Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

In their short but informative Preface, the authors characterise haiku as emerging from the chance encounter of two often commonplace elements; through the poem, they combine to create a third element which ‘transcends its component parts and, at its best, allows the reader to glimpse a little something of what is behind appearances.’ Maeve O’Sullivan and Kim Richardson then make plain that this laudable if somewhat formidable endeavour is one they are undertaking with the present collection, as they add the hope that the two of them together ‘give voice to something that has not so much come from them as through them.’

   How far (or how often) the two poets succeed in fulfilling their lofty ambition in Double Rainbow is for each individual reader to decide. For we must bear in mind that the role of the reader can be crucial to the creative completion of a haiku in many instances - as is acknowledged by Jim Norton in his Introduction to the collection when he speaks of the incompleteness that ‘leaves space for the reader.’

   For me (and I must stress for me), a few of these poems do indeed reach to at least the fringes of transcendence, a few decidedly do not and the rest waver at various stages between.

   Overall, it must be said, the collection has about it an air of unassuming confidence, the sort of confidence, perhaps, that comes from knowing you have produced something genuine, something ‘real’. While strictly avoiding any suggestion of cosiness, it nevertheless engenders a sense of companionable familiarity - a subtle and quietly attractive quality.

My favourites include:

 airport security                                 watching the sunset
 a woman frisks me                           the pub landlord
 undoing your hug    (MO’S)             pulls down the blinds    (KR)

And here are two I’d put in my ‘wavering’ category:

two crows flying                     pink bracelet
close to the water                   left behind -
four crows             (KR)         the sparkle of her laughter   (MO’S)

   There are 92 haiku and senryu, divided into 13 themed sections, in this sprucely-produced, perfect-bound book. With the exception of the opening haiku and the final one, all the poems are presented three-a-page. As well as the Preface and Introduction previously mentioned, there is an index of first lines and publication credits and also a page about the authors themselves.

Altogether an engaging, attractive and worthwhile book.