Big news on Haiku Poetry Day

“swirls of confetti” is 8 x 10, made of Japanese washi papers and other papers, an airmail envelope, vintage Japanese postage stamps, pen, sumi ink, acrylic paint, and adhesive on illustration board. © Annette Makino 2021

Happy International Haiku Poetry Day! I’ve got some exciting haiku news to share.

First, I am planning to publish my first full-length book! A selection of my best art and haiku of the past ten years, this book will feature fifty of my watercolor haiga (paintings combined with haiku). Sprinkled throughout the pages will be fifteen haibun—a Japanese literary form in which autobiographical prose is combined with haiku. 

With the working title of Water and Stone, this will be a full-color 8x10 softcover book. It will be available on Amazon and the Makino Studios site early this summer.

Secondly, if you heard whooping from my house, it’s because the Haiku Foundation announced today that a haiku I wrote has won a Touchstone Award for best individual poem of 2020! 

There were 1302 poems from 31 countries, mostly nominated by haiku editors, and I am beyond thrilled that my haiku has been honored in this prestigious contest. The Haiku Foundation site explains, “The Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems recognize excellence and innovation in English-language haiku and senryu published in juried public venues during each calendar year.” 

Below is the winning poem, which I wrote at the Klamath River last summer. This poem also won first place in the Porad Haiku Awards last fall.

long before language the S of the river

For a fascinating look at the range of English-language today, see the contest shortlist. My deepest thanks to the panel of judges.

Meanwhile, I’m getting my second Pfizer shot on Sunday, which will mean all five of us in my household are fully vaccinated. Whew! Plus, the cherry trees around my house have put on a fabulous show and are starting send their blossoms afloat. There is much to celebrate!

swirls of confetti
from the cherry trees
festival day

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Makino Studios News

Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 9! I’ve got cards for all the moms in your life. And graduation cards too!

Collage landscape notecards: For Makino Studios’ 10th anniversary, I’ve produced a brand-new notecard set featuring four of my collage landscapes. The cost is $15 for a set of eight cards and kraft envelopes. Mother’s Day gift idea!

Matted prints: You can now find eight small signed and double-matted prints here, mostly of landscapes.

2021 fairs and events: North Coast Open Studios, which is usually held in late May/early June, will not take place this spring but there is a chance it will happen in the fall. The North Country Fair on the Arcata Plaza is tentatively scheduled to take place Sept. 18-19 this year, if Covid-19 safety permits. 

Thanks: I really appreciate all the messages of congratulations on my last post, “Makino Studios turns 10 today!” You can read past posts online on my blog.

Welcome to the eternal now

"foamy surf" is 11x14, painted with sumi ink and Japanese watercolors on paper. It depicts the Lost Coast in Humboldt County, California.

Recently I spent a long, boring week in bed with the flu. When not sleeping, reading, or writing whiny haiku about being sick, I did some musing on the nature of time. 

There are so many ways that we fight with time. In the short term, like most modern-day humans, I often feel that there is not enough time in the day to do everything I want to do, like paint. So it was frustrating to be bedridden for days, with too much time on my hands but not enough energy to do anything with it!

In the long term, as I get older, I feel a keener awareness of my limited time here on earth, and my finite window to contribute to the world. This, too, can lead to frustration that I am not accomplishing more.

Time can also seem like an enemy because we only experience it flowing in one direction. As a result, it’s natural to compare the present with the concrete and specific past that we clearly remember rather than the misty, unknown future. 

And so we focus more on aging and loss: the slim waistline and the full, dark hair we once took for granted, the steel-trap memory grown rusty, the friends who have passed on. Why not focus instead on the fact that we are probably healthier, sharper, and more energetic today than we will be down the line?

"celebrate" is 5x7, an image of cherry blossoms painted with sumi ink and watercolors on paper.

celebrate!
you’re younger now
than you’ll ever be

What if, as in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, we aged in reverse? Would we be more enthusiastic about growing “older” if it meant becoming more youthful? Yes, eventually there are diapers, mushy food and babbling at both ends of life. But for some reason this is adorable in toddlers, embarrassing in the old.

Anyhow, Benjamin Button is a work of fiction. As Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” 

Maybe we would be happier if we fully grasped the discovery from quantum physics that time is malleable and relative. What if time does not exist in any fundamental sense except as a useful conceptual tool for navigating our world? To quote sci fi writer Ray Cummings, “time is what keeps everything from happening at once.”

Although none of us are evolved enough to transcend time permanently (is that what death is?), we have all experienced the state of “flow” when we lose awareness of the passage of time. It might be while surfing, reading a great book, or playing music with friends. When I am painting—a right-brain activity—I’m focused on color and form, and the hours flow by uncounted.

Paradoxically, perhaps we would feel we had “enough time” if we spent more of our days in this mode beyond time, when we are fully present and engaged in each moment. It shouldn't be that hard to do: as young children, we passed most of the day in this state, fully immersed in exploration and play. 

On my way to the beach, I often hike by some cement water tanks that have been covered in graffiti for years. Today I was tickled to see that a county worker had painted it all out except this one line: “Welcome to the eternal now.”

foamy surf
rushing out
my inner child

Zen graffiti on a water tank at Ma-le'l Dunes in Manila, California.

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Makino Studios

2018 Golden Haiku Competition: I’m delighted to share that the haiku below was selected to be featured on a sign in downtown Washington, DC this month! If any of my DC readers sees it, in the Golden Triangle neighborhood between the White House and Dupont Circle, please send me a photo!

North Coast Open Studios: Mark your calendar for the 20th anniversary of this fun, free event, when more than a hundred Humboldt County artists open their studios to the public. I will once again join silk painter Tina Gleave and other artists at the Samoa Women’s Club in Samoa, CA for Weekend 1, June 2-3. 

More thoughts on aging: A 2013 blog post, “Younger than we’ll ever be,” uses prose, art, and haiku to explore the theme of coming to terms with getting older.