MITSUAKI KOJIMA

Haikuists are adept at juxtaposing vivid imagery during springtime. Tokyo poet Mickey Nasu prefers to serve up a melange of red and white in his poetry, Charlie Smith employs monochrome to sketch spring in North Carolina.

Side by side
red and white blossoms
synergy

Black and white
Apache portrait
red oak frame

Takako Nagai laments the loss of a loved one in Tokyo. Hidehito Yasui searched for the source of a lovely birdsong in Osaka.

Spring snow
leaving nothing
but pistachio green

Invisible
breath of wind
warbler's herald

Marites C. Omori uses a greenhouse to help her get a head start on farming peaches in Yamanashi.

Smell of spring
from the greenhouse peach
full blossom

A strong spring scent hit Croatian haikuist Dejan Pavlinovic right on the nose. A warmer Brazilian breeze played with Francisco Handa's nostrils while he walked down the beach in Sao Paulo.

Out of the fog
straight into the nostrils
mimosa

For the moment
breeze plays up my nose
the nude tree

Because of the mild weather and the break between semesters, spring is the preferred time for poets, professors and their students to attend conferences in India. University of Dhaka student Quamrul Hassan won a prize for a haiku he wrote about the winter sun that rose on Feb. 25, during the 9th World Haiku Festival in Bangalore.

At the conference, Hassan explained his haiku about Falgun, an event celebrated during the first month of spring according to the Bangladeshi calendar.

Winter morning
a slice of the sun
on my blanket

First Falgun
a girl in yellow
boy in white

The World Haiku Association is headquartered in London, but the conference was organized by the Indian Haiku Society for the first time.

Indian poet and professor, A. Thiagarajan convened the conference.

Thiagarajan shared the following haiku about university entrance examinations in Mumbai.

It resonates well with a haiku by Doc Sunday who proctored an examination at the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital.

Exam dawn
child with an admit card
before the deity

Expiry
students giving up
entrance exam

Communicating with her sales staff via e-mail may have been key to Rebba Singh's success as a poet in Lucknow, India. She says she makes so many mistakes in English that she gravitated toward shorter forms of communication in her job as a pharmaceutical sales coordinator. Her pen name Rebba means morning mist in Persian.

Call me
not a poet
but a verse

Want to try composing haiku ?

Back numbers

The 13th anniversary issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears March 29. Readers are welcome to send haiku on postcards for review by David McMurray at the International University of Kagoshima, Sakanoue 8-34-1, Kagoshima 891-0197, or e-mail <mcmurray@fka.att.ne.jp>.