Scott Mason is our guest poet. For only the third time in our sixteen years of meeting, we have had the pleasure of a guest poet actually appearing at our table to present his poems. (Previous instances were meetings with William J.
Higginson and Paul Miller.) Scott lives in the lower Hudson Valley and his trip to Halfmoon was similar in distance to the trip that Tom Clausen takes. I have a long and happy association with Scott. We have both attended regional meetings of the Haiku Society of America in New York for many years and, since 2011, he has been an Associate Editor of The Heron’s Nest. He is also an active member of the Spring Street Group, the haiku workshop from which we took some of our initial inspiration. We found our guest to be like-minded and articulate in ways that were most stimulating and refreshing—a very natural fit.
After two long years of serving as the organizing committee for Haiku North America, it has been a thrill to be “just us” for the past six months. The conference is now the source of a great many happy memories but this revived memory of “us” is unfathomably deeper and closer to the heart. It was Bill Higginson who said, “What is the purpose of haiku? Haiku is for sharing.” We couldn’t agree more.
We are pleased and proud to announce the recent publication of a new haiku collection by Yu Chang. Small Things Make Me Laugh is published by Free Food Press. Michael Ketchek selected and edited the work. Copies are available from freefoodpress.com.
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Sample Poems
new year resolutions
a frosting spatula
glints in the drawer
Scott Mason
walking the length of a cloud shadow
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two geese and the air fills with sound
ht
canopy of pines
a small
green tomato
yc
spreading oak
each family a world
unto itself
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Upstate Dim Sum 