About Silvija Butković June 28, 2010

 

Silvija Butković (b. 1964, Osijek, Croatia) lived on the island of Lošinj as a child to return to Slavonia when entering the University. She currently lives in Djakovo where she works as a tourism manager at the National Lipizzaner stud farm. Her great love are foreign languages as well as photography, poetry and prose writing. Lately, she has been creating photo haiga, combining Japanese poems and photographs. She has received excellent marks (Master Haiga) for her photo-haiga at on-line contents organized by the  World Haiku Association.

In 2004 she published her first poetry collection, Touched by a Dream, in 2007 her second book, A Released Drop, and in 2008 her third book, the love free-verses (Entangled into Nets).

Silvija has taken part in many competitions, both as a poet and as a photographer, in Croatia and abroad (Japan, UK, France and Italy). The island of Lošinj and the heart of the Slavonian plain where she lives are her constant inspiration. She adores horses and watches them in her own way through the objective of her camera. Her photographs can be seen at many on-line photo galleries and websites. She has had seven exhibitions of her photographs so far.

Silvija is a member of the „Photo-Club Djakovo“, The Poets Associations „Antun Ivanošić“ from Osijek and „Tin Ujević“ from Zagreb, the Haiku Association of Croatia from Zagreb and the World Haiku Association. She is also a member of the Croatian Lions Club and of the Croatia Photographers Association.

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About Amelia Fielden June 21, 2010

Amelia Fielden is an Australian. She is a professional translator of Japanese literature, and an enthusiastic writer of tanka in English. To date Amelia has translated, or co-translated, 15 collections of  contemporary Japanese tanka.

In 2007 Amelia and co-translator, Kozue Uzawa, were awarded the Donald Keene Prize for Translation of Japanese Literature by Columbia University, New York, for their anthology Ferris Wheel, 101 Modern and Contemporary Japanese Tanka (Cheng & Tsui, Boston, 2006). Six volumes of Amelia’s own poetry have also been published. The most recent of them is the tanka collection, ‘Light on Water’ (Ginninderra Press, Australia, 2010). Amelia has also collaborated with fellow Australian poet, Kathy Kituai, to produce a book of responsive tanka in English, ‘In Two Minds’ (2008), and with Japan-born Saeko Ogi to publish ‘Weaver Birds’ (2010), responsive tanka in Japanese and English.

Amelia is married with 5 children, 7 grandchildren and 2 labradoodles. She divides her years between Australia, USA and Japan.

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About Saša Važić June 19, 2010

Saša Važić is Co-Editor and Co-Publisher of Simply Haiku. She’s a freelance journalist, astrologer, translator, writer of prose, poetry, essays, and book reviews. Važić authored over 1000 articles on various topics which appeared in newspapers and journals.

Važić is also a member of the editorial board of Haiku Novine (Niš, Serbia), International Editor for moonset (Oregon, USA), and member of the World Haiku Club and the Haiku Oz (Australia).  Her haiku  have been published in over ten national and international haiku anthologies and in a number of national and international haiku magazines and journals. Her haiku have been translated into English, Japanese, Chinese, Macedonian, Slovenian, Croatian, German, Czech, Bulgarian, Russian, Polish, Dutch, Norwegian, French, Italian, Hungarian and Romanian. She is the recipient of a number of awards and commendations in contests held in her country. 

 Other honors include in Japan (Water, Lake and Sea; Suruga Baika; Basho Festival; Ito en; Mainichi), Germany, Croatia, Bulgaria, Canada, the USA, France and Romania. Largely, through her translation efforts, she’s helped to make English language haiku poetry, articles and books accessible to Balkan READERS and vice versa. Važić is the editor of the bilingual Haiku Reality (http://haikureality.webs.com/indexeng.htm). In addition, Važić is the author of an e-book of haiku poetry entitled muddy shoes candy heart, edited by Anita Virgil and published by Peaks Press.

She has translated around 30 books of haiku poetry by Serbian and other foreign authors (into English), as well as David G Lanoue’s novels Haiku Guy and Laughing Buddha into Serbian.

Apart from haiku, Važić also writes tanka, haibun and collaborative rengay. 

Same of Važić’s haiga have been published at the World Haiku Association’s website, Kuniharu Shimizu’s website:  See Haiga Here,  Haiku Canada Review, as well as in the Contemporary Haibun published by the Red Moon Press, USA.

Many  longer poems and short stories as well as some literary articles and book reviews have also been published in a number of journals, in her country and abroad.

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About Robert D. Wilson June 18, 2010

robert d. wilson who lives in the Philippines, is the author of Jack Fruit Moon and Vietnam Ruminations, and his online diary, The Wonderland Amusement Park.  He’s Co-Owner/Co-Publisher/Co-Editor in Chief of Simply Haiku, and the moderator of the Simply Haiku online forum in Yahoo groups. And to some, he’s a pain in the ass.

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 return me,

dragon, to the

elephant

grass field of

not enough  time

robert d. wilson

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About Kala Ramesh June 16, 2010

Kala Ramesh is an Indian, classical musician, who has worked extensively on Pandit Kumar Gandharva’s style under Mrs. Shubhada Chirmulay for over 15 years, and has performed professionally in several major Indian cities.  A recently turned haiku poet (since 2005), Kala writes haiku, tanka, senryu, haibun and renku, and her work has appeared in leading e-zines and anthologies all over the world.  Kala, as director of the World Haiku Club in India, organised with the co-operation of its members, the four-day 9th World Haiku Festival at Bangalore in February 2008, which was sponsored jointly by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Ji and Sri Ratan Tata Trust. Kala is a member of the editorial team of Modern English Tanka Press’s new anthology, Take Five: The Best Contemporary Tanka 2008/2009/2010, is on the panel of the literary e-journal Muse India, for the areas of haiku and short verse Since April 2009, Kala has been the Poetry Editor at Katha, a renowned New Delhi publishing house. In this capacity, she compiled and edited the first ever ebook of haiku, senryu, haibun, tanka and haiga written by thirty five Indian poets. Currently, she is also the lead poet (sabaki) of a Kasen renku with six other international renkujin: experimenting and incorporating the traditional renku with the famed Rasa Theory of India, comprising the nine emotions prevalent in all Indian art forms (which consists of nine rasas or essence, namely: erotic, comic, sorrow, anger, valour, fear, disgust, wonder and tranquillity, traditionally known as the nava rasas).

Kala comes from an extremely artistic and culturally rich South Indian Tamil family and believes, as her father is fond of saying, that “the soil needs to be fertile for the plant to bloom”. She also feels that she owes this poetic streak in her to her mother. Kala is keen to see children in India take to haiku and its genres.

Solo exhibition in Three Lights Gallery (Spring 2009) 

 www.threelightsgallery.com/kala.html

Featured Haiku Poet with 25 haiku showcased:

Simply Haiku (November 2009)

http://simplyhaiku.com/SHv7n4/haiku/feature.html

An exclusive interview on Tanka Online from January to July 2010

http://www.tankaonline.com

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