triveni spotlight: 1st january

triveni spotlight A FEATURE EVERY ALTERNATE DAY! hosts: Teji Sethi and Kala Ramesh GUEST EDITOR: Michael Dylan Welch

Summer twilight—

a woman’s song

mingles with the bathwater

Patricia Donegan Woodnotes #3, Autumn 1989

About the poet:

Patricia’s poem won first place in the first HPNC haiku contest, which, for its first year, admitted entries from women only, with 659 poems received. Anita Virgil and Adele Kenny served as judges, and the results were first published in Woodnotes. This is a beautiful and feminine image, and readers may wonder if the bath is for the woman herself (most likely) or if a mother is singing for her child. Patricia would go on to publish numerous well-regarded books on haiku such as Haiku Mind, a book about haiku for children, and a definitive translation of Chiyo-ni.

Note by the Editor

Woodnotes triveni spotlight

by Michael Dylan Welch

From 1989 to 1997, in various capacities, I edited or helped to edit Woodnotes, the quarterly journal of the Haiku Poets of Northern California, and in 1996 I took on the journal independently before replacing it with my new journal Tundra. I lived in the San Francisco area for more than a dozen years and was active with HPNC from its first year in 1989 until I moved north to Seattle in 2002. Working on Woodnotes with such coeditors as vincent tripi, Ebba Story, Christopher Herold, and Paul O. Williams was a fine education in the art of haiku. The following are selections of favourite haiku and senryu from the journal’s 31 issues, with brief commentary. These poems are expressions of wonder, or as Billy Collins once described haiku, they exhibit “existential gratitude.” In return, I am deeply grateful for the thousands of poems published in Woodnotes over the years, and the hundreds of poets who contributed to the journal’s success. * * * * * This is going to be a treat for our members. _()_ Thank you so much, Michael.