Well hello! And a heartfelt happy new year from us at LeafSalon. It’s certainly been a funny old time, what with that big old wave buggering everything up. Very hard to know how to celebrate a new year when so many lives have been lost so horribly. And it goes on … It’s become a little morning ritual for me. Breakfast, read paper, cry, compulsively call donation line.

Reasons to be cheerful? Hmm. Maybe all we can do is tiredly trot out a George Dubya cliché: 'We will prevail.' Because there's no doubt that people will, eventually. Perhaps that’s what we can celebrate. And also, avoid that survivor-guilt by celebrating our own lucky lives, and drinking to the courage of those enduring the ongoing horror.

So, with that rather lame attempt to encapsulate the last week of silence from me, I must take the slightly surreal plunge back into literary chat. Whadda we got? A poetry round up!

The NZ Poetry Society’s International Verse & Haiku Competition is now calling for entries. This year’s judges are: John Horrocks - Open Verse, Bernard Gadd - Open Haiku, Pat White - Junior Verse, and Jeanette Stace - Junior Haiku.

Hmm, haiku. The Japanese poet Matuso Basho wrote the first haiku about 300 years ago. In case you didn’t happen to know, the aim is to convey a vivid impression of everyday moments in only 17 Japanese characters or English syllables. It’s like reducing a sauce: you end up with the most concentrated essence of … marsala and beef stock, say, or in the case of haiku, human experience. The other rules of haiku are:

• your 17 syllables must be arranged in lines of 5-7-5 with a rhythmical break
• you must avoid similes and metaphors
• try to retain Japanese values
• each haiku must contain a kigo or seasonal reference somewhere.

Here’s a nice topical one I found on a net trawl. It’s called Christmas, and it’s by a Texan called Ron Loeffler:

Glass balls and glowing lights
Dead tree in living room
Killed to honor birth

The deadline for entries for the NZPS competition is 30 May 2005. Entry forms will are available on the site.

And if you’re quick you can do a quick polish up with Paula Green (pictured), who is running a poetry workshop at the University of Auckland Summer Workshops from 10-14 January.

Her course is called Finding the Line: Unpacking the Poet’s Toolkit, and will run at the Tamaki Campus, Morrin Road, Glen Innes from 9.30 to 4.30pm. It’s $410. You can enroll, and find details of other writing courses such as travel writing, short fiction, freelance journalism and non-fiction on the Continuing Education website.

More poetry news coming soon …