“In […] haiku I felt my grief was opening into something else and that something was love due to grief, because of grief. Perhaps I’d felt this love all along, with my husband, with our children, our families and friends, but it didn’t feel like just love-love, as beautiful and profound as that is. It felt like a love that was as big as it was because there had been loss, that only through loss could this love be completely seen.”
A poet and grief group facilitator with the Lower Mainland Grief Recovery Society, Karen Parrish will edit to publishable size more than 1,500 grief haikus while in residence at Historic Joy Kogawa House from October 1 to November 30, 2023, and will present two public programs during the residency.
Tashme Haiku Reading. Join us for this unique exploration merging literature, culture, and history.
Instalment #4 of not-so-pretty cherry blossoms by our writer-in-residence, Isabella Mori: “Of course these cherry blossoms are pretty, and when the late April wind has them drift through the air and form a delicious pink carpet, how can they not delight? And yet … “
“Instalment #2 of not-so-pretty cherry blossom haiku: Blossom petals on the ground always create a little anxious ambivalence in me…” Guest post by Isabella Mori.