(Sharing Our Horizon, A Journey Through the Scottish Highlands with Two Adopted Whippets by Xenia Tran)
Wishing you all a blessed Sunday and a peaceful week ahead,
with love from Xenia xxx
Photographs by Xenia Tran, edited in lr.
A warm-hearted thank you to the editors of the Autumn Moon Haiku Journal and The Asahi Shimbun for featuring my haiku and putting these beautiful publications together.
This is my first attempt at writing a puente poem.
Wishing you all a peaceful Wednesday,
with love from Xenia xxx
Photographs by Xenia Tran, edited in lr.
Settings: f/1.8 – 1/2000 s – ISO 640, f/1.8 – 1/4000 s – ISO 640 and f/1.8 – 1/4000 s – ISO 100.
Puente is a modern poetry form created by James Rasmusson. The first stanza develops one aspect of a topic where you, line by line, work towards another aspect. The centre line is delineated by a tilde (~) and functions as a bridge that forms a couplet with both the last line of the first stanza and the first line of the second stanza. You can choose any number of lines, as long as the first stanza has the same number of lines as the second stanza. You can find more information about the form here.
Placing Poems is an online, interactive map that shares poems about new and imagined journeys away from the stifling reality of the pandemic. We are delighted that this poem now appears on this map. If you visit the Placing Poems website and select The Map, you can scroll up to the Scottish Highlands and find it under Cairngorms, Feshie Bridge, alongside many other poignant poems.
Camera: Canon Powershot SX60 HS, Settings: f/3.5 – 1/15 s – ISO 1600, f/5.6 – 1/20 s – ISO 1250 and f/5 – 1/25 s – ISO 800.
The Light Always Returns was first published in Ribbons, Winter 2020: Volume 16, Number 1. A very big thank you to Christine L Villa and the team at Ribbons for featuring my poem and putting this beautiful edition together.
Dutch Goes the Photo Tuesday Photo Challenge: Tomorrow
Lavender has a lovely scent and it provides food for bees and other insects from Spring to late Summer. We leave the lavender stems after flowering so that Goldfinches can feed on the seed heads in Winter. It’s a delight to see these lovely birds in the garden at this time of year.
Wishing you all a wonderful Wednesday,
with love from Xenia xxx
Photographs by Xenia Tran, edited in lr.
Camera: Canon Powershot SX60 HS, Settings: f/6.3 – 1/60 s – ISO 800, f/6.5 – 1/80 s – ISO 1000 and f/6.5 – 1/50 s – ISO 800.
The year began full of promise and we had a new pair of swans moving into the river before any of us had heard of Covid-19. Two days into Spring we went into lockdown and travel restrictions weren’t lifted until early July.
Many of us had to find new ways of working and being and I want to thank all of you who shine a light and are an inspiration to others.
The emphasis this year was on collaboration and I contributed forty-eight poems to a variety of journals, videos, anthologies and works of art.
My heartfelt gratitude for all our readers who read, comment and share our posts on social media. Below are the ones you liked best, together with some other highlights from each season.
We went into full lockdown on 23 March 2020 and focused on the beauty found in our local environment. In late Spring we revisited, virtually, a lovely fishing village we had travelled to the previous December in The Pier at Findochty. This was the most popular post in Spring and would become the most popular post of the year.
Spring also saw haiku poets from around the world contribute to EarthRise Rolling Haiku Collaboration 2020 in honour of the Year of the Nurse. I contributed six haiku to this collaboration, two of which were later anthologised.
Travel restrictions were lifted at the beginning of July and the Highlands were crowded with tourists from other parts of the country. We waited for everything to settle and did more virtual travelling, this time to Belfast, in order to pay homage to one of the teachers who inspired me in A Moment of Inspiration.
Summer also saw me guest-host the Lens-Artists Weekly Photo Challenge on the theme of Sanctuary.
In Autumn we entered a Tier system according to the number of Covid-19 infections and people from higher tiers were prevented from travelling to lower tiers. This resulted in a huge reduction of tourists and we could walk more safely throughout the Highlands, which was in Tier 1, without running into visitors from high Covid areas.
Autumn also saw the publication of The Helping Hand Haiku Anthology, edited by Robert Epstein, which includes three of my poems, Bundled Wildflowers, edited by Bryan Rickert, which includes one of my poems and the Dutch anthology Aan het Woord 2020, edited by Ferre Denis, Maria de Bie and Nol Hovens, which includes three of my poems. In addition, one new poem was featured in the Haiku-kantelkalender (Haiku Calendar) 2021, edited by Ferre Denis. Falling Petals received an honourable mention in the International Section of the 2020 Haiku Invitational at the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival and ten haiku were featured in the World Haiku Series with Japanese Translations by Mr Hidenori Hiruta.
After a busy Autumn we stayed closer to home as Winter rolled in and the temperatures dropped. It became a time for Christmas socials via Zoom and catching up with friends at a safe social distance.
Winter also saw forty of my images published in Frameless Sky Issue 13 where I was the Featured Artist and the release of the beautiful anthology Dance Into the Light, edited by Michael Dylan Welch, featuring one of my poems.
A very big thank you to the editors and publishers who featured my work throughout the year.
This has been a year like no other and we sadly lost a number of friends and members of our writing community to Covid-19 and to cancer without being able to say goodbye in the way we normally would.
It has also been a year of growing and connecting in new ways and of communities coming together.
A huge thank you to Frank, Kristjaan, Misky, Ronovan and the team at dVerse Poets for your inspiring poetry prompts, to Brian, Christine, Emily, Heather, Katherine, Ping, Punam, Kristian and Sheryl for your wonderful word prompts and to Becca, Cee, Jez, Lisa, Paula, Sue & Gerry, Terri and Amy, Ann-Christine, Patti & Tina for your fabulous photographic prompts.
We leave with you a song by Show of Hands that seems fitting for our times:
Thank you again for the love and we wish you all a blessed, healthy and happy 2021.
Wishing you all a blessed Sunday and a peaceful week ahead,
with love from Xenia xxx
Photographs by Xenia Tran, edited in lr.
Camera: Panasonic Lumix FZ200, Settings: f/2.8 – 1/80 s – ISO 400, f/2.8 – 1/160 s – ISO 500 and f/2.8 – 1/80 s – ISO 250.
Ambient was first published in Ribbons, Fall 2020: Volume 16, Number 3. A very big thank you to Michael McClintock and the team at Ribbons for featuring my poem and putting this beautiful edition together.
Lens-Artists Weekly Photo Challenge #125: You Pick It
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