HCshohyôran

Title: Weather Author: Rob Taylor Publisher: Gaspereau Press Publication Date: 2024 ISBN: 9781554472635  Price $29.95 review by Pearl Pirie Weather  by Rob Taylor (Gaspereau Press, 2024) is barely backlist. I read it when it came out then put it on my best of year list. I’ve since reread it a few times and enjoy on each pass. It seems I favour Rob Taylor books having read, The Other Side of Ourselves (Cormorant Books, 2011) which is lyric poetry. I missed The News (Gaspereau, 2016) but caught Strangers (Biblioasis, 2021) which has a few haiku such as this,  p. 50 late summer walk slanting my father's Issa to catch streetlight   Weather by Rob Taylor (Gaspereau Press, 2024) doubles down on haiku and haiku-adjacent poems. it was a finalist for the 2025 Raymond Souster Award , Longlisted for the 2025 Fred Cogswell Award , was a Miramichi Reader Best Book of 2024 and a Tyee Summer Reads Pick for 2024  It was in my top list of books for 2024 so I gelt...

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...