Carpe Diem Special #161 Lolly's third "new scarecrow ..."

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Today I love to share another wonderful haiku written/composed by Lolly (penname of Laura Williams), but before I share that beauty I love to tell you a little bit more about Lolly, in fact she has done that her self.

Laura "Lolly" Williams was born and raised in Southern California. She's always been sort of the writerly type (essays, skits, parodies, satire and even some terrible rhyming poetry) but didn't develop her skills until mid life.
Sometime in 2010 - 2011 she discovered two haiku anthologies at a thrift store. One was The Haiku Anthology by Cor van den Heuvel and the other was Haiku Moment by Bruce Ross. Both books offered her a first glimpse at high quality, uncounted haiku. There was something about the tiny three lined poem and all that blank space surrounding it. The minimalism of it. The simplicity. The beauty!  This wasn't your typical western, overwrought, esoteric poetry. It was accessible!
These two books were the impetus of her haiku journey.

She had heard of haiku in school. She saw it again on the website Tiny Words back in the early 2000s, but it wasn't until she started doing web searches to find out more that she discovered Fiona Robyn's website called "Writing Our Way Home." Robyn would host an annual month-long writing challenge in January in which participants would write a "small stone" or haiku or poem-ish thought and post it to a designated website to share.
The Small Stone challenges eventually ended around 2012 which is probably what lead Laura to Carpe Diem although she can't remember exactly. She found Carpe Diem around the time it began in the fall of 2012.

And she's been writing haiku, and later tanka, ever since.

A wonderful biography and now we are starting to know her a little bit more and that makes me happy, because we are a family of haiku lovers, so it's really a joy to get to learn you all a little bit more.

Laura "Lolly" Williams

Here is the haiku to inspire you. It fits the theme humor very well, because of the scene she describes. I hope this haiku by Lolly will inspire you and will bring a smile on your face.

new scarecrow ...
already a field mouse pokes
around its fly

© Laura "Lolly" Williams (published in Lovely Things, CDHK- e book)

I like the humor in this one, but I am not that great with bringing humor in my haiku so I hope that this haiku I wrote inspired on Lolly's haiku is ok too.

old scarecrow
lost his battle with the storm
in the field

in the field
pieces of old clothes and paper
birth of scarecrow

© Chèvrefeuille

Scarecrow

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until August 15th at noon (CET). I will publish our next episode, papyrus, later on. For now ... have fun!