Poetry Corner: On the Road

POETRY CORNER – The Regional Reading

– 06/14/17

Hosted by Kathabela Wilson

This is the sixth 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.

Our wonderful poets today are both on the organizing committee of the conference, and find unique, surprising, challenging and inspiring experiences as they go down the road.

~ Kathabela

Cloud meets the road (Photo – Stevie Strang).

Deborah P Kolodji

where the 5
meets the 405 . . .
clouds

desert highway
the super bloom
in her eyes

hand after hand
in the sand
somersault waves

Deborah P Kolodji joined the Board of Directors for HNA in 2016 and was the co-chair of the organizing committee for Haiku North America 2013 on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. She has attended every HNA since Ottawa in 2009. In Santa Fe, Kolodji will be presenting the Memorial Reading and doing a reading from her book of haiku & senyru, “Highway of Sleeping Towns,” which recently won a Touchstone Award from the Haiku Foundation. Kolodji lives in Southern California, between the desert and the ocean near the foothills above Pasadena. Like most Angelenos, she spends way too much time on the freeways, which in Southern California are always referred to by using the word “the” as in “the 5” and “the 405” versus “I-5” or “I-405.”

Deborah is the moderator of the local Southern California Haiku Study group which currently meets every third Saturday at the Lamanda Park Library in Pasadena.

Ο Ο Ο

Tumbleweeds (Photo – David Meischen).

Scott Wiggerman

tumbleweeds
crash into barbed wire
spring pile-up

down the trail
led by a tumbleweed
we follow

windstorm
kinetic sculptures
in every yard

Boca Negra Dam
only tumbleweeds
flow in storm drains

             weeds

tumble             tumble

            weeds

Scott Wiggerman says:” When I moved to Albuquerque’s West Mesa two years ago, I wasn’t prepared for the tumbleweeds. Directly to the west of my house are the Three Sisters volcanoes (part of the National Petroglyph Monument) and lots of beautiful open space —in other words, nothing to stop the tumbleweeds from entering my yard when the winds come from the west. This year has been relatively light, but the first year I moved here, my yard and driveway were covered in these obnoxious things. They’re sticky-prickly and cause rashes and itching, and they’re nearly impossible to break down (meaning about five of them will fit in a garbage bin—and if one is on top, the trash collectors won’t take it, so you have to hide them below other garbage!). As the photo my husband took shows, there are sometimes WAY more than five in the yard. Oh, and if you throw them over the wall, the HOA fines you! At least they’ve been good for dozens of haiku.”

The 2017 HNA Organizing Committee has been meeting regularly for a year and a half to plan the Santa Fe conference. ​Scott says: “​With ​my ​experience in editing and publishing for Dos Gatos Press, ​I w​​as brought on to work with the conference anthology and other printed materials (e.g., program, etc.), as well as with the Silent Auction; but the five of us on the Committee all bounce ideas for HNA off each other, regardless of ‘duties’ (e.g., speakers, arrangements, outreach, etc.). Truly one of the best committees I’ve ever worked on. We should have an amazing conference.”

Ο Ο Ο

> Stevie Strang is a poet and photographer living in the beach town of Laguna Niguel, CA. ​She is a member of the Southern CA Haiku Study Group.​

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*The Regional Reading will be performed live at the conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in September, 2017, led by Kathabela Wilson. The dramatic presentation will be accompanied by Rick Wilson on flutes of the various regions. Poets from Australia, India, Canada, United States, and many other regions will be presenting. Look for their haiku in future Poetry Corners. Anyone can​ register for the conference and send their haiku to Scott for the anthology.

> You may also want to check:

• POETRY CORNER – The Regional Reading (5)

• POETRY CORNER – The Regional Reading (4)

• POETRY CORNER – The Regional Reading (3)

• POETRY CORNER – The Regional Reading (2)

• POETRY CORNER – The Regional Reading (1)