Red Moon Press Publishes Sixteenth Edition of contemporary haibun Anthology
Red Moon Press has relaunched its popular contemporary haibun print series with contemporary haibun 16, featuring a state-of-the-art selection of haibun, tanka prose, and, for the first time, full-color haiga.
The new edition—the first since 2014—offers a glimpse into how writers and artists are advancing these centuries-old forms. Drawn from work published in journals and magazines worldwide during 2020, the 93 haibun and tanka prose range from straightforward narratives to surrealistic prose poems, and the three-dozen haiga showcase everything from traditional sumi-e to cartoons, photo haiku, and collages.
In his foreword, publisher Jim Kacian briefly recounts the history of the series, which began as American Haibun and Haiga in 2000. For the next fifteen years, the annual anthology (which became contemporary haibun in 2003 to reflect its global diversity) offered some of the best work published during the previous 12 months. In the words of former Haibun Today editor and publisher Jeffrey Woodward, it became “the chief vehicle and bulwark of the burgeoning haibun movement in English.”
The editors for the new edition are Ludmila Balabanova, Tish Davis, Terri L. French, Ron Moss (Haiga Editor), Peter Newton, Bryan Rickert, Harriot West, and Rich Youmans (Editor-in-Chief).
contemporary haibun 16 is priced at $20 and can be ordered directly from Red Moon Press (the previous volumes are also available). The contemporary haibun series is also available through Amazon.com. A few sample pieces from the new edition:
Robuki
by Dyana Basist
In the meadow, a white egret spirals down, moves into the remaining sun, tucks one leg. The S of its neck folds, hiding a long yellow beak. Motionless for an hour. A coyote yips once in the distance. Suddenly its torso extends like a plump arrow, wings unfold, five flaps of lift and it is gone over the rooftops.
shakuhachi — he hits the windy note of ghosts
Naturerotica
by Agnes Eva Savich
First touch: tree branches entwining, amaranthus rippling in a breeze, dew drops clinging to buds, a cool creek caressing smooth pebbles, ocean waves pushing and pulling, a thousand fireflies lighting up a field, katydids droning long into the night, and the Milky Way revealed in the deep darkness, a gash spilling the most invisible stars into the sky . . . then calm. A calm lake lapping a soft sandy shore until dawn.
sublimation fiddleheads in moist soil on a riverbank