NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

An independent small press poetry review

NHI independent review
RAIN SONG
edited by LeRoy Gorman
Haiku Canada
51 Graham West
Napanee
ON K7R 2J6
Canada
ISBN 0 920752 27 6
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This page last updated: 10th December 2007. 		RAIN SONG

This is Haiku Canada Members' Anthology 2006; all Haiku Canada members were asked to submit up to five haiku from which one was picked for inclusion. There is a high standard in this alphabetically-ordered ninety-odd haiku collection, and it always seems so subjectively unfair to highlight what can only be a random and somewhat peremptory personal selection. Some pieces (rightly or wrongly) just seem to exhibit an extra layer of originality and aptness, as in this haiku from Graham High:

	my letter to you—
	I rejoin the perforations
	of two stamps
Here are two pieces from Jim Morrison and Christine Nelson, which combine observational exactitude with a powerful emotional charge, adeptly suggested by their very restraint:
	river runs wild
	converting homes
	into tiny islands

		on the forest floor
		scrolls of poplar bark
		unread
Here is a lovely haiku from Patricia Prime:
	jury summons—
	on the refusal form
	my best handwriting
But my favourite is this one in bilingual splendour from Blanca Baquero:
	pieds écartés
	les pylones électriques
	enjambent la foret

		legs apart
		hydro-electric towers
		straddle the forest
There are other fine pieces from Patrick William Campbell, Maureen Glaude, Carol Mitchell, Michael Dylan Welch and Elizabeth Yamashita. Also accompanying this anthology is an inserted fold-up detailing the results of The Betty Drevniok Award 2005; this piece (from Blanca Baquero again) got an honourable mention:
	three days of downpour
	my only horizon
	an old umbrella

reviewer: Alan Hardy.