heron by Ray Rasmussen
contemporary haibun online (cho) publishes 3 issues per year, April, August, and December.
cho publishes haibun and tanka prose and articles about those forms. It does not publish haiku or tanka independent of haibun or tanka prose. When submitting, please follow the guidelines below. To better understand the type of material we look for, please read “Advice from the Editors” at the bottom of this page.
When to Send
Previously unpublished articles and book reviews can be submitted at any time. Please send haibun, tanka prose, and haiga only during the following submission periods:
Jan. 1–31 for the April issue.
May 1–31 for the August issue
Sept. 1–30 for the December issue
Where to Send
Submissions should be sent to the content editors. The haibun, tanka prose, and article submissions should be contained in the e-mail and not as an attachment. Please e-mail all haiga as .jpg attachments.
Haibun: Rich Youmans (April 2024 issue), Lorraine Padden (Guest Editor, August 2024 issue), Terri French (December 2024 issue). Submit haibun to chohaibunsubmission@gmail.com.
Tanka Prose: Tish Davis (all issues). Submit tanka prose to chotankaprosesubmission@gmail.com.
Articles & Books for Review: Rich Youmans. Click Here to Submit Articles. Books for review may be sent to Rich Youmans at P.O. Box 527, North Falmouth, MA 02556 USA. You can e-mail digital copies here.
Haiga: Ron C. Moss. Submit haiga to chohaigasubmission@gmail.com.
If you have any questions about your submissions, please contact the appropriate content editor.
In submitting your work, you acknowledge that you’ve read these guidelines and agree with their contents. It can take approximately two weeks for our editors to respond. However, our editors may be unavailable for short periods, so there could be delays in getting back to you. Time constraints and the voluntary nature of editors’ roles restrict editors from corresponding in any depth with writers whose work has not been accepted.
How to Send
1. You may submit up to three haibun, three pieces of tanka prose, and six haiga. Your subject line should contain: cho, Sub, your name, and the date. We will not open any attachments, so paste your haibun directly into the body of the email. Please e-mail all haiga as .jpg attachments. Label them with a title (one word) followed by your last name: title_(last name). File sizes should be a minimum of 800 pixels at the longest edge.
2. You should submit only work that is not under consideration by other publications or book publishers. (If your submission is pending publication in a self-published collection, please tell us when submitting.) Work that has appeared on personal websites or as uncurated social media posts will be considered. We occasionally consider pieces that incorporate previously published material with new work (e.g., published haiku or tanka with new prose). If you submit any work that contains published material, you must inform us of that material’s publication venue and date (e.g., Free Verse Poetry, 5:4 2017), which we will note if the submission is accepted and published. Since we typically respond within 2-3 weeks, we don’t accept simultaneous submissions.
3. The rights to republish your work remains fully in your control and you need not seek permission to submit or republish the pieces elsewhere. However, cho also reserves the right to republish or reference excerpts from your work in future issues of cho, and in any associated annual print or on-line journals or anthologies sponsored by cho (e.g., a “Best of cho” anthology).
4. cho retains first rights. This means that if you subsequently arrange to have your haibun published elsewhere, that publication venue must be informed that the work was previously published in cho and the publication venue must cite cho as the place of original publication.
Copy Editing & Revisions
1. All work accepted will be copy (not content) edited and for consistency we will use our house style on all copy. The copy editors will make any obvious changes (e.g., minor typos) without notifying the writers. However, if a writer feels a copy edit has led to a change in the writer’s intentions or misrepresents the writer’s preferred style, he or she may contact the editor and request changes.
2. Once a piece has been accepted, copy edited and formatted for the journal, we will not make content changes except under unusual circumstances.
Advice from the Editors
Ron C. Moss’s Haiga Guidelines
I will be looking for your best work in all forms of art and haiku, senryu, or tanka prose using media of all types, from writing in the sand or doodling on paper to the most advanced digital techniques. Ideally, a “link and shift” will occur between the written word and the image: the two separate elements brought together to make something that resonates on a level higher than when they were separate. Pay particular attention to the use of white space; leaving room around the haiku and the art can be of great importance.
Tish Davis’s Tanka Prose Guidelines
Tanka prose, as a literary form in English, continues to evolve. Writers are encouraged to read and study tanka prose resources for exposure to a variety of perspectives perhaps starting with Claire Everett’s interview with a doyen of tanka prose, Jeffrey Woodward: “Tanka Prose, Tanka Tradition: An Interview with Jeffrey Woodward.” I don’t want to restrict writers with preset formulas. Many years ago I attended a Steve Reich concert and was mesmerized by “Clapping Music,” a minimalistic piece performed entirely by two performers clapping. Tanka prose can also be minimalistic, but I need to hear the music.
Rich Youmans’s Haibun Guidelines
As a genre, haibun has grown in scope to cover everything from brief biographical episodes to surrealistic prose-poem narratives and “flash” stories, and cho welcomes all explorations into content and style. However, good haibun do share a few basic characteristics.
First, the prose typically relies on concrete descriptions and images, rather than rococo phrases and impassioned, emotional outbursts. Like all good writing, it “shows” more than “tells,” and it engages multiple senses (not just sight). The prose is brief, with the writer often focusing on specific moments and portraying them in the fewest words possible, leaving the readers to explore and fill in the blank spaces on their own (just like haiku). “Brief” doesn’t always mean “short,” though—some excellent haibun, especially travelogues, have gone on for several pages, but always as building blocks of prose and haiku.
Then there’s the title to consider: Is it working for a living, helping to contribute to the overall effect of the haibun? I’ve seen many haibun where the prose repeats the title, as if it weren’t a few inches away or weren’t really a part of the haibun. Titles want to do their part; help them to live up to their potential.
And then, of course, there’s the haiku. Yes, some definitions say a haiku isn’t mandatory, but common practice has upended that theoretical stance. The haiku create leaps (the old “link and shift”): they don’t repeat or closely paraphrase the prose, they expand it, creating resonances that enrich the reading experience.
But the best haibun don’t just have a bunch of haiku strewn about like so many decorative buttons on a coat. Yes, some of those buttons might be quite beautiful in their own right, but ultimately only a few really serve to keep the coat closed and the body warm. In my experience, the same standard applies to haibun: Those pieces that resonate most deeply have only “purposeful” haiku. When writing a haibun, I’ll sometimes ask myself, “If that haiku were removed, would the haibun suffer in any way?” If the answer is no, then chances are I have a bad haibun on my hands. I’ve read more than a few submissions where I enjoyed the prose immensely, but the haiku seemed to be there as afterthoughts, looking pretty but serving no purpose. I also might ask a corollary: Could that haiku have been rewritten as prose? If the answer is yes—and especially if it’s yes, to better effect—I know I have to try harder. But when the balance is right, and the interplay occurs, then something like a chemical reaction ensues—a + b = c—and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.