Click on the cover then scroll down to hear Her Name Was Hazel and The Inevitable. (audio)
Year of Moons is precious to me. These poems do what I look for; the poem says one thing but means something else. Case in point, my favorite in the collection is a haiku in which the fish breaks the surface. And my 2nd favorite, Way of the River with its ripples of radiating meanings. “Make it [the river] take you where you want to go.” I like the sensual nape of the neck poem, and the way Mr. Jibson makes a poem out of something we’re all familiar with (but don’t write about) like grandmother’s old recipe cards. Of the moon poems, travel moon takes the reader well outside its frame, a great quality in a poem. The same for the Milky Way poem. The thought and research that went into the making of Year of Moons are two of its great qualities, along with the sensitive observations throughout and depth and clarity the writer brought to the project.
– Laurence W. Thomas, Editor Emeritus
3rd Wednesday Magazine
Year of Moons by David Jibson is available as a free download at https://davidkjibson.com/
and is available in print at Amazon.com.
Watercolor wash and haiku by David Jibson (the full moon of January is the Wolf Moon).
Year of Moons, my 2022 poetry month project, is available for free download.
As a lit journal editor, I have often been in the position of needing to evaluate submissions of claimed “haiku”, many of which had little to do with the actual spirit of the original Japanese masters and which were often simply poems written in the 5-7-5 syllabic pattern that most of us were erroneously taught by well-meaning but misinformed teachers in high school or earlier. I often didn’t feel confident in judging them on their merits as haiku.
My project for poetry month of 2022 was to have a deeper look at the forms of contemporary haiku, senryu and sijo in English; to read, study and learn to write them, not a simple task, as I already knew.
Just click on the cover image to visit the free download page.
Symphony Number 11 in The Decadent Review: https://thedecadentreview.com/corpus/symphony-number-eleven/
Thank you to editor, Dimiti Kaufman.
Writing ekphrastic poetry is a great way to break out of slump (I never say writer’s block). Here is a technique that makes an ekphastic poem seem to write itself. To demonstrate we’ll use a poem that was originally published in The Ekphrastic Review. It was insprired by the famous photo of the same title as the poem.
The poem is written in three parts, each part it’s own stanza, though that is not any kind of rule. It’s just how I chose to work with this short poem. I think it’s brevity contributes to it’s impact.
The first stanza is a simple description of what’s seen in the photograph. It’s best to concentrate on just one or two details and extend them, perhaps through comparison using simile or metaphor.
In step two I have brought in sensory experiences beyond the visual. This animates the photograph, turns it into a living scene that includes movement and the senses of hearing and smell.
The final step is for the poet to enter the photograph and to interact with the visual elements. This is purely imaginative and the most engaging part of writing the poem. You can talk to people, touch or pick up objects, use tools, taste food etc.
There you have it, short and sweet; 1) Describe, 2) Animate, 3) Enter and interact.
Here is a short ekphrastic poem from the chapbook Poem Noir from 3rd Coast Press, available at Amazon.