SEA CHANGE
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on March 9th at 11am EST
Published by Whiptail Press in collaboration with Red Moon Press
Foreword by Jim Kacian, President of The Haiku Foundation
Sea Change is just that—a fresh and essential collection of innovative, contemporary English-language haiku, tanka, and micropoems, and a celebration of the ways that these single-line poems differ from their more commonly encountered enjambed counterparts. Scholars, writers, and readers of poetry will enjoy these selections, which are expansive of their genres while maintaining a touchstone to Japanese aesthetics.
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This anthology of 84 single-line poems will appeal to anyone who enjoys short yet substantial poetry. The inaugural book of poetry collected from whiptail: journal of the single-line poem includes haiku (also referred to as monoku), tanka, and micropoems—each one written in a single line. While many of the collected poems are formatted horizontally, other formats are included in the book: vertical, reversed, looped, and free form. The anthology showcases the wide range of possibilities of the poetic line through the exploration of topics, tools, and techniques.
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Praise for Sea Change: An Anthology of Single-Line Poems
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“Who knew we needed a journal dedicated to testing and developing the one-line poem? Editors Kat Lehmann and Robin Smith, that’s who. And what an exciting display of whiptail’s first two years online this first anthology provides. Imagine a colorful assortment of firecrackers in a box—slender sizzlers taking off in a shower of compressed thought, imagistic surprises, and other aural and visual delights. Page by page, nothing distracts from the poetry, not even the name of the poet, that 4th (in this case 2nd) line, here removed to the back of the book. Read this anthology for the sheer variety in monoku craft. Read for the shared sensibilities of one-line tanka and other micro-poems. Above all, read for the wonder of what one small fuse can do.”
Michele Root-Bernstein
Author of Wind Rose and the award-winning Plainsong, both from Snapshot Press
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“What if we were all given one line to render a poem naming what it means to be human? Some would come with the undomesticated disjunctions of haiku, and some could come with a micro-poem or words suggestive of a tanka—and some of us would free ourselves of the heavy cloaks of classifying that tell the story of a poem short of its truth. You will find here peacocks and doves and the diaphanous blues selected from issues 1-7 of whiptail. This anthology is a sea change, a second Shiki—a primer and a delight lifting the scales from our eyes. A deep bow for this collaboration.”
Dan Schwerin
Author of the Touchstone Award-winning ORS, from Red Moon Press