Butterfly Dream Haiku Anthology

 NeverEnding Story Anthology Submission Guidelines

A haiku or a tanka without "rhetoric" was likely to be no more  than a brief observation without poetic tension or illumination.

-- Donald Keene, The Winter Sun Shines in: A Life of Masaoka Shiki, p 57.

Butterfly Dream Haiku Anthology

Send your best published haiku (please provide publication credits) or new work and a bio sketch (50 words max.) with the subject heading "Published or Unpublished Haiku, Your Name, Submitted Date" to Chen-ou Liu  via email at neverendingstory_haiku(at)yahoo.ca  And place your haiku directly in the body of the email. DO NOT SEND ATTACHMENTS.

No more than twenty haiku per submission and no simultaneous submissions. And please wait for at least three months for another new submission.

Please note that only those whose haiku are accepted will be notified within three weeks, and that no other notification will be sent out, so your works are automatically freed up after three weeks to submit elsewhere.

The accepted haiku will be translated into Chinese and posted on NeverEnding Story and Twitter (You are welcome to follow Chen-ou Liu on NeverEnding Story -  http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.ca/, or to follow NeverEnding Story on Twitter at @storyhaikutanka).

The best 66 haiku will be included in the anthology, and the poet whose poem is chosen as the best haiku of all submitted haiku will be given a 3-page space to feature the haiku of his/her choice. Each poet in the anthology  will receive a copy of the e-book edition.

My haiku in MahMight haiku journal

 

MahMight haiku journal

Friday, 25 June 2021

Bee Jay is breathing and Susan Burch finds a love note

 

i am the joey

breathing in my dead mother’s

pouch

Bee Jay

 

Bee Jay says:

“Sometimes a haiku can take years of thought and revisions. Sometimes one pops out seemingly fully formed. This haiku came out of me suddenly after I spent a few weeks reading experimental haiku and Japanese gendai on social media and in journals such as Heliosparrow, is/let, and Otoroshi.

I placed my fresh haiku into a workshop group to gauge responses and to see how I could improve it, but despite the sentence structure and the personification/anthropomorphism, the reaction to it was very positive, including a surprising request from Alan Summers to submit it to his new journal.”

one favourite haiku and why

I compiled a list of 30 of my fave contemporary haiku and then selected Susan Burch's haiku out of that. 

washed jeans―

his love note

still dirty

Susan Burch

Honourable Mention 4th Annual Senryu Contest, 

Sonic Boom July 2018

Bee Jay says:

“In 2014, Susan Burch was one of the first poets to write constructive comments and expert advice on my haiku and she later gave me the confidence to begin submitting my work. Her haiku and senryu often move me and this one is one of my faves. 

In this poem I see a fresh, new romance where lust and passion colours everything and even the most simple sentence contains sexual innuendo. I can imagine the kinds of words written in that note. The jeans could be hers or his but I prefer to think they’re hers. The love note is ‘still’ dirty which makes me believe she’s read it before. 

On the other hand, there is also the possibility that this is a dark poem about an illicit love affair and that she finds this dirty note in his jeans. This kind of ambiguity is one I admire in a haiku, I luv the idea that a haiku can be seen as positive in one reading and then so negative in another.”

favourite quote from Waiting for Godot

“There's no lack of void.”

Withnail and I

“Give me a Valium, I'm getting the fear.”

Alan note:

Also enjoy my own commentary, as the contest judge, on Susan Burch’s haikai verse:

“Being Human - the ordinary intensity” 

a look at senryu

https://area17.blogspot.com/2018/06/being-human-ordinary-intensity-look-at.html 

INVITATION - Rengay by Bee Jay/Sherry Grant

Invitation

too shy

to show my face

drifting leaf

full makeup on

turning the car around

road rage

swear words cut across

my apology

hard brake

the steady stare

of a startled deer

99 missed calls

birds chatter in trees

returning

the wedding dress

no refund

Bee Jay/Sherry Grant

WILD - a rengay written by Sherry Grant/Bee Jay

 
Wild

the school

partly hidden by mist

first day

still hanging on…

laughter at the park

lunch monitor

the pebble pushed

into an enemy’s pie

dancing

around the edge

friendship ring

hiding from bullies

behind the prickly pear

graduation

he plucks a wild rose

for her corsage

Bee Jay/Sherry Grant

Translation of WILD into Chinese by Sherry Grant -

狂野

作者：蜂 / 火の鳥

中文翻譯：火の鳥

上學第一天

部分校園被

濃霧籠罩

公園的笑聲

猶在耳際

午餐糾察隊

我在敵手吃的派裡

偷偷放了一顆石子

圍在邊上

跳舞

朋友圈（友誼戒指）

為了躲避惡霸

我藏在仙人掌後面

畢業典禮

他親自為她摘了朵

野玫瑰插在胸前