HCshohyôran

A Wild Blue Sky by Ben Gaa Octopus Hearts Press, 2025 ISBN: 979-8-218-79833-8  $12US review by Sandra Stephenson This seventh full collection by Ben Gaa, of the podcast series,  Haiku Talk , is printed large. It is a small book that feels intimate like a Bible. Between its size, poems, and the sundog on the cover, A Wild Blue Sky is full of delight, and full of subtle echoes easy to miss on first reading:      snow on snow      chilli reheats There’s a freshness in “budding limbs/ of pollywogs” or      moonrise      the white tops      of toadstools and an understated, innocent incredulity in      as if it never happened           and yet                this old wedding ring There’s a slow unfolding through “bottleneck blues”, gradual and gradated like the hike up the hill, revealing “first one ...

Wondrous Instruction and Advice from Global Poets: How to Write and Publish Moving Poems and Books and Publicize Like a Pro by Charlotte Digregorio (Artful Communicators Press, 2025) Published by  Artful Communicators Press, 2025 (5th printing) ISBN : 978-0-9912139-2-4 Order from eBay, or by mail , 352 pages $34.20 U.S. Reviewed by Pearl Pirie Charlotte Digregorio is a Haiku Canada members.  You probably know her from her busy blog, Charlotte Digregorio's Writer's Blog  where she has posted poems of haiku and tanka by many people worldwide for 16 years. She has also been a teacher for decades. She has marketed and/or published 55 titles on all manner of topics, including Haiku and Senryu: A Simple Guide for All in 2014 and Checkout Time is Soon: More Death Awareness Haiku with Robert Epstein in 2018. Unlike the two previously mentioned, Wondrous Instruction isn't listed at Amazon. This she sells through eBay. It is very heavily blurbed by a who's who of haiku. Dig...

  Mossy Alley by Shannon Wallace ( Island of Wak-Wak , 2025) ISBN: 978-91-990469-0-7, , $27.50 (Amazon) Review by Pearl Pirie Mossy Alley is  a 60-page book as one unit without sections. It is  haiga, in the sense of illustrations, paired with haiku or senryu but the text isn’t superimposed on the images. As a reader, I tend to overlook images in books, but these drawing, collages, photos and paintings, are more emotive and communicative like Arshile Gorky  than decorative. The author, Shannon-Wallace, is Canadian-American. The book is printed by a Swedish press, Island of Wak-Wak, umder the imprint of Forests Unexplored . This press is not devoted to haiku, but a general poetry press. It is always sweet to see haiku appealing to the wider market as did Weather by Rob Taylor (Gaspereau Press, 2024). The back cover astutely points out that it is not only the collage that collages. Capturing moments “that when taped together as a collage reveal what it i...