Gabriola Grass

Here’s the first poem from my index card boxes for poems that start with the letter G:

Gabriola grass

still damp with rain—

clouded summer moon

Just across from Nanaimo on Vancouver Island in British Columbia is the magical island of Gabriola. It’s an arts haven, and it was my pleasure to attend annual haiku weekends there, at the home of Naomi Beth Wakan. I documented ten years of these retreats in Tidepools: Haiku On Gabriola, an anthology I edited (read my introduction), published by Pacific-Rim Publishers in 2011. That same year, at the island’s “Poetry Yurt,” we wrote renku together, and my verse here was the hokku (starting verse) for a “shisan” renku titled “Tulips Flame,” written with Amelia Fielden, Marg Sutton, Naomi Beth Wakan, and Zulis Yalte. We wrote our twelve verses together on 17 July 2011 and submitted our polished collaboration to the Journal of Renga & Renku in England. It was published in issue #2 in February of 2012. I served as “sabaki” (renku leader) to help guide the writing of our renku together. For a hokku, it’s traditional to compliment the host or the location where one’s group is writing, and to honour the season when the renku was written, hence my references to Gabiola and the summer moon. This renku reminds me of the harmonious time we spent together, laughing together, but also taking our writing seriously. I miss these annual retreats.

—19 May 2025 (previously unpublished)