an open field

mosquito wings — the colour of evening  so thin           — Ajaya Mahala (First Place, Shiki Monthly Kukai, May 2014) It’s probably a default approach to use visual images when writing poetry and I know I consciously nudge myself now and then to consider the senses of smell, sound, touch and taste too. And, sometimes taking it a step further, to consider if synaesthesia ~ when the sensory stimulus from one sense is mixed up with another sense ~ might also be effective with the material I’m working with. The use of metaphor, in any form of poetry, needs a light touch, and even more so in haiku where the minimal form has no space for a grandstanding author to hide. I want my haiku to encourage a reader to reflect on their own experiences, through the filter of mine, and not reflect on how clever with language I might think I am! ‘mosquito wings’ is written with an incredibly light touch, subtly using synaesthesia to blend visual and textural q...

cylymau tywod ~ knots of sand John Rowlands £12 from Alba Publishing This week a friend on Facebook shared an old photograph of us, standing together on the shore of the Atlantic on Florida's east coast, and I felt homesick for the sensation of damp sand under my feet, for the scent of salt on the breeze.   I was born next to the sea in South Wales. The beach and sand dunes were our playground as children. The sound of breaking waves became so familiar I had to focus intently to hear them at night before I fell asleep. roaring sea tongues of foam silenced in sand  (p.32) The  knots of sand  in the title of Rowlands' haiku collection are the ropey-looking burrowings that lugworm leave on the surface of the sand. My dad used to dig for lugworm, to use as fishing bait, on the beach at low-tide.  cylymau tywod  in Welsh, my mother's first language, the language we were not taught growing up in Port Talbot (for outdated reasons about l...