Owing to editorial exigencies, the collection dates for Echidna Tracks Issue 11: Elements will now be from the 25th of March to the 15th of April, 2023. It is planned to post the first haiku for the journal on 1 July 2023.
Editors for Issue 11 will be Gavin Austin and Marilyn Humbert.
Gavin Austin lives in Sydney and writes short fiction, free verse poetry, and Japanese-form poetry. In 2016, Gavin was awarded a Writing Fellow of the FAW NSW Inc. and was the Featured Poet in the January 2016 issue of cattails. The Drifting Sands Special Feature, Girt by Sea, was Gavin’s undertaking; the partnership of his photography and poetry from Australian writers. He currently has two published poetry collections: Shadow Play, Dragonwick, Aus., and changing light, Alba Publishing, UK. You can find Gavin in The Poet’s Hub Gavin Austin – Drifting Sands Haibun – Poet’s Hub (drifting-sands-haibun.org)
Marilyn Humbert lives in Sydney, surrounded by bush. Her haiku, tanka, and free verse poems have been published in International and Australian journals, anthologies and online. Her love of travel in the outback is often reflected in her writing.
For Echidna Tracks Issue 11, we invite your best and previously unpublished haiku and senryu on the theme of Elements.
This is a wide-ranging topic.
Whether you are drawn to the ancient categories of Earth, Air, Fire and Water or are more at home with chemistry and current ideas in physics and cosmology; our theme deals with nature in the raw, the fundamentals of existence. Stone, soil, sea, wind and sky come to mind, as do energy, light, matter, electricity, space and time. Perhaps your world is an enchanted one; animated by spirit and containing magical and miraculous elements. You might also be open to the idea that the universe is composed of mind stuff, the stuff of which dreams are made, or is it all a mystery beyond words (though as aspiring poets we shall try). There is scope here to explore our place as thinking, feeling and social beings immersed in immensities and carried along in the flux of it all; the possibilities are endless and go to the heart of haiku. Take us into the heart of your universe, share your visions and wonder – leave us adazzle, quietly reflective and moved in one way or another…
Australian Haiku Society 