Blo͞o Outlier Journal | Grandy’s Landing

Christmas 2020 was unlike any other we’ve ever known.  Christmas in lockdown!  But here on Halkyn Mountain, Wales, with a little light snow from time to time lending a seasonal touch, we had a grand old Yuletide, Maureen and I.  A super chicken dinner on Christmas Day with best brandy and a traditional fruit cake, which she’d baked.

And the festivities could hardly have got off to a better start for us than with the online publication, on Christmas Eve, of the fabulous first issue of Blo͞o Outlier Journal, edited by top UK haikai poet Alan Summers.

A beefy journal it certainly is, running to 131 pages.  The amazing artwork and photography fairly leap from the page to perfectly compliment the brilliant poetry.  A most exciting and inspirational journal it is too, believe me!

And how honoured we feel, Maureen and I, to have a senryu each included in this inaugural issue.  Many thanks to the founding-editor Alan Summers.  Under his expert editorship, I’m sure Blo͞o Outlier Journal will go far.

Here’s my poem.  It’s on page 114, adjacent a street corner snap of an amusingly hand-painted sign on a rough white wall, advertising a café…

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covid corner

large ladies without masks

talk gherkins

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Paul Beech

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And here’s Maureen’s.  It’s on page 115, alongside an indoor shot of artistically arranged books on a white shelf…

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reading your work

I slip

into your skin

.

Maureen Weldon

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Wishing you all a happy, healthy, peaceful New Year.

Take care,

Paul

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Copyright © Paul Beech 2021

Daily Haiku: Dec. 22, 2019 | Charlotte Digregorio’s Writer’s Blog

grazing reindeer
the girl in emo jeans
and purple hair

 

by Alan Summers  (UK)
From “The Wonder Room” haibun
Red River Book of Haibun, November 2019

Insectoid Serendos sequence – weird laburnum

Pliny’s Idea
the spells and charms
of bees in lust

hymenoptera
don’t we all have
some rights?

Christmas moon
the sheen rolling off a football
close to enemy trenches

spiderlight…
the sun crawls
to a stop

frying an egg
off the car hood…
forgetting pollen

Brief Encounter
it’s still illegal to kiss
other lifeforms

Martian townships
how do we start to make
new prejudices

a weaving sky
circumnavigating
into synonyms

Alan Summers

The House On The Hill by Alan Summers – the other bunny

Alan Summers

Ekphrastic haibun inspired by:
‘House on the Hill’ by Helen Garrett
Oil on board (80cm x 70cm)
Victoria Art Gallery exhibition: Towards the Unknown
(24 November – 13 January 2008)