like line dancers
crisp cabbages displayed
at the market stall
nobody passes
across the leek field
except the bright moon
baseball kid
catches and throws
a cloudy sky
summer ends - - -
a single page
of the fish-eye lens
like elephant's eyes
this spring moon
heals my sorrow
A review of elephant's eyes, by Ikumi Yoshimura, appears in the Reviews section of this issue of Simply Haiku.
Ikumi (Ikuyo) Yoshimura was born in Kyoto, Japan. She graduated from Doshisha University, in the English Literature Department and gained her MA from Aichigakuin University. She began writing poems in her college years and studied haiku under Kaneko Tohta, Professor of English at Asahi University (Gifu). She founded the Writing English-Japanese haiku group "Evergreen" in 1987. She is a contributor to Kaitei, and a member of the Modern Haiku Association. Her publications include Small Pictures (1966), At the Riverside (1990), Linked Poems by College Students (1995), Spring Thunder (1996), The Life of R.H.Blyth (Dohosha 1996), Cats in Love (2000), Honeysuckle (2000), Haiku Troubadours 2000 (2000), A Desert Rose (2002), Internationalization of Japanese Short Poems: HAIKU, TANKA & SENRYU (Chugai Nippon 2002), Evergreen Haiku Anthology (2003), HAIKU NO SUSUME-An Introduction to English Haiku for Japanese (The Japan Times 2003), Waiting for a Breeze (2003), A Halo Round The Moon (2004), elephant's eyes (2007) and Kawai Photo-Haiku Calendar 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 (Kawai Gakki) as well as numerous articles on haiku in English. She organized the 2nd Haiku Pacific Rim in Ogaki in 2004. She is the recipient of several haiku awards, including the Aichi Prefecture Prize, the Special Merit Book Awards given by Australia Day Council, the Haiku Four Seasons award given by Newsweek, and the grand prize (with Michael Dylan Welch) given by Haiku Poets of Northern California Rengay Contest in 2003.
Ikumi (Ikuyo) Yoshimura was born in Kyoto, Japan. She graduated from Doshisha University, in the English Literature Department and gained her MA from Aichigakuin University. She began writing poems in her college years and studied haiku under Kaneko Tohta, Professor of English at Asahi University (Gifu). She founded the Writing English-Japanese haiku group "Evergreen" in 1987. She is a contributor to Kaitei, and a member of the Modern Haiku Association. Her publications include Small Pictures (1966), At the Riverside (1990), Linked Poems by College Students (1995), Spring Thunder (1996), The Life of R.H.Blyth (Dohosha 1996), Cats in Love (2000), Honeysuckle (2000), Haiku Troubadours 2000 (2000), A Desert Rose (2002), Internationalization of Japanese Short Poems: HAIKU, TANKA & SENRYU (Chugai Nippon 2002), Evergreen Haiku Anthology (2003), HAIKU NO SUSUME-An Introduction to English Haiku for Japanese (The Japan Times 2003), Waiting for a Breeze (2003), A Halo Round The Moon (2004), elephant's eyes (2007) and Kawai Photo-Haiku Calendar 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 (Kawai Gakki) as well as numerous articles on haiku in English. She organized the 2nd Haiku Pacific Rim in Ogaki in 2004. She is the recipient of several haiku awards, including the Aichi Prefecture Prize, the Special Merit Book Awards given by Australia Day Council, the Haiku Four Seasons award given by Newsweek, and the grand prize (with Michael Dylan Welch) given by Haiku Poets of Northern California Rengay Contest in 2003.