HCSHR 9:4 : Mono

Mono (phafours press, 2026) ISBN: 978-1-7380645-3-3 (print), ISBN: 978-1-7380645-4-0 (digital) $16 or free.

Review by Sandra Stephenson

After reading the monostich haiku of Mono edited by Pearl Pirie (phafours press, 2026), the bios, at two and three lines, seem like a gift, where severity stops.  My favourite is "Jim has been writing monoku for 4 decades, and can’t seem to stop." (The ebook viewable at digitally yours or you can buy it in print.)

Because the poems are so spare, some of them use visual effect as well, such as MD Welch’s pigeon on the roof. Ellen’s Confederation Bridge is an example where a curve would add to the effect. Her sister, Pam Cooper is always one of my favourite poets to read. The gingko poem is no exception. In one line, she’s got gingkos all over the place, inside and out.  And Roland Packer: on one unimportant word, ‘the’, he pivots the whole poem.

Pearl’s choice of bold font in serif sets the poems apart from the author’s details, solving a common short-coming of haiku anthologies. She links the poems loosely:  on pages 6 & 7, the common element (besides flat landscape) is that the reader has to turn to a dictionary. Wikipedia says, ‘A tombolo is a sandy or shingle isthmus.’  The play on terns and tide turning and other turns and tunes is fun and musical.  And then LeRoy’s as is poem. If you’re going to put together only ten pages of poetry with only a single poem from each of the best poets you know (minus a few), you need to sort by theme.