It’s a great pleasure to introduce this month’s guest poet Julie Mellor.

Julie holds a PhD in creative writing from Sheffield Hallam University and has published two poetry chapbooks with Smith/Doorstop: Breathing Through Our Bones (2012) and Out of the Weather (2017). In 2019 she became interested in haiku, and since then her haiku and haibun have appeared in Blithe Spirit, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Presence, The Heron’s Nest and Tinywords, as well as two Red Moon anthologies. She recently retired from a career in education, and enjoys walking her dog, attending art classes and playing the banjo.

Here are recent haiku and a haibun with their publication details. You can find more of Julie’s writing on her site here.

Modern Haiku 54.3 (Autumn 2023)

toe-hold weeds
things that were said
years ago

Blithe Spirit 35:2 (May 2025)

long night joining the dots between stars

The Heron’s Nest Summer 2025

wetting the ink
a ghost orchid blooms
from its painted stem

Presence issue 82 (Summer 2025)

morning moon
beside the fretless banjo
pistachio shells

BHS Hope anthology 2025 (ed Neil Sommerville)

butterfly summer
I write a letter
to my future self

Presence 73 – Summer 2022 – and included in Contemporary Haibun 18 (Red Moon Press, 2023)

The Coffin Path

Grass, waist high this morning, and wet with last night’s rain. Brushing past it, my jeans wick the droplets from seeding cock’s-foot and brome. No one else walks this way. Behind the hawthorn hedge is the cemetery. People tend to use the other path, the one that the council mows. Or else they drive – ‘to save their legs’ my mother says. Some days she says she wants to be buried. Other days, she thinks she’d prefer to be cremated and have her ashes scattered next to a memorial bench. No rush to decide, I tell her, trying to make light of things.

elderflowers
pressed in her prayer book
a recipe for wine