NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

There are 24 tracks by 24 poets, containing 143 poems. The accompanying book gives the poems together with source notes and brief biographies of the poets. The A5 book extends to 111 pages.

This CD is an anthology of work from the Raku Teapot online haiku forum, which began life in 2000. The aim of the Raku Teapot forum is to be uncensored, and free of taboo and prejudice; a laudable endeavour in an age when so much contemporary poetry is stifled. Only brave editors dare walk this path, and long may the path stretch.

The CD is well produced, clear, and crisp. Each poet reads his or her own haiku. I am envious that all the poets are so well spoken. Sometimes people who write beautiful haiku are not so good at reading their own work.

Most of the names are familiar. I have heard many of the haiku presented before, for instance:

	winter night
	finding my pajama bottoms
	on my wife

	Mark Brooks

		calling each other
		the free owl and the captive
		unable to sleep

		Sheila Windsor

	crow caws three times view of nine mountains

	Jesse Glass

		mouth agape   gawking at swifts
	a greenfly wanders in    aghast

	John Edmund Carley

	ever-changing sky
	she could not move
	her eyes

	Angela Detlev

		street cleaner
		his brush clears everything
		but the fog

		Cindy E Tebo

	evening air
	sharpening —
	the heron's cry

	ghost, if you
	see buddha,
	tell the butterfly