Poetry Corner: Regional Reading – Bright Plumage, the Colors of Home

POETRY CORNER – The Regional Reading

Photo – Tanya McDonald.

– 09/20/17

Hosted by Kathabela Wilson

Today, as you read this, our Haiku North America Conference in Santa Fe New Mexico has ended. I love imagining us all coming home, and taking one look back at where we came from. As Jennifer Sutherland, of Australia says ” I find myself looking anew at the colours of my home landscape.” This is the regional reading we share, highlighting our colorful world. Tanya McDonald, much closer to home, in Seattle, creates her own sunshine in an often rainy world and is “known for her bright plumage.” Both poets are known for their haiku and bright warm personalities.

This is the seventeenth in our series of Regional Reading haiku Poetry Corners featuring haiku poets who will be visiting Santa Fe, New Mexico in September for Haiku North America 2017*. Our corners develop from the themes highlighted by their poems and concerns.

~ Kathabela

Photo by Jennifer Sutherland.

Jennifer Sutherland

I feel blessed to live in an outer suburb of Melbourne, Victoria i called Viewbank. My windows look out on to park land and I am regularly visited by various Australian native birds including magpies, kookaburras, currawongs, native parrots and lorikeets. I am minutes away from areas where I can enjoy horse riding and a variety of bush walks.

I find myself looking anew at the colours of my home landscape. The subtle grey and greens of the eucalyptus and the yellow wattle and pink blossom that is gradually appearing as we move to Spring and the days grow warmer here.

Whilst I am aware that Santa Fe’s colours are richly drawn from a vastly different palette, there is an underlined tone of spirituality that is common to both places. Santa Fe’s diverse history includes the Tanoans and Puebloans who settled along the Santa Fe River. The traditional owners and custodians of my home land were the Wurundjeri people who lived along the Yarra River which runs through Melbourne 150 miles from the Yarra Valley region.

sunrise
the raised crest
of the cockatoo

red river gumtrees
line the banks
Wurundjeri land

overcast morning
the only blue a feather
on the kookaburra’s wing

Jennifer Sutherland lives in Victoria, Australia. She supports animal welfare and volunteers regularly at a local RSPCA animal shelter. Her haiku have been published in a variety of journals including Frogpond, Modern Haiku , A Hundred Gourds, Bottle Rockets, The Heron’s Nest and the Australian annual haiku journal, Windfall.

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Photo by Tanya McDonald.

Tanya McDonald

The Seattle area has a reputation for rain. Locals are the ones without umbrellas when it’s raining. We’re the ones whose skin bears a mossy tint in the depths of winter (and spring and autumn), the ones popping Vitamin D and basking under full-spectrum lights, the ones whose fashion sense consists of rain jackets and waterproof boots. No wonder the area has so many coffee shops and writers.

rain-blurred window—
the book
he isn’t reading

I’ve lived in rainy areas most of my life: the Willamette Valley in Oregon, the southeast of England, and now Woodinville, east of Seattle, so you could say that rain feels like home to me. Sure, I’ll complain with everyone else in the depths of November when we haven’t seen blue sky for what feels like an age, but in the summer, I get twitchy if I go too long without that pitter-patter on leaves.

summer night
through the open window
petrichor

Tanya McDonald is known for her bright plumage and her haiku. A tea-drinker and wannabe naturalist/librarian, she is constantly distracted by birds and bookstores. She has been published in various haiku journals, and is currently serving as vice-president of Haiku Northwest. Her alter ego is a novelist.

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*The Regional Reading was performed live at the conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in September, 2017, led by Kathabela Wilson. The dramatic presentation were accompanied by Rick Wilson on flutes of the various regions. Poets from Australia, India, Canada, United States, and many other regions presented. Look for their haiku in future Poetry Corners.

> You may also want to check:

• POETRY CORNER – The Regional Reading (16)

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