Off the Beaten Track: A Year in Haiku

Off the Beaten Track presents new work by twelve writers taking part in a unique collaborative project. Each contributor was invited to compose one haiku per day for a month, towards a total of 365 haiku for a full calendar year. Half of the authors are widely published writers of haiku, while the other half are much admired for their work in other fields of writing (ranging across poetry, prose and songwriting), but are almost, or even entirely, new to writing haiku. Several writers are based in the UK or the US, while others are in Canada, Ethiopia, Holland and Japan, adding geographical variety to the diversity of voices and perspectives. The result is a fascinating collection of glimpses into the lives of twelve highly distinctive writers through their observations of the minutiae of their daily activities and the world around them

About the Author :
Christopher Herold was born in New York in 1948. He was a student of Shunryu Suzuki, and his commitment to Zen practice is reflected in his writing. His most recent collection is The Moon Unfazed, a gathering of moon-inspired haiku. Fabian Ironside was born in Oxford in 1973. He is a prolific writer and editor, chiefly under pen-names. He has published books about Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hamish Ironside was born in Reading in January 1971. He has published two books of haiku with IRON Press. His longer poems have appeared in Poetry Review, P N Review and The Guardian, among others. Éireann Lorsung was born and grew up in Minneapo­lis. She has lived in France and England, and now lives in Belgium. She writes poems, essays and fiction, and has published two collections of poems with Milkweed Editions. Bob Lucky contributes regularly to haiku and tanka journals worldwide, and his work has been widely anthologized. He was living in Ethiopia when he wrote his month of haiku for Off the Beaten Track, and has more recently moved to Saudi Arabia. Momus is Nicholas Currie, a singer-songwriter, author, blogger and occasional performance artist. He was born in Scotland and currently lives in Osaka. His blog at http://imomus.com provides an excellent introduction to his many activities. Matthew Paul lives and works in the outskirts of London. Two collections of his haiku have been published by Snapshot Press: The Regulars (2006) and The Lammas Lands (2016). He is an occasional contributor to the Guard­ian’s ‘Country Diary’ column. Sally Read lives in Italy. She is the author of three books of poetry: The Day Hospital, Broken Sleep and The Point of Splitting, all published by Bloodaxe Books. The story of her conversion to Catholicism will be published in 2016. George Swede has published 38 collections of poetry, with fifteen being haiku only. His latest collection is micro haiku: three to nine syllables (2014). He lives in Toronto with his wife, Anita Krumins. Michael Dylan Welch grew up in England, Ghana, Australia and Canada, and now lives with his wife and two children in Sammamish, WA. He has been writing haiku since 1976. See www.graceguts.com for samples of his work, and much more. Matthew Welton was born in Nottingham in 1969. He received the Jerwood–Aldeburgh First Collection Prize for The Book of Matthew (Carcanet, 2003), and his second collection in 2009 under a title usually abbreviated to We Needed Coffee but… Hugo Williams is one of the best-loved English-language poets of recent times. The haiku he wrote for Off the Beaten Track are as observant and funny as his longer poems, despite having been written while undergoing treatment for kidney failure. Hamish Ironside was born in Reading in 1971. He works as a freelance editor, and runs Boatwhistle Books as a labour of love. He produced five issues of his Saudade fanzine in the nineties, and has recently published three more issues of it, including one printed on a rusty old Gestetner, just to see if it could be done. He owns every album the Thrills ever made.

Review :
"As fine a hai of ku as I have ever encountered" -- Les Murray