Featured Haiku from Windfall 5 & 6

We continue our series from Windfall: Australian Haiku, an annual Australian print journal edited by Beverley George and published by Peter Macrow’s Blue Giraffe Press between 2013 and 2022 (ISSN 1839-5449). The pair of haiku I’ve selected to feature this time are linked by the similar dramatic action of fracturing and splintering.

fractured rock
the river turning
into rapids
– Vanessa Proctor
Windfall 5, 2017

In Vanessa’s haiku strong forces have fractured rock. We don’t know what forces have done this. Perhaps movement of the earth’s crust. Perhaps water expanded into ice. Something dramatic happened in the past. And that drama continues in a way, because the quietly flowing river turns into rapids at this place. L2 creates an instant of uncertainty – perhaps the river is turning direction past the fractured rock. L3 clarifies the scene, showing us the whitewater gushing over the broken rock. Lots of ‘r’ sounds in this poem mirror the forceful actions.

currawong whistles
splinter the ridgeline
late black frost
– Marietta McGregor
Windfall 6, 2018

Marietta’s haiku opens with the familiar sound of one or more currawongs calling. The calls of these large birds are loud and piercing. The choice of whistles for their calls is fresh. And it seems these whistling calls have amazing power as they splinter the ridgeline. How they do this is left to readers’ imaginations. Perhaps through synaesthesia. The concluding line gives a hint that the air is crisp, dry and very cold. Black frost is damaging to vegetation, freezing it from the inside. The modifier late implies that the frost was unexpected. Maybe plants were already putting out new spring shoots. Black echoes the colour of the unseen birds. The overall impression from the poem is one of piercing cold.

Leanne Mumford