My Dear Friends:
I started writing haiku in late 2009 and published my first haiku in the December issue 2009 of The Heron’s Nest:
tangled
in blades of grass
spring breeze
In 2011, my chapbook, titled Following the Moon to the Maple Land, won the first prize in the Haiku Pix Review Chapbook Contest, a book that reflects the early development of my craft and the path of my journey as an English learner and a struggling poet. With
Haiku Pix Review defunct
, I now self-publish my chapbook in an e-book form for your reading pleasure
.
Following the Moon to the Maple Land is dedicated to my parents who believe that I can find my own way by moonlight, and it is prefaced by the following haibun, which was first published in
Contemporary Haibun Online, 7:2, July 2011:
There Is No There There
Canada geese
crisscrossing the sunset sky --
alone in the attic
Tonight I sleep in Taipei, but wake up in Ajax. My mind is winged by a yearning after things not yet lost. I dream in Chinese, but I awake and become Eric.
unbirthday morning
yet still I see father's face
from the mirror
My mind can’t find a resting place except writing poetry – the only way I can manipulate the reality of my life in Canada.
anything new
under the autumn sun?
reading jisei
twilight
my shadow faltering
under a bare maple
(note: Jisei is the “farewell poem to life")
Selected Haiku:
Pacific shore …
my poem is folded
into a boat
Honorable Mention, 2010 Winter Moon Awards for Haiku
wordless
in my borrowed tongue
plum blossoms
The Heron's Nest, XII: 4, December 2010; Popular Poem of 2010
job hunting ...
a yellow leaf drifts
from branch to branch
First Choice Winner, Sketchbook, V:5, September/October 2010
peeling my pear
in a thin, unbroken spiral ...
hometown memories
First Choice Winner, Sketchbook, V:4, July/August 2010
autumn dusk …
I stir my coffee
anticlockwise
First Prize, 2010 Haiku International Association Haiku Contest
a dried lotus leaf
in Tibetan Book of the Dead ...
winter dusk
Third Place, 2010 World Haiku Competition
roadside puddle
a street dog
licks the winter moon
First Honorable Mention, 2011 Anita Sadler Weiss Memorial Haiku Award
Silent Night
drifting in from the neighbors--
I relearn Chinese
Second Place, 2011 North Carolina Poetry Society Lyman Haiku Award
slowly I eat up a spring day quickly dissolving
Chrysanthemum, 8, Fall 2010
fork in the road ...
standing still to hear
the leaves
Honorable Mention, 2010 Winter Moon Awards for Haiku
Milky Way …
bit by bit I put myself
out of my mind
Haiku News, July 18, 2010
I love you ...
that hazy moon
in Rashomon
Honorable Mention, 2010 Mainichi Haiku Contest
single married single again a rushing river
Notes from the Gean, II: 2, September 2010
her face
in my whisky
the moon floats
Grand Prix, 2010 Klostar Ivanic Haiku Contest
autumn dusk
red leaves fall
into a poem
Ripples from a Splash, 2011
Many thanks for your continued support of my writing.
Enjoy the read.
Chen-ou
Note: You can read the detailed book reviews by
John McManus, British poet and former
A Hundred Gourds Expositions Editor, and
Kathy Uyen Nguyen, author of two books. And I wrote a haibun with the same title for my first Canada Day, July 1, 2003, which was first published in
Contemporary Haibun Online, 10:2, July 2014:
Following the Moon to the Maple Land
Name: Chen-ou Liu (phonic);
Country of Birth: R.O.C.;
(Cross out R.O.C. and fill in Taiwan) 1
Place of Birth; Date of Birth; Sex;
simply more technocratic questions
the Immigration Officer needs to pin down my borders.
He is always looking for shortcuts,
more interested in the roadside signposts
than in the landscape that has made me.
The line he wants me confined to
is an analytically recognizable category:
immigrant. My history is meticulously stamped.
Now, you're legally a landed immigrant.
Take a copy of A Newcomer’s Introduction to Canada.
from Lake Ontario
I scoop the Taiwan moon
distant sirens
(Note: "The Republic of China (ROC) was established in China in 1912. At the end of World War II in 1945, Japan surrendered Taiwan to ROC military forces on behalf of the Allies. Following the Chinese civil war, the Communist Party of China took full control of mainland China and founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. The ROC relocated its government to Taiwan, and its jurisdiction became limited to Taiwan and its surrounding islands. In 1971, the PRC assumed China's seat at the United Nations, which the ROC originally occupied. International recognition of the ROC has gradually eroded as most countries switched recognition to the PRC. Only 21 UN member states and the Holy See currently maintain formal diplomatic relations with the ROC, though it has informal ties with most other states via its representative offices." -- excerpted from the Wikipedia entry, Taiwan)
