NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

Doreen King, in her editorial, introduces the forthcoming Time Haiku Award. The award is intended to promote competent haiku poets and to feature new and interesting work — TIME HAIKU already achieves this without the need of any such award. This twenty second issue is full of competent poetry and, on many of the pages, there are poems of an altogether higher order. Andrew Detheridge is an old hand who produces fresh, life enhancing images:

	in each other's arms
	but falling
	into separate dreams

Mr Detheridge's haibun CHICHENITZA, MEXICO is both elegant and informative:

The final awe-inspiring fact is that, at the equinox's, the steps are lit by the rising sun to take the form of the body of the snake; and leading all the way to the summit; we are silenced by the skill of this lost race.

	past and present:
	woman in Mayan costume
	sells us cans of coke

Many of the poems are quotable — this one by DAVID WESTON:

	squashed between the leaves
	of my grandmother's diary
	a Victorian fly

TIME HAIKU is very well produced — well bound and pleasingly printed on good paper. I'll leave the reader with Ms King's delightful page one haiku (combining both physical and incorporeal movement):

	a strong gust
	takes the cat
	forward a life

TIME HAIKU is published twice a year, and was developed for, and continues to champion the accessibility of the haiku and associated forms. This issue has an most interesting contribution from Davies Lane Primary School, London (from where editor Erica Facey has just been awarded a certificate of dedication and professionalism for her work with young people. The freshness of the Davies School work is widespread from the Katrusha May Buniak's introspective:

	immortal beauty
	something as wonderful as love
	is not always true

	a rabbit jumps
	over the tall grass
	into a nice blue sky

	a rhino's anger
	startled by approaching watchers,
	people disappear

	Late spring day
	a pheasant lands
	on the bridge

	Glistening eyes
	of the pheasant
	being sold

Peasants were first introduced into Britain by the Romans and again, later, by the Normans ... I have often seen them in Essex.

	barely a movement
	hardly a sound
	a patient wolf awaits its prey

	Andrew Lowe

		sunset over sapphire
		blue seas; making no splash, the
		falling crimson sun

		Kenneth Crane

	water in the trees—
	clouds in my pockets
	spring rain

	Paul Williams

		Earthy-leaved fragrance
		Mum's yellow chrysanthemum
		a silent Sunday.

		Marianne Barber

Editor Doreen King is nothing if not enthusiastic when it comes to the haiku form and its various offshoots including the haibun and the tanka. In her all too brief editorial she writes:

The poets concerned give a depth of imagination and skill that ... cannot be ignored

The reader is duly informed and indeed Jack Barry's winning effort from issue 24 reproduced here on the winners' page is a good example of what I would have also selected as a good and meaningful haiku:

	longest night
	the neighbour's lights
	lost in the trees

On the other hand is the following poem from Michael Henry a meaningless riddle or is it just me? Is it about football, rugby, babies, dogs, and England's place in the world or what?

	Sycamore leaves
	dribble down an empty street.
	England not in the lead.

	cold bed at dawn
	the downy woodpecker's
	hollow rattle 

		on the rock face
		the climber's rope
		just a spider's thread