Carpe Diem Extra January 23rd 2018 -- Celestine Nudanu (special feature)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Maybe you remember our exclusive cooperation with the FB-page My Haiku Pond Academy in which I challenged the visitors of that FB-page to create a Troiku. I was also the Judge and short before Christmas I congratulated Celestine Nudanu (Reading Pleasure) with her winning Troiku.

The Troiku Contest was to create a Troiku based on a beautiful haiku by Jane Reichhold (1937-2016):

golden shade
under the redwoods
evergreen violets

© Jane Reichhold

There were a lot of contestants and I have read really wonderful Troiku, but the Troiku by Celestine was really a beauty with a small reference to a haiku by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) which I will give here also:

a night secret
a worm under the moon
bores in a chestnut

© Basho (Tr. Jane Reichhold)

Celestine Nudanu

Here is the winning troiku created by Celestine Nudanu (incl. the "base"-haiku by Jane Reichhold):

golden shade
under the redwoods
evergreen violets

© Jane Reichhold

golden shade
where my pillow rests
a slice of sunlight

under the redwoods
a worm burrows deeper
into itself

evergreen violets
a butterfly seeks rest
on the gravestone

© Celestine Nudanu

And these are the comments given by the judges (Michael Smeer and myself):

An amazing Troiku. Wonderfully crafted with love and honor for Jane Reichhold. Nice to read in the 2nd haiku an allusion to Basho's following haiku:

a night secret
a worm under the moon
bores in a chestnut

© Basho (Tr. Jane Reichhold)

Celestine is a long term participant in Carpe Diem Haiku Kai and she is a very gifted haiku poetess and family member of our haiku-loving family CDHK. Celestine writes wonderful haiku as you all could have read in the "time"-kukai:

midair waltz
first snowflakes and the leaves
frozen in time

© Celestine

In 2016 Celestine published her first anthology "Haiku Rhapsodies" written under, as a first idea, her pseudonym "Afua Peprah", but later on she decided to use her own name. It has become a wonderful and successful anthology. In the weeks before publishing I had the opportunity to read her concept (and later the final print) and I was in awe. Celestine writes really wonderful. A few examples:

 

bursting through the mist
silver rays kiss the leaves
ah, the dew, the dew

 

cockcrow
the stirring of leaves
heralding a new day

© Celestine 

Back in 2016 she has  asked me to write a review. I was honored, because I am just a guy who happens to have a haiku weblog to promote haiku as an art form. I will give you a highlight of my review:

[...] "With "Haiku Rhapsodies", Celestine has delivered a wonderful book full of gems. A few years ago I met Celestine online at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai, my daily haiku meme. Than she was just a novice in haiku. During the years she improved her haiku writing skills and I have seen her grow ... and now ... with this haiku anthology she dives into the 'big world'.

With this anthology she has reached a milestone ... I am glad and a bit proud that she has made this anthology after several years of publishing and sharing her beautiful haiku at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai.

As I read "Haiku Rhapsodies" I was overwhelmed by the beauty of her haiku and I love to bring a few haiku in the spotlight:

empty calabash
reflecting the fading sun
a beggar sits in gloom

This haiku describes a scene, which is seen very often, but it's not the fading sun here but the beggar who has the lead. It's a haiku in which I easily can recognize the spirit of Basho (one of the four greatest haiku poets ever) ..." [...]

 

Celestine is a very talented woman which is shown in her "Haiku Rhapsodies" shows this very well.

Well ... I hope you all did enjoy this special about Celestine Nudanu. And to make this a challenge too for you all I think I challenge you to create a troiku with the following haiku by Celestine Nudanu:

empty calabash
reflecting the fading sun
a beggar sits in gloom

© Celestine

This extra special episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until January 30th at noon (CET). Have fun ...!

Carpe Diem #1185 mirage (miraajuu)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Today another great classical kigo extracted from the Kiyose, mirage. This month we will have all classical kigo, seasonwords, that are part of the classical way of haiku writing. And this month I hope to create classical haiku (or tanka) myself and as you know ... that's not really my "cup of tea". Yesterday I didn't bring tanka following the classical rules, but today I hope to do that for sure.

Today our classical kigo is mirage (miraajuu), but what is a mirage? I dived into the WWW and found a nice definition of mirage on Wikipedia:

A mirage is a naturally occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays are bent to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky. The word comes to English via the French mirage, from the Latin mirari, meaning "to look at, to wonder at". This is the same root as for "mirror" and "to admire".

In contrast to a hallucination, a mirage is a real optical phenomenon that can be captured on camera, since light rays are actually refracted to form the false image at the observer's location. What the image appears to represent, however, is determined by the interpretive faculties of the human mind. For example, inferior images on land are very easily mistaken for the reflections from a small body of water.

Mirage along the Xin'an River, Huanshan City China (2011)

Mirages can be categorized as "inferior" (meaning lower), "superior" (meaning higher) and "Fata Morgana", one kind of superior mirage consisting of a series of unusually elaborate, vertically stacked images, which form one rapidly changing mirage.

Must be a strange sight as you see a mirage. Mirages appear mostly in spring and therefore it became a kigo for spring.

