OFF THE BEATEN TRACK
A Year in Haiku
Twelve Authors
Category: haiku
ISBN: 978-1-911052-01-2
Dimensions: 185 × 120 mm
Extent: 224 pp.
Publication date: January 2016
£12.00
‘As fine a hai of ku as I have ever encountered’ – Les Murray
Off the Beaten Track presents twelve months of haiku by twelve writers, with original artwork by twelve artists. Some of the writers are haiku specialists, while others are new to the form, but each brings a distinctive voice to this unique collaborative project. Their locations range across four continents, and their haiku encompass graveyards and graupel, dandruff and dahlias, topiary elephants and wheezing cicadas.
The twelve artists bring a similarly diverse set of approaches. The result is a book like no other, celebrating equally the quotidian and the transcendent, as each writer takes the reader off the beaten track into new ways of seeing.
The writers
Christopher Herold • Fabian Ironside • Hamish Ironside • Éireann Lorsung • Bob Lucky • Momus • Matthew Paul • Sally Read • George Swede • Michael Dylan Welch • Matthew Welton • Hugo Williams •
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The artists
Dan Bramall • Angharad Burnard • Eleanor Crow • Julian Hanshaw • Kevin Huizenga • Krystine Kryttre • Mungo McCosh • David Noon • Woodrow Phoenix • James Sturm • Nathan Tolzmann • Annabel Wright
It’s over on the left,
making a noise like the sea.
Oh, it is the sea!
January
Hugo Williams
the surgeon’s wink
just before
I’m under
February
Hamish Ironside
without my glasses
I recognise my son
by his stride
March
Matthew Paul
spring sun—
my shaver changes pitch
as I plug it in
April
Michael Dylan Welch
slow breeze
deep cloud
electric mower in the rain
May
Matthew Welton
bee sting
my thoughts return
to the present
June
Christopher Herold
Now she sleeps—a cartwheel
of starlings sucked back
into the arms of a tree.
July
Sally Read
under the fridge
glass shards, tangled dust—
our archived lives
August
George Swede
​
false banana plant
in the beer garden a man
claims to know me
September
Bob Lucky
Aunt Molly can’t remember
The start of sentences
Dad can’t finish.
October
Momus
A finger puppet
Of the current president
On the bookshop floor.
November
Fabian Ironside
Nameless flower
by the road—
memory’s color
December
Éireann Lorsung