We are fifteen years old! Founded in January 2007, Shamrock Haiku Journal has since been published regularly. On this occasion, we have prepared SHAMROCK HAIKU JOURNAL: 2012- 2018, a print edition of the twenty issues of Shamrock, Nos. 21 to 40, as they appeared on the Shamrock website. This paper-based collection covers the full range of English-language haiku, from classical to experimental, as well as haibun. Also included are English translations from one of the most prominent Japanese haiku poets of the 20th century, Ryuta Iida, and an essay on translating Matsuo Basho's haiku.

Shamrock Haiku Journal: 2012-2018
Edited by Anatoly Kudryavitsky.

Copyright © 2012-2018 by Shamrock Haiku Journal.

All rights reserved.

Published in Dublin, Ireland.

Printed in the United Kingdom.

Price EUR16.92
ISBN 978-0-244-9767-9-8

Trade paperback. 302 pp.
5.8"x8.3", perfect binding.

Preview available here

A similar compilation volume comprising issues 1 to 20
(Shamrock Haiku Journal: 2007 - 2011) is available here.

IHS International Haiku Competition 2022 announced!

The Irish Haiku Society International Haiku Competition 2022 offers prizes of Euro 150, Euro 50 and Euro 30 for unpublished haiku/senryu in English. In addition, there will be up to seven Highly Commended haiku/senryu.

Details and previous winners can be found here:
http://irishhaiku.com/haikucompetition.htm

All the entries shall be postmarked / e-mailed by 30th November 2022.

Good luck to all!

elk rut
the screech of a gate
I didn't fix


dead conifer
a stairway of fungi
to the stars


lock-keeper's pipe
a pelican swallows
the last light


sea-churn
a driftwood bird
takes flight

--  Debbie Strange (Canada)




gentle rain
the small umbrella
of a mayapple


sunrise
the fanning out
of egrets


the tease
of daffodil shoots
false spring

-- Bryan Rickert (USA)




late-afternoon light
the nesting swan
resettles


afternoon wind shift
beach peas
shivering


day's end
a hare's silhouette
lopes along the hill crest

-- Hannah Mahoney (USA)




a crust of frost
on the wild persimmon
gathering light


pine canopy
the leisurely journey
of clouds


gum branch
the magpie's song
outlasts twilight

-- Gavin Austin (Australia)




calls of starlings
from the tree tops
morning mist


the window
cannot hold it
winter sunset

-- Frank Hooven (USA)




bayou canoe
a bait shrimp trailing
Spanish moss


thwack of a culling iron
an oyster separates
from the clump

-- Bill Cooper (USA)




windfall figs
a coyote pup's
sweet tooth


ground cover
the dusky blue
of juniper berries

-- Cynthia Anderson (USA)




butterfly garden
the flutter
you leave behind


long crooked road
a coyote's lament
at sunset

-- Deborah Kolodji (USA)




faded petals...
the sound of rain
on my umbrella


evening mist...
the soft chatter
of flying squirrels

--Theresa A. Cancro (USA)




the grebe's neck
flashing white as it dives
winter breakers


the languid flutter
of a passing fritillary
high summer

-- Kristen Lindquist (USA)




pink camellia
the candlelight
blushes her cheeks


afternoon picnic
discovering the glow
in a ripe plum

-- Joshua Gage (USA)




golden sunset
oak tree
ablaze with autumn


ceiling of clouds
cicada skins
dot the tree

-- Stephen C. Curro (USA)




end of summer –
frog in a heron's beak
does not struggle


along the timberline –
spring frogs,
thawing

-- Tate Lewis-Carroll (USA)




golden tatters
on the ripples
moon feathers


moonlight
a doe nibbles
the snowman's nose

-- Nola Obee (Canada)




smoke haze...
in silence godwits going
going gone


coolness the leaves full of bellbirds

-- Lorin Ford (Australia)




November morning
frost on brown leaves
crouching in the sun

-- Robert Witmer (Japan)




sidewalk sale –
a price tag flutters
into fallen leaves

-- Michael Dylan Welch (USA)




holding the moon,
held by it –
one lone cloud

-- Ben Gaa (USA)




morning sun
the flash and glitter
of mating dragonflies

-- Jay Friedenberg (USA)




summer night
a coyote wonders
why I'm not in bed

-- Dan Spencer (USA)




wishes
without words
wild dandelions

-- Edward Huddleston (USA)




