It is an enormous pleasure to introduce the talented John Barlow: poet, editor, publisher and designer. I can’t remember exactly when and where we first met. It may well have been at one of the annual conferences organised by the British Haiku Society.

John Barlow is the editor of The Haiku Calendar, which has appeared annually since the 2000 edition, and co-editor (with Martin Lucas) of The New Haiku (2002). His other books include Waiting for the Seventh Wave and Wing Beats: British Birds in Haiku (with Matthew Paul).

John grew up surrounded by fields and woodlands. A keen amateur naturalist, his haiku appear in Where the River Goes: The Nature Tradition in English-Language Haiku, and he has given talks and workshops on haiku for organisations such as New Networks for Nature, Haiku North America, and the RSPB.

His haiku and tanka have received more than 150 awards, including the Modern Haiku Award, The Heron’s Nest Award, the Haiku Presence Award (in 2007, 2010, and 2011), and British Haiku Society Awards (in 2015, 2016, and 2018), while works he has edited have been honoured by the Haiku Society of America and the Poetry Society of America.

In 1997 he founded Snapshot Press, described in Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years as “the most important English-language haiku publishing house outside the United States.” From his published work John has made this selection.  Starting with the inventive vertical haiku, it forms a seasonal progression.

 

down
the
leafless
beech
the
voice
of
a
nuthatch

 

under leaden skies the low-slung belly of a river

 

through her skin
the baby’s heartbeat
fieldfares in alders

 

each one on sunlight the yellowhammer’s phrases

 

summer morning
the riverbed stones warm
beneath my feet

 

sparroweight the groundsel bends to ground

 

a nestful of feathers
and tiny skulls . . .
clouds without rain

 

leaf-cast shade
a hoverfly moves around
a spot of sunshine

 

crab buckets along the quay the gait of trawlermen

 

train delays
for the fifth day now
the dead fieldmouse

 

our shadows holding hands the width of the stubble field

 

inside the clown’s smile the clown’s smile

 

calls of marsh tits
in the autumn woods
leaves release their rain

 

wind-rippled tarn
a raven’s croak
echoes through stone

 

for all the wind-borne spores lungfuls of the wood

 

a stoat arcs into undergrowth thin winter moon

 

the faint pulse
of out-of-tune strings—
winter light