times. On the last occasion I didn’t, as i recall, do anything, as i couldn’t think of anything else to do so I just sent it straight out again and, a day later, it was accepted.

This is an example of how editors all have different views and requirements.

Meanwhile, although I have used it on the blog before, I use it here to illustrate the making of moral judgements. Larkin, you see, was a racist according to his letters. That illustrates several points, such as whether we should judge poetry through a filter of our own morality. Just because he was a racist does that make him a bad poet? And if we do decided to judge a writer by his morals rather than his writing, is it fair to judge one as a racist because he preserved his correspondence, yet to make no judgement on another writer who may have failed to preserve his correspondence?

That’s a tricky thing about making moral judgements, they aren’t always accurate – a bit like the poem, which picks and choses which facts to use. I didn’t use moral judgements in selecting the facts, just what fitted nicely into the flow.

Hidden Worlds

He wears a grey gaberdine and rides a bicycle from church to church. In his head he composes poems about sex and tombs. On YouTube he flickers in black and white, like a newsreel from the 1950s. Smiles are clearly still on ration.

Larkin used more bad language than you normally expect from a librarian. This becomes understandable when you find that he started his day with half a bottle of sherry.

monochrome photo
my parents younger than me
1963

Failed Haiku Feb 2021

 

A Film Show a Surprise and a Superstition

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Robin

I went to the funeral of one of my aunts yesterday. I used to be well-supplied with aunts – thirteen that I had met and there were several I never met, so haven’t counted.  They have now dwindled to two. Several of them were actually great aunts (and several were great-great aunts) and two were actually second cousins who were approximately aunt age. One is still alive and another, in South Africa, hasn’t answered a letter for a year or two, so it’s a Schrödinger’s Cat situation, where she is still alive until we get a letter to tell us differently.

I have been very bad at keeping in touch. As such, I have spent most of the night awake, contemplating ways I could have done better and thinking about family history.

There was a screen in the crematorium chapel, displaying my aunt’s photograph and (mis-spelt name). At her mother’s funeral the vicar used the wrong name all the way through – using her official first name when she was always known by her second name. Her father, in turn, was sent medals by a grateful nation in 1919, where his name was spelt wrongly on them and when the King sent his widow a memorial scroll, they spelt her name wrong too.

Some people are destined to achieve greatness, some are mere footnotes in history and, dragging along at the rear comes my family, with its name spelt wrong.

In a way, it was good to see the extension of family history into modern times – a century of misspelt names.

It was, as funerals go, well organised and upbeat and, as a final touch, a robin came out after the rain and sang us on our way. Of course, it’s only a superstition about robins, but, as they say, other superstitions are available.

Robin - singing

Robin – singing

Part of the slide show featured my aunt’s wedding photo in 1961. It was wet and blustery day. I was given some confetti to throw, which I did. Nobody had told me I had to wait for the bride and groom and it fell in a lump into a puddle. On being told of my error I tried to retrieve it for re-use, but was told to leave it and try again with a new, dry batch. What struck me as I looked at the picture, was that I think there are only three of us left who were there that day. Possibly two (see note about Schrödinger’s Cat). My sister had been left with a babysitter as she was considered too small for the weather. She still nurses a grudge about that.

It’s a surprise to look round and realise that you are the oldest in the room. It’s time for a poem, I think. First published in Contemporary Haibun Online 20.1 Spring 2024.

The Next Funeral

Amazon reviews indicate I am not the only person to have searched for a black tie with next day delivery. I could have sworn it was in the car’s glove compartment, neatly folded from the last time I wore it. My one white shirt hangs, ghostlike, from the bedroom picture rail and my timeless drab tweed jacket hangs next to it. The tie, I suddenly remember, is in my jacket pocket.

Tomorrow, as I nod to cousins, we will remark that we really must try to meet without someone dying. My uncle, who has just turned ninety, tells his brother in law to wrap up warm or he’ll be next. One day, I suppose, I will realise there is no obvious candidate to be next . . .

in church the sun
shines through an angel’s robe
bubbles trapped in blue glass
I wonder whose breath is
captured forever


					

		
		
	


	

				

			
						

				Following Up and Bits & Pieces
			

										

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I was recently asked for a description of various forms of Japanese poetry. I think you should find all you need here.  There are links in that one, which is about tanka and tanka prose, which will take you to haiku and haibun. One of the tanka links no longer works. If I remove it I them have to change the text, so am leaving it as I am short of time and am not a perfectionist.


The real way to write poetry of any type, as I have said before, is to pick up a pen and start writing. Eventually it will need typing but you’re a blogger, so you can already do that. Then email some off to editors.


If they are accepted, you are a genius. Well done, come back and tell me how you did it. Then tell everyone you learnt it all from me.


If your initial poems are rejected, join the club. Write some better ones and send them off. Each rejection hardens you up to cope with rejection, so failure is useful.


This year I have made 44 submissions and have had 18 acceptances, 17 rejections and have 9 answers pending. It’s not such a good rate as last year, but I’m writing to more places rather than just the ones that suit me. The point is to do something new rather than rack up an impressive ratio of accepted poetry.


Orange Parker Pen


I am, as i have said, looking at changing things round a bit. It may not see me improving or becoming more successful but it will get me out of a rut and make me use my brain differently.


Meanwhile, Sunday brought two emails, one accepting a haibun and one accepting a haiku. The ones that weren’t used (six haiku and two haibun) can go into the submissions for the coming month.


I need one lot of 10-15 and one lot of four for the 15th of the month. I now have enough. It’s a help and takes some of the pressure off.


Having said that, I just went to look at what I need to do. Even with this progress I still have quite a lot of work ahead of me. OK, I have three weeks to do it in,  but I am at a funeral in Norwich later today and on Thursday I will be messing about delivering the car for repair.


My Orange Parker Pen. I just wrote a poem about it, as all my hints to parker have come to nothing. It was rejected. So I sent it to somebody else.


 

					

		
		
	


	

				

			
						

				The Best Words in the Best Order
			

										

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‘I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is prose; words in their best order; – poetry; the best words in the best order.’


S. T. Coleridge


Yesterday I read the words of an editor on the front page of their website. It seems that running a magazine is hard work and takes a lot of time. I had never imagined otherwise. I base this on the fact that I spent yesterday pushing words round paper. By the time I had finished I had taken three unpublishable poems and turned them into one possibly publishable poem and two that were better than when I started on them.


 


Poetry takes time. Lots of time.




I read some background, cogitated, deleted a few words, added a few words, deleted them, went back to the first version, and, in a flash of inspiration, deleted the first verse and the last verse and carried on messing with words.


Then I moved on to the next one . . .


The tricky thing I find, is that it’s surprisingly easy to alter something and make the poem worse.


Sometimes, when I’m in full flow, I can write a whole poem and it doesn’t need altering. I wrote one like that once and it was highly commended in a competition. I need to practice more and try to get back to that.




One of my free verse poems, when edited, turned into a haibun. Not quite sure how it happened, but it just seemed to fall into shape as I edited. It might be similar to what sports coaches call “muscle memory” – I’ve written so many haibun that I can’t write anything else. That’s unfortunate, because, as a previous editor pointed out recently, I can’t write haibun. 🙂


I’ve used pictures of Julia’s woodturning, because it’s very much like poetry. You start off with hope and a battery of skills and, if you are lucky, you end up finding something that is better than you hoped.