Editors on haikuKATHA: Shalini Pattabiraman, Vidya Shankar, Firdaus Parvez and Kala Ramesh Guest Editor: Lakshmi Iyer Host: Srinivas Sambangi Featured Poet: Geetanjali Rajan A Thursday Feature 18th June 2026 Orchestration Geetanjali Rajan A Tincture in Ether It’s as if paint splattered the sky salmon pink, amber, and then some orange and gold. The orange gets brighter, the glow almost ethereal, before gently fading into a dull shade of peach. Suddenly, the only colour left is

Editors on haikuKATHA: Shalini Pattabiraman, Vidya Shankar, Firdaus Parvez and Kala Ramesh Guest Editor: Lakshmi Iyer Host: Srinivas Sambangi Featured Poet: Baisali Chatterjee A Thursday Feature 11th June 2026 Flamenco Baisali Chatterjee The wind tangoes with the flaming red gulmohar, the neighbouring leaves clapping and shivering to the beat. The clouds, unmoved by this wild passion, slink away, taking the rain with them. Another night of broken promises. the fading notes fr

Editors on haikuKATHA: Shalini Pattabiraman, Vidya Shankar, Firdaus Parvez and Kala Ramesh Guest Editor: Lakshmi Iyer Host: Srinivas Sambangi Featured Poet: R. Suresh Babu A Thursday Feature 4th June 2026 Orchestration R. Suresh Babu The symphony begins with a sonata of one cicada, followed by a second, and joined by many others until it reaches a climax. Then, a cut—the whooping cough of my old neighbor. Shortly afterwards, it starts up again with one cicada, two, and more,

Editors on haikuKATHA: Shalini Pattabiraman, Vidya Shankar, Firdaus Parvez and Kala Ramesh Guest Editor: Teji Sethi Host: Srinivas Sambangi Featured Poet: Shobhana Kumar A Thursday Feature 28th May 2026 Shobhana Kumar Act Two Scene One (The lights black out. A silhouette of a bedroom. The only sounds are a man’s breathing, the clock ticking.) between bird calls the pressure-cooker beckons Voice 1 (Lady in the audience): What will it take for you to look at me? How much mor

Editors on haikuKATHA: Shalini Pattabiraman, Vidya Shankar, Firdaus Parvez and Kala Ramesh Guest Editor: Teji Sethi Host: Srinivas Sambangi Featured Poet: Michael Dylan Welch A Thursday Feature 21st May 2026 Documenting History in Haibun Haibun, with its blend of prose and haiku, has a unique ability to both record and recreate historical events. It can serve not only to chronicle what happened but also to preserve the texture of lived experience by anchoring the narrative in

Editors on haikuKATHA: Shalini Pattabiraman, Vidya Shankar, Firdaus Parvez and Kala Ramesh Guest Editor: Teji Sethi Host: Srinivas Sambangi Featured Poet: Rupa Anand A Thursday Feature 14th May 2026 Documenting Personal Stories in Haibun Like other Japanese short forms, I presume haibun also saw a literary migration to the Indian subcontinent around the same time as haiku. When I first came to haiku, I dared not attempt haibun as the form looked too prosaic, and I was always

Editors on haikuKATHA: Shalini Pattabiraman, Vidya Shankar, Firdaus Parvez and Kala Ramesh Guest Editor: Teji Sethi Host: Srinivas Sambangi Featured Poet: Seren Fargo Introduction The Fragmented Prose "Preparing to write a haibun is like stalking. You must be patient, circling the idea or experience many times, looking at it from different angles. Should it be confronted head-on or obliquely, truthfully or disguised? It can sometimes take me weeks (or as we’ll see, years) t

Editors on haikuKATHA: Shalini Pattabiraman, Vidya Shankar, Firdaus Parvez and Kala Ramesh Guest Editor: Billie Dee Host: Srinivas Sambangi Featured Poet: Emily Dickinson Introduction This five-part series explores haibun written in response to poems from the Western tradition. I think of this pairing as a kind of literary ekphrasis, not commentary, exactly, but entering a canonical field, listening, and answering back. A Thursday Feature 30th April 2026 I have saved the mo

Editors on haikuKATHA: Shalini Pattabiraman, Vidya Shankar, Firdaus Parvez and Kala Ramesh Guest Editor: Billie Dee Host: Srinivas Sambangi Featured Poet: Robert Hass Introduction This five-part series explores haibun written in response to poems from the Western tradition. I think of this pairing as a kind of literary ekphrasis, not commentary, exactly, but entering a canonical field, listening, and answering back. A Thursday Feature 23rd April 2026 This week, we turn to R