The New Zealand Poetry Society International Competition

The New Zealand Poetry Society 2007
International Competition.

Closes 30th May 2007

The New Zealand Poetry Society's annual International Verse and Haiku Competition, with adult and junior sections, is currently under way. The Open Junior and Haiku Junior sections are open to students who are 17 years of age or under on 30th May 2007. Please visit www.poetrysociety.org.nz for full competition details and to download the entry forms. Last year's competition results and judges' reports are also on the website.

There are cash prizes, and selected entries will appear in the New Zealand Poetry Society's annual anthology later in the year.

This year's judges are:
Open: James Norcliffe
Open Junior: Bernard Gadd
Haiku: Ernest Berry
Haiku Junior: Patricia Prime

The judges' details are available on www.poetrysociety.org.nz and entry forms are available for downloading.
Alternatively, for a hard copy, send a self-addressed envelope and IRC to:
The Competition Secretary,
PO Box 5283,
Lambton Quay,
Wellington, New Zealand

For further information, please email: competition@poetrysociety.org.nz

Tour of Kunming's Minority Villages

I went out shooting with a new camera yesterday, so I don't wish to bore you with 'my trip' - but we did see contrived villages representing the culture and lifestyles of Dai, Yi, Miao, Naxi and Tibetan peoples. There was an elephant show where clever elephants did their bag of tricks - including standing on volunteers from the audience, and playfully whacking them with their trunk as they finished. One man won't forget it in a hurry: he needed a cricket batsman's protection to safeguard himself! Jen is standing next to her birth sign, the snake. There was a park-sized circle of similar statues, surrounding a tall totem pole. Not much else there but the wooden Hinayana temple and the White Pagoda, rebuilt and placed here by local people in 1983.

A collection of villages as example of the minority groups isn't such a bad idea, but it would be infinitely more satisfying to see them in their natural setting.

More to come!

Terra Cotta Warriors

On our travels, the internet is not always avaialble and when it is it is not always cooperative. So now, days after the event, I can maybe show you some photos of our day with the warriors. We also say a wonderful hot springs site where emperors bathed with their favourite concubines, and - later - the famous Xi'an 1936 Incident (their word) happened between the Nationalist Paerty and the Communists.

Xi'an Terra Cotta warriors

Wednesday, we spent a wonderful day sightseeing a 6000 village site, Huanqing Hot Springs, and the Xi'an Terra Cotta Warriors World Heritage site. Unfortunately my internet connection here, 'on the road', is insufficient to post photos. This is very frustrating, but this evening we are travelling to Kunming where hopefully the weather, the quality of air and the internet connections will be greatly improved.

Stay tuned.

Snippets of Linfen life

My wife Jeanette with a street vendor near Milky Way supermarket; two views of an obelisk embossed with Chinese characters, possibly Confucius analects; and the interior of a noodleshop just off campus, in a laneway.

We are off on holiday from Monday for six weeks or so, so entries on this blog may be sporadic, but they may also be interesting with snaps of Xian, Kunming and Liang ... But it is all up to the availability of internet access in hotels along the way. Check in from day to day ... Something will happen some time :-)

Repairing a Poem

When I wrote a ‘Snap beginning with a line by Fanny Howe’ days ago, I used the phonetic spelling of a phrase in Mandarin, spoken by a young American student, Tom, who is learning the language here. I wrote ‘doswa’ for him coming to get some water, and apparently it should be ‘da shui’ – to get water. I am grateful to my student and friend Wong Li for the knowledge. Here is the corrected poem:


'I'd speak if I wasn't afraid of inhaling'
the air here is thick with shibboleth
he comes down for da shui not just
to drink but to feel the temperature
expatriot ghettoes breed insecurity
it is shortly after the reason to be jolly
now in the season of promise I pause
with a China Post pen in the air
she points at the page to indicate
press harder to be read push down
to give it all birth to give it all berth

(Snap beginning with a line by Fanny Howe)

The Doctor is in Session

Ron Silliman at http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/ has announced the complete recordings of William Carlos Williams are now available on the Internet at http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Williams-WC.html

Snap beginning with a line by Fanny Howe

'I'd speak if I wasn't afraid of inhaling'
the air here is thick with shibboleth
he comes down for doswa not just
to drink but to feel the temperature
expatriot ghettoes breed insecurity
it is shortly after the reason to be jolly
now in the season of promise I pause
with a China Post pen in the air
she points at the page to indicate
press harder to be read push down
to give it all birth to give it all berth

My first sight of Snow

Haiku competition details - from HaikuOz

Kaji Aso Studio International Poetry Contest
Deadline March 15, 2007 postmarked.

Languages : English, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew.

Entry fee $2 (or two International Reply Coupons if from abroad)
per each original poem typed or printed nicely on three identical
3``x 5`` cards or sheets of paper. One card or 8 ½`` X 11``
sheet should have your name and address on its back.
No limit on the number of poems, tanka, haiku, senryu, haiga
or short haibun. All rights will revert back to the authors after May 2007.
Send a SASE or one IRC, please, for the results and the printed images of the
studio art and ephemerae.

Prizes $250, $150, $50.


Top 3 poems or artwork and 10 honorable mentions will be published in DASOKU and the magazine will be mailed to the 13 winners! We will also bestow "Elizabeth Searle Lamb Memorial Prize" $50 cash, publication in our magazine and a public reading.

Special prizes from the Japanese Consulate in Boston.

Additional prizes for "overlooked" poems from HAIKAI BOSTON Underwriters, SUSEKI PUBLISHING and HAIKU VILLAGES, Inc.

You may also send your poems by text message to 617 216 0230
and pay by credit card or by check. See the website www.kajiasostudio.com

Kaji Aso Studio
40 St Stephen St
Boston, MA 02115
USA
kajiasostudio@rcn.com

Happy New Year - wherever you are!

To follow a tradition of writing a haiku on new year's day, I rose early and started writing ... MSN chatline started, then Skype twice, breakfast and the washing up ... It is now after Noon, and I have these paltry attempts written, but not in a contemplative frame of mind at all!


snow fills

the satellite dish –

dove shakes its wings



*



fresh sneaker tracks

by the snow-capped

barbecue