~ This poem/haiga is dedicated to all who have struggled with cancer. ~

~ ~

A wonderful surprise email told me that a haiga of mine had been selected as an “Honorable Mention, Mixed Media** Category” in the Jane Reichhold Haiga Contest sponsored by two wonderful senryu journals:

Failed Haiku, A Journal of English Senryu Volume 1, Issue 11, edited by Michael Rehling

Prune Juice – A Journal of Senryu, Kyoka, Haibun and Haiga, Issue 20, November 2016, edited by Steve Hodge

The Judges of the contest were: Kris Kondo, Ron C. Moss, Michele Root-Bernstein

Michele wrote the commentary on my haiga: 

“With the sparest of words and imagery, this haiga lays bare the essence of life in the face of death. If the poem skirts the uncertain boundary between haiku and senryu, just as certainly the picture skirts the shadowlands of mortality, its single image illuminating the darkness with a pulsating light. So well integrated are text and image that the associative leap between the two has the power of metaphor: the shaved skull is the incubating egg, never mind the incongruity. Avoiding the maudlin and the sentimental, this haiga speaks simply, honestly, of the beauty to be found in the ordinary, ordinarily hidden from view.”

This competition was in honor of the late Jane Reichhold who was such a brilliant poet, teacher, editor and mentor to so many who write haiku, senryu, tanka and other small form poems. I never had the honor of meeting her, but her main book on haiku has been a bible for me and so many others.

**Mixed Media, which can be any combination of traditional and photographic, or computer generated images and text.