Wolf Moon
another night
in its jaws

-- Ruth Holzer (USA)




spring moon
a face becomes
a butterfly

-- Joseph Wechselberger (USA)





flooded field
the milky way
of tadpoles

-- John O'Connor (USA)




creeping phlox
the Pink Moon rising
through the hyacinths

-- Joshua St. Claire (USA)




lunar eclipse
frost on the last
green tomatoes

-- Edward Rielly (USA)




after the storm wax paper moon

-- June Rose Dowis (USA)




spring rain all night one dove at dawn

-- Michael Drummy (USA)




seaside field
an abandoned boat floats
on waves of mown hay

-- Betsy Hearne (USA)




gathering dark...
the last ravens slide
into it

-- Chen-ou Liu (Canada)




autumn breeze
leaf becomes butterfly
becomes leaf

-- Jane Williams (Australia)




gathering
moon-ink
geese flight

-- Joanna Ashwell (England)




predawn silence
the neighbour's cat
takes on newcomers

-- Bisshie (Switzerland)




driver side preset
in Dad's old car –
the mirrors too close

-- Noel Sloboda (USA)




natural draft
cooling our faces
in the church

-- Noel King (Ireland)




tree at window
my mind climbs
its seven branches

-- Roberta Beach Jacobson (USA)




evening meditation
the sway of her hemline
as she walks

-- Ayaz Daryl Nielsen (USA)

Cash at the Blink of an Eye

by Barbara A. Taylor (Australia)

  
     tuning in...
     a cyborg's
     daily tasks

My dear friend, forever an optimist, is convinced of the benefits brought to society by artificial intelligence. She raves about the possibilities, ignores any talk of misery, doom. "... and sure you'll have cash at the blink of an eye!" Her Celtic eyes sparkle. She enthuses about scientific and medical research breakthroughs, super computers, nano information highways, advanced genetic engineering: all of which will vastly change the whole perspective of our life on earth. Algorithms rule. I am too cautious, too resistant, depressed by my concentration on black biology: bacterial wars. I have read too much. It is becoming more difficult to define the boundaries between the laboratory, the real, and an imagined world. Alarming for me to acknowledge that too much knowledge is very frightening; that science is the art and the art is science and burrowing deep within this are the illuminating treasures of the reasoning of our universe. Today I heard that bookings for flights to Mars are under way. The future is unknown, yet already it is here. "I don't want to discourse with my fridge, thank you very much." I shudder when I think of talking toasters, and I do know how to lock and unlock my car!

     days of fluster
     Siri chooses
     calming music

I believe that our consciousness stems from ancient generations of stellar matter blasted out of celestial spheres: mosaic blueprints for our predetermination. I think of myself as a mathematical puzzle. Here, the garden's pulchritude is all embracing. I, the rock-ribbed, Luddite, let jacaranda aura envelop me. I feel strong, safe in the eye of the cackling kookaburra, assured that what we are and what we might be is at the behest of Mother Nature and the twinkle in Her eye.

     peach of a day
     no phones, no computer
     only songbirds

After Cezanne

by Diana Webb (England)

I'm no painter

Well, catch it. Catch it by any means at your disposal. Catch it now.

'A cello undulates between skeletal branches, canopies of deepest leaf. Tarnished into beauty, streaks of silver. Low within the wooded hollow, cavernous dark.'

And so?

It will do.

     view of trees
     morning after morning
     an altered light

Who's Counting

by Cynthia Anderson (USA)

Twilight. A bedraggled lump floats face-down in the water dish. Quail parents don't check for stragglers--the smallest, the weakest, the just plain unlucky. I fish out the tiny, long-legged body and cradle it in my hands, then place it on a rock for the ravens.

     pecking order
     no emotion
     left behind
 

Alone

by Martin Gottlieb Cohen (USA)

There I am staring at the delicate paper boat in Manhattan's Central Park Pond on an autumn
afternoon admiring how white it looked in the sunlight.


     dead leaves a sudden shift of the hollow


Could see myself at the eyes of the ship with my chalked blue nose standing watch as the destroyer crossed the arctic circle.


     before the horizon... the silence

Prestidigitator

by Stuart Bartow (USA)

Some decades ago an older poet advised me to minimize my use of the word dusk, that only once or twice should that noun appear in the entire body of a poet's work. I get it. Invoke the genie too often, she'll stop appearing. Each time you summon the djinn, he fades in power. Still,

     dusk disappearing
     over
     the hills...

stars

Views Once Seen on a Visit to Wuhan

by John Zheng (USA)

A teenage girl beggar sits on the pavement before a bank, her face buried in her arms wrapped around her knees. A cardboard sign, as down-and-out as she is, leans against her legs. She asks for five yuan for lunch. I walk past her and turn around to put five by her sign. My nephew, a teenager as well, says young solicitors are lazybones and don't want to find a job. This seems like a good excuse for walking past a beggar without even casting a look. But who really wants to beg with her face concealed from the passersby's eyes?

     street food stand
     two drinking men play
     the finger game