Red Moon Press Publishes contemporary haibun 20 Print Anthology

The 20th edition of contemporary haibun, the annual print anthology showcasing a state-of-the-art selection of haibun, tanka prose, and haiga from around the world, is now available through Red Moon Press. The new edition contains 101 haibun and tanka prose, along with 32 full-color haiga that range from traditional brushwork to mixed-media collages and computer renderings.

From the Editor’s Foreword:

Read through the current [haibun and tanka prose] literature and, alongside the straightforward autobiographical narratives, you’ll find flash fiction and fables, ekphrastic renderings, and epistles to readers both imaginary and real. You’ll find erasures, which form the core of another relatively new form, the “burning haibun,” in which a prose passage is doubly erased to create a haiku. Some writers are even doing away with prose altogether and substituting verse forms, while others are incorporating concrete presentations. … However, all the pieces in this book, from traditional to experimental, do share one trait: each offers multiple resonances between the various elements. Such connections lie at the heart of these hybrid works.

Editorial Team: Ludmila Balabanova, Tish Davis, Terri L. French, Doris Lynch, Ron Moss (Haiga Editor), Peter Newton, Bryan Rickert, and Rich Youmans.

Priced at $25 U.S., the anthology can be purchased through Amazon or directly from Red Moon Press.

Three sample selections (haibun, tanka prose, and haiga):

Stellar Anxiety

By J. Zimmerman

depth of winter

The stars shimmer because they are nervous, separated by distance and darkness. They want someone to lead them back to that heady brilliance in the heart of the bang. Insomniac and quivery, they lie awake tallying particles and fields and poly-dimensional strings.

the muffled music

Many faint at acceleration to light speed. Others complain that going nova shows pretentious passion or grumble that the universe keeps splitting. Most rehash interstellar gossip: red giants are pompous, black holes acquisitive, and white dwarfs outworn. Ten trillion talk-show hosts, they babble desperately, praying for the charismatic guest to arrive at last.

of entropy

The Library of Babel
     (after Jorge Luis Borges)

By A.A. Marcoff

for weeks I worked on the library catalogue, those packed drawers infinite with cards and light-years: I never got used to its revelations: opening drawers at random, I found—photographs detailing Lindisfarne, The Book of Sand, a Spanish guitar and flamenco dancers, mosaics and a study in human anatomy, a woodblock print showing Mt Fuji, a kingfisher on blue paper that flew away into library arcana, a history of metals and a samurai sword in the making, Love itself, the Mad Hatter, and an analysis of Hamlet: one drawer gave me Mozarabic Bibles: another offered heaven, and another hell: one drawer contained the Indian Ocean, and one the whole of time, from beginning to the very end: the last I opened showed forth the Milky Way:

my hands are turning
into books

I open my fingers

into a world of print

& a blossom of pink stars 

Haiga by Debbie Strange

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