An example of a haiku with "mirage" in it. This haiku is written by Celestine Nudanu of Reading Pleasure, I think you will know her because she posted this haiku here at CDHK back in 2014.

on coconut leaf
the sizzling sun shimmers
forming a mirage

© Celestine Nudanu

Or what do you think of this one:

Appearing out of

a heat mirage comes

the winning horse

© Gotō Tatsuo (Japan)

Earlier published in Frogpond 39:1 in a review of: Bruce Ross et al, eds. A Vast Sky: An Anthology of Contemporary World Haiku. (2015)

Another example of a mirage (photo © Jeffrey Beall on Flickr)

I found a nice haiku by Yosa Buson in which you can "see" mirage as a kigo:

The shimmering heat

…soil in a wicker basket

someone dear

© Yosa Buson

And here are a few haiku from my archives (not following the classical rules by the way):

shimmering sky

behind a thin veil of heat -

seagulls cry

at the end of the road

the sky kisses the earth -

everlasting love

© Chèvrefeuille

Of course I cannot leave without creating a new one ... so here it is:

through veil of spring rain
I see the shadows of the old castle
it's not even close

© Chèvrefeuille

Hmm ... I don't know it's not a masterpiece, maybe it looks too artificial, because of the use of the classical rules. Let me know what you think!

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until April 9th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode, hazy moon, later on. For now .... have fun!

Carpe Diem Tokubetsudesu #76 Celestine, our "runner-up" of the "time"-kukai in the spotlight

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

As the "runner-up" of the CDHK kukai you win a special Tokubetsudesu episode and this week that's the purpose of this post to 'celebrate' the "runner-up" of the "time"-kukai. Maybe you can remember that we had a draw in this "time"-kukai, not only Celestine was "runner-up", I too was a "runner-up", but of course it is not possible to create a post only about me and that's why I will place Celestine of "Reading Pleasure" in the spotlight today.

Celestine is a long term participant in Carpe Diem Haiku Kai and she is a very gifted haiku poetess and family member of our haiku-loving family CDHK. Celestine writes wonderful haiku as you all could have read in the "time"-kukai:

midair waltz
first snowflakes and the leaves
frozen in time

© Celestine

Recently Celestine published her first anthology "Haiku Rhapsodies" written under her pseudonym "Afua Peprah". I hope it will be a very successful antholgy.
In the weeks before publishing I had the opportunity to read her concept (and later the final print) and I was in awe. Celestine writes really wonderful. A few examples:

sound of bamboo flute
calming the savannah
rushing streams

cockcrow
the stirring of leaves
heralding a new day

© Celestine

She even asked me to write a review as her "mentor" at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. I was honored, because I am just a guy who happens to have a haiku weblog to promote haiku as an art form. I will give you a highlight of my review:

[...] "With "Haiku Rhapsodies", Celestine has delivered a wonderful book full of gems. A few years ago I met Celestine online at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai, my daily haiku meme. Than she was just a novice in haiku. During the years she improved her haiku writing skills and I have seen her grow ... and now ... with this haiku anthology she dives into the 'big world'.

With this anthology she has reached a milestone ... I am glad and a bit proud that she has made this anthology after several years of publishing and sharing her beautiful haiku at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai.

As I read "Haiku Rhapsodies" I was overwhelmed by the beauty of her haiku and I love to bring a few haiku in the spotlight:

empty calabash
reflecting the fading sun
a beggar sits in gloom

This haiku describes a scene, which is seen very often, but it's not the fading sun here but the beggar who has the lead. It's a haiku in which I easily can recognize the spirit of Basho (one of the four greatest haiku poets ever) ..." [...]

Celestine Nudanu (a.k.a. Afua Peprah)

Let me tell you a little bit more about Celestine or maybe ... this is what she says about herself at her weblog:

I am a Ghanaian living in West Africa who loves books and reading, so much that I would rather buy books than clothes.

I read mostly fiction, both contemporary and classic. I do love non-fiction too, if I lay hands on any.  I enjoy world literature as well.  I’m partial to women writers and their works, especially African women writers.

I also read English and Theaters Arts at the University and majored in Playwriting. I have a Masters in International Affairs, all from the University of Ghana, Legon. I am a Senior Assistant Registrar, with the Institute of Professional Studies. I am married with three boys.

I love to write and read and not necessarily in that order.  My home is choked with books of all sizes, both adult literature and children stuff as well.

I also have a passion for thrillers, mystery and any good suspense novel from the West. I have read almost all of Sydney Sheldon, Dan Brown, Robert Ludlum, Jeffrey Archer, John Grisham, Martina Cole and a few of David Baldacci. I do love historical novels and romance. So, it goes without saying that I have read Danielle Steel, Judith Gould and Judith Krantz.

I am also fascinated with any novel that is based on the Jews and the Holocaust. So, I’ve read almost all of Leon Uris.

So this is me, a woman of diverse reading taste and talents.

cover Haiku Rhapsodies by Celestine Nudanu

As Celestine says above ... she is a woman with talents and this first published book "Haiku Rhapsodies" shows this very well.

To conclude this Tokubetsudesu episode about Celestine, a few other haiku written by her taken from her "Haiku Rhapsodies":

midday nap
a string of beads
her only cover

bursting through the mist
silver rays kiss the leaves
ah, the dew, the dew

© Celestine

Congratulations Celestine with this wonderful "mile-stone" your first book published ... chapeau!

As you all know Celestine lives in Ghana and maybe you can remember that we have had a while ago a few special episodes about Africa and that we were introduced to what Adjei Agyei Baah calls "afriku".

So that's the challenge for this week's episode of Tokubetsudesu: Try to write an "afriku" in the same spirit as the ones I gave here from Celestine, our "runner-up" of the "time"- kukai. Have fun! 

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until April 22nd at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode, the third CD-Special by our featured haiku poetess Sara McNulty, later on.