lonely buffalo

grazing in a field of green

faraway from home

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how georgia’s climate

differs from your native west

warm winter living.

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.Did you know that Cynthia Bohannon-Brown has a photography website? It’s true. Check out more of her work at CBB Studios.

View more haiga by Cynthia.

cute home for tired birds

quaint dwelling for feathered pair

tin roof, not rusty

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old makeshift platform

rickety wooden structure

dauset trails garden.

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.Did you know that Cynthia Bohannon-Brown has a photography website? It’s true. Check out more of her work at CBB Studios.

View more haiga by Cynthia.

Spring has sprung and I can’t think of a better way to celebrate than with a collection of nature inspired haiga. Personally, I find haiga mesmerizing. There’s something about pairing haiku with an image that is rich and complex as well as simple and fresh.

So I’m thrilled to present this week’s guest haiku’er, Cynthia Bohannon-Brown, a poet who combines photography with linked haiku. Her haiga will appear on this page for the next five days.

Cynthia has many talents and interests. She is a teacher, a photographer, a poet and a nature enthusiast. Cynthia also has a photography website that showcases her beautiful nature photography. It’s simply stunning work so be sure to check it out.

Let’s give a big welcome to Cynthia as  she tells us a bit about her life in Atlanta, Georgia and her adventurous approach to haiga:

Teacher, friend, lover, writer, poet, and photography nut are all words that accurately describe me. I live in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia (with my six zebra finches) and spend most of my waking hours thinking about nature and haiku. I am one of those poets who finds it difficult to separate the two things. I have volunteered my photography skills to organizations like the Sierra Club of Georgia and the Atlanta Audubon Society.

For the past thirteen years, I have taught elementary students and moved into teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) about three years ago. In 2009, I opened Cynthia Bohannon-Brown photography that specializes in nature photography, as well as photography for small businesses. In my spare time, I ride the lovely byways and highways of Georgia looking for my next photo opportunity.

For haiku poets, images are created from experiences which translate into words. For me, I document those images and experiences through digital photography and use them as my source of inspiration. I have found that as I move deeper into my fabulous forties, my memory simply isn’t as good as it used to be. Also, I am able to share the images with my students and motivate them to learn more about nature and to write haiku.

As a teacher, friend, lover, writer, poet, photography nut, I hope to inspire a generation of children to love and to appreciate haiku and nature as much as I do.

hot, freshly showered

i step onto the iced street

and turn into steam

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….Read more of Barb Heath’s haiku.

….And be sure to check out her haiku on Twitter.

courtyard politics

birds exchange words with gray squirrels

ancient peace resumes

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….Read more of Barb Heath’s haiku.

….And be sure to check out her haiku on Twitter.

brittle, bitter cold

and bald sunlight bleach stillness;

leech life from bleak forms

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….Read more of Barb Heath’s haiku.

….And be sure to check out her haiku on Twitter.

a languorous rain

drums its fingers on my sill

and cries itself out

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….Read more of Barb Heath’s haiku.

….And be sure to check out her haiku on Twitter.

lush purple garden

more honest in the moonlight

the sun changes you

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….Read more of Barb Heath’s haiku.

….And be sure to check out her haiku on Twitter.

Thank goodness for Twitter! Because this is where I first became acquainted with the haiku of Barb Heath. And after just a few tweets I was already hooked on her poems. So I asked Barb if she would be interested in being a guest at our site and I’m glad she said yes. Her haiku will appear over the next five days.

Barb is a professional writer who has found a different kind of sanctuary in haiku. Let’s give a big welcome to Barb as she tells us a bit about her life, work and approach to haiku:

I’m Barb Heath, a full-time freelance writer/editor. I’ve been writing as long as I can remember, but I didn’t discover haiku until my sophomore year of college. For the first 20 years of my life, I learned to “expand on my thoughts.” “Add supporting details.” Organize paragraphs. Write ten page papers. Fifteen page papers. Twenty page papers. Cite ten sources or more.

And then came haiku. I stumbled into a “poetry in translation” class that was originally supposed to be “advanced creative writing.” Haiku: it was mystifying, aggravating to me at outset. I loved what we read in class, but I couldn’t reproduce it. I had never learned to love such little things as syllables before. I was about to throw my haiku homework in the garbage when I realized, “I don’t have to be good at writing haiku, but I do have to learn something from it.”

Haiku actually taught me (what I think is) the most important thing for all my writing: focus. Haiku forces me to focus events, emotions, settings, etc. until they’re in their purest, most impactful forms. For me, writing haiku is like squeezing the juice out of a 750 page orange. Sometimes it takes me days to choke the nectar out of a single sentiment. Stray segments of haiku hang around my apartment on sticky notes, ripening. Professionally, I write essays, articles, standardized testing stories, web copy, and advertising materials. Recreationally, I even do some comics. Haiku fits in there somewhere.

Love?:

Negotiating

with a still-married woman…

Insane or in Love?

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…Read more of D. Gale’s haiku.

.h