Writing
I’ve always been drawn to the sparseness of haiku and the challenge of conveying meaning within such a short form.
I follow the traditional Japanese approach, rather than the “almost anything goes” style of most English-language haiku. My work is rooted in nature, seasonal references, and careful structural precision. These constraints don’t limit the work – they sharpen it, encouraging me to slow down and pay close attention with all my senses to fully capture the moment.
I began writing haibun to provide context for my work in Greenland, a place so different from the rest of the world that a little extra grounding helps readers to engage with the haiku.
Selected Haibun
Anticipation
Published in The Haibun Journal, issue 6:3
in the produce section
canned fruit and vegetables
the only options
The news has blown through Tasiilaq like a piteraq. The Nanoq Arctica is on its way and, according to Shiptracker, should arrive later this morning. For the next several hours, everyone is glued to their phone, monitoring its slow progress towards town.
At 10:40 am, I join the crowd on the hill above the church and watch as the red supply ship grows steadily larger. Half the town is here, including schoolchildren and anyone who could escape from work. A hero’s reception for a lifeline we’ve not seen for six months.
As the cargo vessel pulls alongside the harbour, one of the town’s cannons fires a welcome. The captain responds with three long blasts of the horn and several locals launch fireworks into the brilliant day.
on jaded tastebuds
a flare of fresh stawberries
late spring sunshine
*Tasiilaq is the largest town in East Greenland
**pitaraq is a strong katabatic wind common in East Greenland
Modern History
Published in The Haibun Journal, issue 6:1
It feels as if I’m back in time. Since leaving Sisimiut four days ago, I’ve had nowhere to resupply food, no phone reception, nowhere to recharge batteries, and I’ve seen almost no other people. It’s exactly what I was looking for out here on Greenland’s Arctic Circle Trail.
After a breakfast of oats made palatable with wild blueberries, I tear down camp and hoist my 18kg pack onto my back. A tall, stone cairn painted with a red half-sun guides me back to the foot-width trail that leads me across the invisible border into the Aasivissuit – Nipisat UNESCO World Heritage area.
This enormous site was inscribed to preserve and protect an ancient hunting route of the Greenlandic Inuit. Every summer for thousands of years, they would leave their coastal dwellings at Nipisat and paddle then walk east to the reindeer hunting grounds at Aasivissuit near Kangerlussuaq. While the Arctic Circle Trail doesn’t follow this historic route exactly, it offers the only land-based access to the UNESCO area during summer and achieves the same purpose – guiding travellers from the ocean to the ice cap across more than two hundred kilometres of Arctic tundra.
marking the trail
discarded reindeer antlers
bleached by the sun
Selected haiku
Published in The Heron’s Nest, Modern Haiku, and Poetry Pea.
snow-filled valley
from one cliff-face to the next
the raven’s echo
before sunrise
coiled around Scorpio’s tail
ribbons of aurora
alone on the ice
bent over something scavenged
a midnight raven
snow-filled graveyard
on the tip of a white cross
a black raven