balcony breeze . . .
cajoling the clouds
rāga megh malhār
Rāga is one of the ancient traditional melodic patterns or modes and frameworks for improvisation and composition in Indian classical music. A rāga is based on a scale with a given set of notes.
I invite you to enjoy the rāga performed (audio) by one of the 20th century’s greatest masters of the Sarod, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan.
Monica Kakkar, USA/India
Inspired by Pink Floyd’s famous song:
listening
to an old vinyl alone
wish you were here
Emil Karla, France
autumn deepens
in the moonlight
the ghost of you
*The Ghost of You by My Chemical Romance
Rowan Beckett Minor, USA
vinyl hiss—
a voice I almost knew
returns home
Inspired by vintage LP recordings.
Nalini Shetty, Mumbai, India
“home sweet home …”
in my rear window snow geese
unzip the sunset glow
FYI: “‘Home Sweet Home” was first released in 1985 as a single from Mötley Crüe’s third studio album, Theatre of Pain.
Chen-ou Liu, Ajax, Ontario, Canada
Beethoven’s Fifth
thunderous intro
to an exhilarating life
Sherri J Moye-Dombrosky
Liberty, South Carolina USA
downtown jazz club
stepping into the river
of brushed cymbals
petro c. k.
an old monks’ choir
from the cold mountain
the sounds of the thaw
Marie Derley, Ath, Wallonia, Belgium
dad’s record collection
the day we spun
the cat
Note: my dad was an audiophile and I still have remnants of his collection (but the cat is long gone!)
Barrie Levine
Wenham MA USA
Michele’s Musings
Hello friends!
What a joy to receive all of your musical haiku! Sally and I spent quite a bit of time listening to all the music that inspired you. I have a whole new playlist now!
We had our first snowfall this week and it has stayed in the mountains. So pretty to see from town. I’m trying to write a haiku a day right now, but I was struggling to think of things weren’t actually snow. So I turned to my favourite season word resource. In Japanese, this resource is called a kigo. You can buy a kigo that is a few pages up to multiple volumes, depending on the additional commentary. The resource I use is the Five Hundred Essential Japanese Season Words, selected by Kenkichi Yamamoto translated by Kris Young Kondo and William J. Higginson. I hope you will take a look for inspiration!
Happy writing!
Member News
petro c.k. shared the following recent success stories:
goddamned inflation eyeing the swear jar
(Kingfisher, issue 12)
Honorable Mention for HNW’s Porad Award:
so ,
lar
flare. .
)
. . we
* stop
> talk
ing
( to each
oth.
/er
https://www.haikunorthwest.org/porad-haiku-award/2025-porad-award-winners
The December issue of Sense & Sensibility is now available on-line. Many of our members have haiku in this issue. Congratulations to all!
And from Charlotte Digregorio’s blog:
measuring
the length of another day
green inchworm
Ruth Holzer (USA)
Ginkgo Gold
Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthology, 2025
Christmas Eve . . .
a wooden Jesus
and its shadow
Chen-ou Liu (Canada)
Modern Haiku, Vol. 43.1, Winter-Spring 2012
day lilies
returned to earth
my first attempt
Rowan Beckett Minor (USA)
Mayfly, Issue 79, 2025
lake effect snow–
he has an answer
for everything
Julie Bloss Kelsey (USA)
tinywords, 14.1, 2014
We look forward to sharing your news, so please drop us a line!
Places to submit
The Haiku Society of America’s journal, Frogpond, is open for submissions until November 30th. Frogpond will accept a submission of up to eight (8) haiku & senryu. In addition, your submission can include: up to three (3) haibun, up to three (3) rengay or other short sequences (including alternate forms of rengay and split sequences), and one (1) renku.
Also over at the HSA, a great discussion about music and haiku hosted by Daisy friend, kj munro!
An interesting event is coming up online on December 11th – the 2025 Haiku Head-to-Head Invitational! A fundraiser for the Nick Virgilio Writer’s House, the ticket price is a reasonable $5USD.
The Fourth Annual Rachel Sutcliffe Haibun Contest opens December 1st and runs until December 15th. This is an ekphrastic contest, with three images to choose from. Please note the submission email for the contest is different from the regular one.
Bottlerockets is open for submissions until December 15th, but keep in mind they only accept submissions by snail mail so send yours off sooner rather than later!
Check out this new haiku offering by Daisy friend, petro – Post-ku! Submissions for their January issue are open December 1st to 15th.
JAL FOUNDATION biennially organizes the ‘World Children’s Haiku Contest’, and they are happy to announce that the 19th contest is to be held this year. The theme is “Sound”. The Regional Contest (works in local languages) runs from October 1st, 2025 to February 28th, 2026. Applicants must be children under 15 years old as of February 28th, 2026.
This Week’s Prompt
Michele took this picture of November’s full moon and Sally thought it would be a good prompt for all of you! So let’s have one or two of your favourite moon haiku. Deadline for submissions is December 10th.
Send one or two haiku to sally_quon@yahoo.com or to Michele at kelownalady@hotmail.com. Find our full submission info here. Don’t forget to tell us where you are writing from!
“The sun shines, snow falls, mountains rise and valleys sink, night deepens and pales into day, but it is only very seldom that we attend to such things. . . . When we are grasping the inexpressible meaning of these things, this is life, this is living. To do this twenty-four hours a day is the Way of Haiku. It is having life more abundantly.”
― R.H. Blyth
Michele Rule is a disabled writer from Kelowna BC. She is especially interested in the topics of chronic illness, relationships and nature. Michele is published in the Asahi Shimbun Haikuist, Pine Cone Review, the Enchanted Garden, Five Minute Lit, Shadow Pond, WordCityLit, and the anthologies F*ck the Patriarchy, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and To Live Here, among others. She is an associate member of the League of Canadian Poets and Haiku Canada. Michele has been awarded honourable mention twice for the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational and also for the Haiku Northwest Porad Award. Her first chapbook is Around the World in Fifteen Haiku. Michele lives in a beautiful garden surrounded by people who love her just the way she is.
Sally Quon is a disabled poet and photographer living in the Okanagan Valley of beautiful British Columbia, Canada. She is an associate member of The League of Canadian Poets and a member of Haiku Canada. Her work has been published in numerous journals including The Heron’s Nest, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, First Frost, and Time Haiku. She is currently working on her first book of haiku, haibun, and haiga, tentatively titled, “My Valley, My Home.”
Featherstone Creative
