It’s summer, for sure this time. Gave my author site a cleanup for broken links and to be better organized. Read a bit. Sent a couple more submissions. Took a walk. Transcribed some.

Birdsong of various chirps, and another, somewhere among cat’s meow, falsetto donkey and door hinge. Took a horsefly, a wasp, a few deerfly out to see the sky. Snacked, drank, read some more. Received a few more submissions for my one-line chapbook call. Wrote some more.

I have curiosity about monoku which are one-liner haiku. Not monostitch — that is more like the American sentence. I do like me a good caesura.

I’m thinking, I’ll try to make a group chapbook again. It’s been a while. I’m thinking for the end of June 2026, the ottawa small press fair, with a deadline of, June 12. Sooner started, sooner finished.

Keeping it simple. No theme.  Do you have any new ones,  (or previously published with pub credit included)? 

Send 3 and I’ll see what interest is in this being made. 

If it’s a go, I’ll make a print run with a letterpress cover. I have got a pasta maker that can be rigged as a letter press.  & I’m make a free downloadable pdf version.

In other news, I put a few archived phafours items as pdfs.

I am aiming to read wider, and source sustainably. And peck away at French books. I kick myself for not getting any häiku at the conference. This count includes ones read and partly read. Not the 50 or so others scattered around.

I’m hoping to finish title 115 read this week. Page count varying from 8 pages to 1100, avg 175 pages. Only half the free downloads were fan fiction. (Let’s just stash this record keeping under a safe outlet for OC impulse.)

Amazon is a great resource for previews, much better than the publishers in most cases. (For the love of god, just share a page of poetry in preview, anyone.) I aim to look it up online and get it from publisher or author, but for international the indie stores not dealing with small publishers, and publishers not shipping to Canada or insane postage rates… it all makes it too much of a steeplechase.

I aim to review as a practice a tenth of what I read which makes myself boxes into the strange position of feeling guilty for reading when I have conscripted myself to finish reviews underway. Let it go…let it go…

I’m toying with the idea of doing a call and getting a chapbook done for end of June. Madness?

I have a few more pics but mostly memories.

But I do have news from Haiku Canada! Mike Montreuil is the new president of Haiku Canada as Angela Leuck steps down and more into her publishing, Yarrow Press.

Jessica Allyson the new head newsletter editor of Haiku Canada Review. Maxianne and I continue as the English and French book review editors and as coordinators of the Betty Drevniok and of the Jocelyn Villeneuve contests respectively. The results are on the Haiku Canada website.

The Marianne Bluger Book & Chapbook Awards Results, 2026 judged by TA Carter and Philomene Kocher.

Books
1st Place – Gary Hotham, Our Backs to the Wind:Selected Haiku of Gary Hotham (Brooks Books, US) and
Debbie Strange, Random Blue Sparks (Snapshot Press, UK)
2nd Place – Chuck Brickley, downhill home (Snapshot Press, UK)
3rd Place – Marco Fraticelli, Slowly Turning (Yarrow, Quebec)

Chapbooks
1st Place – Marco Fraticelli, Happy Birthday (Kings Road Press, Quebec)
2nd Place – Marianne Paul, the drift from here to where (Paper Heron, Canada)
3rd Place – Beth Skala, Dear Sir or Madam: Poems From a 1970s Office (Canada)

A lot of the shortlisted book titles were from Red Moon Press and a lot of the over 40 chapbooks submitted were self-published.

Next year is Haiku Canada’s 50th anniversary & the conference will be the May Long Weekend 2027 at the University of Saskatchewan, Dept of Education, Saskatoon.

This fall there will be a more intimate gathering of Haiku retreat at St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Sept 4-6 under Carole and Angela with 5 streams of focus, (tanka, haiku, haibun, haiga and ?).

Each month are planned more activities across Canada to introduce people to haiku.

Because one of the gingko walks was around and through Murney Tower all participants were invited to share their haiku from it to be part of the display at the museum through the summer.