Featured Poem - March/April 2006
FIVE HAIKU
Time and time again
His iron-fisted heart
Refuses to melt.
On this most snowing…
All white reigns supremely pure
As the black of night.
Snowy Sunday morn
Chambers of my heart aglow
With serenity.
With you my haiku
will be forever brief
Yet madly in love.
A leap of new faith
Was my rebirth—spring 2000—
Blooming fresh Iris.
Iris Elizabeth Sankey
“After losing all those years—all my using years—I am always hungry for something fantastic to hold onto. Working on my memoir has been a joyous and therapeutic project that lasted three years, but now that I have finished my book, I need a new project. With poetry, I have a friend for life. Now, I have poetry and I have haiku. Ever since we learned about it in the ASC Creative Writing Workshop, I’ve been writing haiku on the train and at home and just loving it.
“Poetry is about condensing, but haiku is beyond condensing. Haiku means gathering the essence or the gist of what you want to say. With poetry, you condense as best you can, but with haiku, the condensing is even more severe. And with haiku, you must not think too much—you must grasp the idea and write it down immediately. It’s so challenging and I love a good challenge—haiku is the ultimate challenge in poetry. It’s a fantastic exercise of the mind.”
—Iris Elizabeth Sankey
Iris Elizabeth Sankey has been an active participant in the ASC Creative Writing Workshop for more than three years. Her poems have appeared in the past four editions of ASC’s literary magazine, Situations. Iris is a graduate of the Zwickler Memorial Poetry Leadership Program at ASC, and now guest-teaches poetry workshops at the agency. She has just completed a memoir entitled, Lesser Roads and Niche Called Home.