Graceguts News

1 September 2025

August 2025 has been a quieter month on Graceguts, and that’s fine with me. Here’s what I’ve added to the website this past month.

• New to the Poems About Haiku page is “Things Haiku Say,” recently published in Blithe Spirit. It’s a little bit of a homage to a William Stafford poem, but mostly a homage to haiku, with a twist.

• Yet another extension to my sprawling “Haiku from Index Cards” pages is the addition of three poems to my “Paperclip Poems” page. I had misplaced these poems previously, but I’m glad to include them now.

• A new page on Haiku and Senryu is “From Best of Geppo,” featuring my three poems from this new anthology published by the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society.

• Dhugal Lindsay kindly featured another one of my poems as a “classic” on his “Haiku in English” column in the Mainichi, which is somewhere up there as Japan’s oldest or most widely read newspaper, at least in Japanese. Have a look at “Haiku Classic 5,” with Dhugal’s generous comments, published in August 2025.

• A new postscript on my essay, “The Mysticism of Ordinary Experience,” explores the poem “Mystic” by D. H. Lawrence, who said, “an apple becomes mystic when I taste in it / the summer and the snows, the wild welter of earth.”

• On my Haijin’s Tweed Coat sequence page, look for a photo of a new haiku stone my sister painted for me, featuring one of the poems from this sequence.

• On the “Dojin’s Corner” page, I’ve added a PDF link to the issue of Geppo I considered for this commentary, plus a link to the subsequent issue where my comments appeared.

• Freshly added to the Haiku Workshops page are new listings for the following three presentations:

  • • “Amen to Life: Learning from the Haiku Mind of Samuel Menashe” (see the essay)

    • “Poems About Nothing: Learning Haiku from Antonio Porchia” (see the essay)

    • “Finding the Sky” (see the essay)

The latter presentation is a meditative immersion in what it means for a haiku to create space for reader engagement, quoting Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Peggy Willis Lyles, Rumi, Allen Ginsberg, Patricia Donegan, Alan Watts, and John Brehm. This presentation is based on an essay that appeared in Kyoto Journal in 2016 and is about to be published by Tuttle in Ma: The Japanese Secret to Contemplation and Calm.

• On my Poems page, check out my latest wedding limerick, this time written for my niece and her new husband, whose wedding I attended in August of 2025. Have a gander at “Another Wedding Limerick” (previously unpublished).

• “Beginner’s Mind” was a column I coordinated for several years in my old haiku journal, Woodnotes. I decided to pen my own contribution as an addendum. To have a look, go to the “Beginner’s Mind” page and scroll to the bottom.

• In 2016, my poem, “meteor shower . . . / a gentle wave / wets our sandals,” appeared online in a Greek translation by Alexandra Maragopoulou, which I’ve now added to my “Meteor Shower” commentary page (available through Commentary). Here’s the translation, which was also published in “12 Haiku from 5 Countries” in The Books’ Journal #70, October 2016, in Greece:

βρέχει πεφτάστερα

κύμα απαλό

μουσκεύει τα σανδάλια μας

• I’ve added a spate of new additions to my Venues page listings, all in Washington state:

  • • J. Bookwalter Tasting Studio, Woodinville

    • Cornish Playhouse, Seattle

    • Path with Art, Seattle

    • Radiate! A Community Arts and Music Festival, Seattle

    • Tsuga Poetry Group, Bothell

    • Willard Art & Frame, Bothell

    • Words and Wine, Woodinville

    • Yakima Grace Church, Yakima

• In keeping up appearances, here are some recent additions to my Appearances page:

  • • 6, 13, 20, 27 August 2025: Featured “Tanka Take Home” poet on the Triveni Haikai India website, with 13 individual tanka, a tanka prose piece in recognition of September 11, and extensive answers to interview questions. I’ll be adding all this content to Graceguts later.

    • 1 September 2025: Featured poet in Tsuri-dōrō #29, September/October 2025.

    • 18 September 2025: Providing instant haiku as Captain Haiku as part of the Downtown Redmond Art Walk, in conjunction with VALA Eastside art center and the Redmond Association of Spokenword.

    • 14 September 2025: “Finding the Sky” PowerPoint presentation regarding space in and around haiku, for India’s 2025 Triveni Utsav haiku festival, on Zoom.

    • 18 October 2025: Featured reader for the Tsuga Poetry Group, at Willard Art & Frame, 10101 Main Street in Bothell, Washington.

• I always enjoy getting feedback on Graceguts, especially when I learn how helpful the site can be to those learning or exploring haiku. On “Your Thoughts,” I’ve recently added the following comment by Deborah Lynn Bowman: “Graceguts is my go-to! Thanks always!”

And hey, over on my Rengay website, please check out “Zest,” a rengay I wrote with Meg Arnot, recently published in Blithe Spirit.

The next couple of months will have me busy with Haiku North America and then the annual Seabeck Haiku Getaway, but I suspect I’ll still manage to add new content to Graceguts.