Going forward Kelly Moyer will be the EDITOR of Failed Haku! I have total confidence in her and love her spirit and creativity. All submissions for the next full issue should be directed to her at: editor@failedhaiku.com. Kelly is a dear friend, and I am so happy to know her, and for her love of FH. As most of you know she and I have been ‘Buson buddies’ for some time now, and love collaborating together and she is someone I trust implicitly. Please take a minute and let her know you do too!!!

I will be out of the day-to-day editing of F/H. This is a permanent change. I WILL be taking care of the site and rebuilding it as well as doing some videos. I had to remove a lot of information from servers that I have maintained for decades. I did that so that Kelly would not have to worry about learning ‘server stuff’ in addition to all the work involved in editing and creating FH. My energy level dictates this may take many weeks. Please be patient.

I still love you all, but my health emotionally, mentally, and physically has been wildly on a downturn lately. I have good doctors and lots of support, but candidly I have a very hard time concentrating and completing tasks. I just can’t do it anymore. I am VERY LATE in responding to this month’s batch, but I will get it done in the weeks to come. Please accept my apologies. Submissions for the next issue should be sent to Kelly in the future.

The loss of my wife and my own issues won’t in any way dull the loss I will feel in not communicating with all of you about your work. This is a wonderful group of poets and please feel free to stay in touch. You will ALL be missed in my inbox…

Peace and hugs to you all…

Mike
(Former editor of Failed Haiku)

I have selected ten poems from the last issue and given a short commentary. Just enjoyed the last issue so much, that I wanted to highlight a few of the ones that seemed special to me and share them with you. Enjoy!!!

Also, the two videos below will give you some insight and encouragement when you submit haiga and haibun to Failed Haiku. Take a look even if you currently don’t do haiga or haibun and if you do take a try at these two wonderful parts of haikai be sure to feel free to submit them to us!

Ok folks, get your haiga ready to submit. Please NOTE the submission rules and DATES for your submissions. We are looking forward to seeing your work. If you have any questions just email us and we will be quick to answer.

Kelly Moyer and Michael Rehling

Ok, folks, we have a new Invitation Only Issue and I have offered some of my commentary on the work included. I invited the following poets to contribute:

Andrew Riutta, Glenn G. Coats, Shloka Shankar, Lew Watts, Alexis Rotella, Jennifer Hambrick and Richard Gilbert, Jennifer Hambrick, Roberta Beary, Kala Ramesh, Johannes S. H. Bjerg, and Terri L. French

I think you will both enjoy and learn by reading their work, I certainly did!

A new video is up now of Richard Gilbert and Jennifer Hambrick discussing two of their collaborative haibun. It really was great of these two fine poets to to share their thoughts. Take a look, you may find some things you can use.

NOTE: I am redoing the site, and things are missing now since 9 pages have been temporarily removed. Things should be back to normal (whatever that is) by November.

BTW, both Kelly and I have completed reading the submissions for Issue 104 and if you have submitted and not heard from us please feel free to email us.

Peace

Mike Rehling

We are happy to announce that Kelly Moyer, a former co-editor of Failed Haiku, and the old man himself (Mike Rehling) will be handling Failed Haiku going forward! Kelly will handle everything senryu-related except for Haiga and Haibun areas which will be handled by Mike. Please go to the Submissions Page and read it over, and please try to remember to use the correct emails for your senryu and haiga and haibun submissions.

SUBMISSION GUIDES

More news later, but thank you all for being a part of Failed Haiku!

Kelly Moyer and Mike Rehling

This issue is packed with wonderful senryu for your reading pleasure. We also have some announcements to make. This is the last issue by Bryan Rickert who served as editor for the last two and a half years. Please join me in thanking him for the job he has done!

Failed Haiku will continue and in a couple of weeks, we announce some changes so please stay tuned. Many exciting changes are planned, and they will take the strain of one person editorship out of the equation by adding some help in the social media area as well as new editors to shift the load more evenly.

As always, we want to appeal to a broad selection of poets from different cultures and poems that range from the traditional to the experimental.

Peace

Mike Rehling

I have made a small PDF collection of poems, and there is a link on page two of the PDF that will take you to a ‘video’ of me reading them if you wish. I am trying to leave a trail of breadcrumbs of my poetry and this is just one more addition. More to come!

DIRECT LINK TO THE PDF BELOW

LINK TO THE VIDEO VERSION HERE

I hope you enjoy it. I am ‘slowly’ returning to the world of social media, but things are anything but stable here with all that is going on. Abbey is making a slow recovery, and I am better myself finally. I just can’t live with any deadlines since I am a full-time caregiver.

I will be doing some ‘pop up’ YouTube meetings soon, and I am mostly posting on X (Twitter) now since there is a huge community of poets from around the world there, and you can mute the things you don’t like very easily now. Join me there if you wish. @mikerehling

My thanks to Hemipriya and Bryan for taking Failed Haiku and doing such a wonderful job. Love you both!!!

Mike

Hemapriya Chellappan completed another excellent issue of some astounding poets! Click below to download.

AND THE MURTHA CONTEST RESULTS ARE IN!!!

Video reading for all poems will be posted on the 5th!!!

Mike Rehling

I know you will all understand, but my wife took a fall while we were leaving therapy. She is home now, but with seven staples in her head, but otherwise fine and resting. Give me a few days and I will announce the winners. I am her caregiver and just want to be sure is healing. So sorry for the delay. I am almost done, so it will not be long.

Mike