Poetry Corner: Traveling Near and Far

POETRY  CORNER

Acrylic on canvas by Rekha K Rana.

– 5/31/17

Hosted by Kathabela Wilson

This is the fifth 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 Conference, 2017*. Our corners develop from the themes highlighted by their poems and concerns.

Here we present two wonderful poets, from near and far! Carol Judkins lives in Carlsbad, CA, and just came back from Australia. She carefully notices the regional details, animals, birds and flowers at home and abroad. Meanwhile Kala Ramesh, from Pune, India gives us an exotic, delicious taste of her homeland.

~ Kathabela

Carol’s Pond (Photo – Carol Judkins).

Carol Judkins

It’s always wonderful to come home after an overseas trip. We returned from New Zealand and Australia in late March, driving from the airport to our home in Carlsbad, California. In our temperate climate, one needs to look a little harder than in other places to find seasonal changes, but some heraldings are quite spectacular.

ground cover
abloom at highway exits
SoCal spring!

Carlsbad was once a checkerboard of ranches. Some of the housing developments maintain that historical connection, as does our pastoral retirement oasis, Rancho Carlsbad. Birds, bunnies, ducks, our resident heron and other creatures keep us close to nature.

ducks in a row
on the way to the pond
spring training

Traveling also gave us a glimpse of another spring. A quick trip to Sweden in April for a family celebration revealed the edges of two seasons:

first light…
snowflakes
dust a daffodil

Carol Judkins loves all of Japanese short form poetry. Her chapbook, at the water’s edge, received a Kanterman Merit Book Award honorable mention from the Haiku Society of America.

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Flower (Photo – Beata Wrzal).

Kala Ramesh

parijaat blossom …
as kids, we shook the tree
for raindrops

Parijaat is the only blossom which is not plucked for morning prayers in India. We shake the tree gently and pick the fallen flowers from the ground. What a beautiful way to offer flowers to Gods and Goddesses.

Buddha (Photo – Beata Wrzal).

a leaf
caught by the boulder
I pause
the ahimsa’s way

(‘ahimsa’ means non-violence in Sanskrit, and as a concept, it was introduced by Mahatma Gandhi.)

Moon (Photo – Beata Wrzal).

beach dinner
the papad in her hand
dwarfs the moon

‘papad’ is an Indian flatbread or cracker.
Beach dinners were a monthly extravaganza during my childhood days. The famous Marina Beach in Chennai with its unending stretch of sand, sea and sky has featured in many of my haiku, tanka and haibun.

(Photo – Beata Wrzal).

home-ripened mangoes
I hear my grandmother’s voice
in my mother’s

Riding on our passion, joy and imagination, mangoes rule the summer season and our hearts!

Kala Ramesh writes and teaches haiku, tanka, haibun and renku to children, undergrads and senior citizens. An editor of five journals, she is also an external faculty member of the Symbiosis International University Pune since 2012, where she teaches Japanese short forms of poetry to undergrads – a first in her country.

Kala will present her book, “beyond the horizon beyond” at the Haiku North America conference, and present this program: “Dance Your Way Through earthtones — Kala Ramesh & Preethi Ramprasad.”  A recital of dance and haiku reading that highlights the synergy between an Indian classical dancer and a haiku poet. A selection of haiku from Naad Anunaad: An Anthology of Contemporary World Haiku, written by authors from all over the world, will be read aloud by Kala, then interpreted through Preethi’s abhinaya (body and facial expression), a beautiful idiom of the Indian classical dance style called bharatanatyam.

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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. See the newly updated program as it develops here.

> You may also want to check:

• POETRY CORNER – The Regional Reading (4)

• POETRY CORNER – The Regional Reading (3)

• POETRY CORNER – The Regional Reading (2)

• POETRY CORNER – The Regional Reading (1)

Tree of flowers, sweeping in India (Photo – Kathabela Wilson).

♣ We welcome and encourage your response especially in the form of short poems. You may reply by leaving a comment below.