Luckring, Eve. The Tender Between. Princeton, NJ: Ornithopter Press, 2018.

I recently read some of Luckring’s haiku in an anthology and really enjoyed them, so I decided to buy her book.

Shirane, Haruo. Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashō. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.

I found out about this book via an article I read about a month ago, and decided to buy it because I love Bashō’s work.

Since January 2021, I’ve been keeping a list of my writing activity for each month (here’s last month’s). I do so partly as a form of encouragement for myself to show that I am still able to do some writing despite the energy-sucking terrors of our times, and partly as an archive that I can look back on in the future. As such, I include negative happenings (e.g., receiving rejections), not just positive ones.

I think that it is important for me to share my list publicly as a genderqueer bisexual disabled Latinx writer because mainstream discourse tries to either pretend voices such as mine do not exist or actively tries to suppress them. Whether one is part of an oppressed group or not, writing is an essential act of resistance in these terrible times, so I hope that my list offers encouragement to others.

The list is basically in chronological order.

1. Wrote a haiku or senryu on most mornings.

2. Helped to distribute the Call for Proposals for the next Mennonite/s Writing Conference (for which I am once again on the planning committee).

3. Submitted sixteen poems to Modern Haiku and had two accepted.

4. Submitted fifteen poems to Acorn and had one accepted.

5. Submitted eight poems to Frogpond.

6. Had my memoir manuscript rejected by a publisher.

7. Updated the Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies.

8. Submitted my memoir manuscript to another publisher.

Gilbert, Richard. The Disjunctive Dragonfly: A New Approach to English-Language Haiku. Updated ed. Winchester, VA: Red Moon Press, 2016.

I recently had this book recommended to me by someone who is also interested in writing nontraditional haiku.

Rotella, Alexis. Milkweed: Selected Haiku & Senryu. Taylorville, IL: Brooks Books, 2024.

Rotella has been one of my favorite haiku poets since I got into the genre, so I was quite excited to hear about the publication of this collection.

Since January 2021, I’ve been keeping a list of my writing activity for each month (here’s last month’s). I do so partly as a form of encouragement for myself to show that I am still able to do some writing despite the energy-sucking terrors of our times, and partly as an archive that I can look back on in the future. As such, I include negative happenings (e.g., receiving rejections), not just positive ones.

I think that it is important for me to share my list publicly as a genderqueer bisexual disabled Latinx writer because mainstream discourse tries to either pretend voices such as mine do not exist or actively tries to suppress them. Whether one is part of an oppressed group or not, writing is an essential act of resistance in these terrible times, so I hope that my list offers encouragement to others.

The list is basically in chronological order.

1. Wrote a haiku or senryu on most mornings.

2. Submitted ten poems to Blithe Spirit and had two accepted.

3. Submitted a micro-chapbook of poems to a press.

4. Continued taking an online poetry workshop, Poetics of Resistance, and had my second piece workshopped.

5. Had a poem, “daffodils / opening / the drawer of old maps,” published in Frogpond 47, no. 2 (Spring-Summer 2024): 9.

6. Had a poem, “twilight / the glow / of her text,” published in Modern Haiku 55, no. 2 (Summer 2024): 22.

7. Submitted a fellowship application to a journal.

8. Worked on some revisions to my memoir manuscript.

9. Had an essay on Diane di Prima’s haiku that I submitted to a journal several months ago accepted for publication in their fall issue.

Berggrun, Chase. Somewhere a Seagull. N.p.: After Hours Editions, 2023.

I love Berggrun’s full-length poetry collection R E D, so when I heard about this limited-edition chapbook last week I bought it immediately. My copy is numbered 55/100.

Cairns, Robyn, and Marianne Paul. Damselflies. Canada: Paper Heron Press, 2023.

This is a lovely hand-sewn chapbook of single-line poems. I bought it because more and more of my haiku and senryu are one-liners, so I am always eager to see how other authors write them.

Today is “Strand Day” to celebrate the Strand‘s ninety-seventh anniversary, so everything in the store is 25% off and you get a free tote bag if you spend more than $50.00. I hadn’t been there in while, but this deal was too good to pass up, so I went this morning and bought a few recent books that I’ve had my eyes on. The July and Kwon novels are autographed.

Dancyger, Lily. First Love: Essays on Friendship. New York: The Dial Press, 2024.

July, Miranda. All Fours. New York: Riverhead Books, 2024.

Kwon, R.O. Exhibit. New York: Riverhead Books, 2024.

After I finished my MFA a year ago, my book buying dropped off pretty significantly (partly because I was buying fountain pens instead), but it has really picked up again over the past few months. I already know that I am going to surpass my book-buying budget for June even though the month is only half over, haha.

Abi-Karam, Andrea, and Kay Gabriel, eds. We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics. New York: Nightboat Books, 2020.

Gabriel, Kay. A Queen in Bucks County. New York: Nightboat Books, 2022.

I was assigned We Want It All‘s introduction in the Poetics of Resistance workshop I’m currently taking, and as soon as I read it I knew that I had to buy the full book. As I was reading about the anthology on Nightboat’s website, the description of A Queen in Bucks County caught my eye, so I decided to buy it, too.

van den Heuvel, Cor, ed. The Haiku Anthology: Haiku and Senryu in English. Revised Edition. 1986. New York: Touchstone, 1991.

When I first got into haiku, I read the third (i.e., the most recent) edition of this anthology. Recently, I bought the first edition because I thought it would be interesting to see what the field was like when it was published in 1974. This exercise was even more fascinating than I had hoped, so I decided to go ahead and complete my set and buy the second edition.

Higginson, William J., and Penny Harter. The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Teach, and Appreciate Haiku. 25th Anniversary Edition. New York: Kodansha USA, 2013.

I’ve had this classic on my to-buy list for a while, and finally decided to acquire it.

Pearce, Jacqueline, ed. Last Train Home: An Anthology of Contemporary Haiku, Tanka, and Rengay. Vancouver: Pondhawk Press, 2021.

Because commuting on the PATH train and subway is a significant part of my working life, I end up writing a lot of train-related haiku. I was therefore quite excited to find out about this anthology of train-related poems via a review in an old issue of Blithe Spirit, and ordered the book shortly thereafter.