THE HAIBUN GALLERY: 5th June 2025. Diana Webb - Guest Poet
- Kala Ramesh
- Jun 5
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 5
host: Rupa Anand
mentor: Lorraine Haig editors on haikuKATHA: Shalini Pattabiraman, Vidya Shankar, Firdaus Parvez and Kala Ramesh Guest Poet: Diana Webb
A Thursday Feature
5th June 2025
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW
THE HAIBUN GALLERY June 2025 - Diana Webb
Prompt 1week
PROMPTS for June 2025
Diana Webb
Wonderlust
Nothing better than 'still travel'. No visas, no tickets and no packing. Find a spot near a meadow, or a pond , or even a park around your neighbourhood, and sit still for about twenty minutes. Slowly the place reveals its crittered and feathered secrets . Over seasons, the stones begin to tell their stories.
more of what
I don't know -
light on the river
Salil Chaturvedi
from his book A Little Knowing
Prompt
The medieval mystic Meister Eckhart talked about the four paths, all of which worked in conjunction with each other. From the via positiva and the via negativa came the via creativa with the culmination in the via transformativa. I believe all of these are present in the piece above. A person's attitude can transform what could seem a negative situation to be lamented, into something very different. The above piece came over to me as something which could have been written in lock-down and shows how moving a very short way from where one lives can be a deeply creative and transformative experience not that different perhaps from becoming aware of how something familiar to an adult can appear through the eyes of a child. The river is never the same river. The river of time always affords new discoveries along its waters and the inner child is always dancing along its banks on the verge of new insights.
Write a haibun about being restricted to a small area of wandering in which you recover the amazed eyes of your inner child with their most intense vision shining out of the concluding haiku.
******** Diana,
A beautiful prompt and challenge. Looking forward to your month.
Thank you so much.
_kala
******
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT NOTICE
NOTICE
Dear Haibuneers
Starting from March 2025, we at haikuKATHA are moving on to a new submissions format for haibun submissions. (Only for haibun, please note!)
Writers are invited to submit one unpublished haibun per submission window.
Kindly note the submissions calendar.
1-20 March, to be considered for publication in May
1-20 June, to be considered for publication in August Here's the link to the Google Form dedicated for this submission.
1-20 September, to be considered for publication in November
1-20 December, to be considered for publication in February
All accepted submissions will receive an email to confirm their acceptance by the 5th day of the publication month.
Your unpublished (only one) haibun should be sent to:
The Google link will be given in this space soon. This form will open only during the submission period.
********
The Haibun Gallery continues as is.
We will be having editors and prompts, and your sharing…
Post #1
10.6.25
Homecoming
the perfect petals of a winter rose this solitude
I enter the temple I have been visiting since childhood. It’s mostly empty. I cover my head with a dupatta and sit in a corner. The Radha Krishna idols are adorned with beautiful finery. Krishna’s mukut( headgear) is glittering with pearls. The flute in his hand is adorned with glitter. I can actually hear it playing. A light zephyr sets the temple bells in motion. Gradually everything else fades and only the Gods come alive. Before I know I am dancing with them to the tune of bhajans.
dawn chorus --
a koel sings into
my prayers
Mona Bedi
India
Feedback appreciated:)
Interesting prompt!
#1---8June25
Like the Movie Brazil
They’ve got the IV in, crash cart ready, someone’s yelling for O-negative blood. I can hear everything, even the monitor stuttering out my rhythm.
But the transfusion’s delayed. The name on the requisition doesn’t match my wristband. Not quite. Protocol, they say— can’t start it until the paperwork’s corrected.
I’m bleeding out on a stretcher in the ER of a hospital I worked in for twenty years. I know these people, trained some of them. And still, they hesitate.
Not angry. Just stunned by the surreal elegance of fate: Death by Clerical Error. Like all the others—wrong dosage, unread lab, the surgeon whose cell phone is out of range.
Nothing…
https://www.trivenihaikai.in/post/celebration
The haikuKATHA Issue 44, June 2025 LIST is up!
Check it out!
Congratulations to all our poets!
Thanks to all our members who shared their poems in our various forums.
#2
Between full moons
I pick up
a fallen rose
it smells of life
A balmy morning on a park bench under the linden trees. I don't mind an occasional drop of petrichor. Tourists with colorful umbrellas take photos near the square's central statue surrounded by puddles, and quietly leave for the next thing on their list. This place at this time is my destination. High in the town hall's annex a choir rehearses taking me back to my youth when I still sang. Later I would be at the rehearsal piano. I recognize the Requiem of Maurice Duruflé, and recall certain moments combating tears every time I performed it.
at your wake . . .
in this desert
a…