Carpe Diem Ghost Writer #30, Garry Gay on "thinking out of the box or misdirection"

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at our 1000th post on Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. I never had dreamed that I would publish that much in two years time. From the beginning of CDHK until today we have had already 1000 posts. Awesome, a new milestone.

As I told you earlier this week's Ghost Writer post is written by Garry Gay, who last year was one of our featured haiku poets. Garry Gay was born in Glendale, California in 1951. He received a BPA degree from Brooks Institute of Photography in 1974 and has been a professional photographer since his graduation. He is skilled in all formats and has been creating digital images since 1993. His award winning Polaroid Transfers have hung in numerous juried art shows. He is a proud member of Advertising Photographers of America, Film Arts Foundation, Friends of Photography, Artrails, and the Cultural Arts Council of Sonoma County.

Greatly influenced by Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North, he has steadily been writing haiku from 1975 to the present. He is one of the co-founders of the Haiku Poets of Northern California, serving as their first president from 1989-1990. In 1991 he was elected president of the Haiku Society of America.

Garry is also the inventor of the Rengay, a modern version of the Renga. I am glad that he will be our one time Ghost Writer and I am honored that he will do that for us.

new snow--
the path you made last night
has gone with you

(c) Garry Gay

Garry is a photographer and the above photo and haiku are © by him. I hope you all like the Ghost Writer post by Garry.

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October Inspiration

October is the first full month of autumn. It evokes iconic words that are very useful for inspiration in haiku writing.  It is also called Indian Summer where I live in California.  The days are starting to get shorter, they are very warm, almost warmer then summer, and are bathed in a golden glow.

Credits: Indian Summer Québec Canada

I love October, the leaves are starting to turn, the nights are a little bit cooler, the time for candlelight and crackling fires is drawing near. The abundance of summer’s bounty is dying, the colors of earth and foliage are changing, and nature is preparing for the coming winter. There is much that inspires poetic instincts in autumn.

You begin to see everyone putting pumpkins on their porches. Halloween is a big holiday here in the US. Decorations begin to appear everywhere. Skulls and skeletons are in people’s windows or hanging on their doors. There are so many poems to be written with the Halloween theme. I have always liked anything to do with skeletons, maybe its dark and macabre, but it fascinates me. Try to think outside of the box when you use Halloween topics. It’s a good source of humor as well. Everyone likes to dress up in costume and scare each other. This leads to good fun. There are haunted houses, lots of candy to be given out and spooky places to visit, like the cemetery late at night.

Here is an example of thinking out side of the box or misdirection.

My skeleton
going for a walk
in the cemetery

This poem has both a subject of death, yet a dash of humor. A misdirection if you will as my skeleton is still living yet visiting the graveyard. Enjoy the environment of the rich colors and creepy Halloween decorations of October and create your on haunting  misdirection’s.

Garry Gay

Garry Gay

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Well I hope you did like this GW-post by Garry Gay. Thank you Garry for providing us with this "October Inspiration" for Carpe Diem's Ghost Writer feature.

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until October 24th at noon. I will publish our next episode, the fourth haiku by our featured haiku poetess Shiba Sonome, later on. For now ... have fun, be inspired and share your haiku with us all.