Yavanika Press
Mini chapbooks
“Alison Jennings’ Desire and Despair is a beautiful chapbook that explores how ‘everything that can be found is connected.’ Through her captivating poems, Jennings pays homage to fellow poets, inviting the reader into the complexities of longing and loss. Whether we’re finding love on an index card or contemplating a blue feather, Jennings’ poems capture the essence of our shared desires and the impact of our deepest despairs.”
— Kelli Russell Agodon, Author of Dialogues with Rising Tides
Desire and Despair
“C. X. Turner can be counted upon to bring refreshing originality and invention to the haikai arts, weaving mesmerizing tapestries through charged words and evocative moments, while deploying rich symbology, histories, and archetype. In this powerful, eloquent chapbook of ten unforgettable poems, readers will find much to identify with in these tight, imagistic depictions, and they may well help us each to realize we are not alone in our struggles. No poet I can think of utilizes yugen and ma with quite the skill or panache as Turner does here and elsewhere so impressively.”
— Jerome Berglund
anemones
“Seth Copeland has managed to encapsulate the essence of southwest Oklahoma as if his words were written in gunpowder. Each line carries through with precision and a heavy, gritty, impact that even cuts through Kevlar. Read it. Love it.”
— Sy Hoahwah, Author of Ancestral Demon of a Grieving Bride
Plug in the Mountain
Mixed-genre
“And Mash by Jerome Berglund crackles with the kind of life you find in a city recently decontextualized by a thunderstorm. The poems interrogate not the division between the natural and manmade but the falseness of that division. Our conception of the natural is itself a construction, while human artifice is natural. These tensions form a network of relations which the poet draws from and deconstructs, leading not so much to a resolution, but acceptance.”
— Pippa Phillips
And Mash
anityam
“We have a rich tradition wherein, when the love for God/Goddess goes beyond a certain threshold, and you cannot contain or express the same to a fellow human being, the emotion transmutes itself into a piece of art such as poems, kritis, and so on, as a small token of gratitude, in the poet’s perspective, towards the higher being. Here, Raghav Prashant Sundar, a modern-day devotee, has showcased his devotion and spiritual knowledge through the shortest poetic form: haiku. It truly is an honour and a huge contribution to have him in the haiku community, spreading the love, knowledge, and spiritual concepts of Hindu culture to other readers around the world.”
— Dr. Jaswanth A S
“We can all be made anew. That was my biggest takeaway from these visually delightful and insightful collage poems. Building a poem is always a careful labor of love, but Carter has taken it one step further, cutting out words from magazines and repositioning them into new ideas and images. Read these poems slowly. Take in each word’s presence as Carter “summon[s] old ideas to create new ones.” Here “A poet glows in the dark” in poems full of color, energy, and transformative hope.”
— Deborah Bacharach, Author of Shake & Tremor and After I Stop Lying
Behind the Scenes
at the Eternal Everyday
Japanese short-forms
“Arvinder Kaur’s chapbook challenges Jack Kerouac’s oft-cited assertion that haiku should be as simple as porridge. Delving into these profound monoku (which she dubs “rareku”) demands effort, but fear not, as Kaur generously provides a glossary of key terms to unlock their layers. While Kerouac’s advice to aspiring haijin remains sound, Kaur invites us to indulge her poetic diversion. I am blessed, as she had hoped, for having taken a crack at these poems. rasāsvāda is a collection I’ll revisit often for further exploration and inspiration.”
— P. H. Fischer, Co-Editor of Prune Juice
rasāsvāda
“Mithaक is a tour de force by Surashree Joshi that juxtaposes ancient myths and contemporary concerns with great skill. At times startling, at times amusing, it is always deeply thought-provoking. A real delight for anyone with an interest in mythology and a love for poetry.”
— Ashish Narain, Associate Editor of haikuKATHA
Mithaक
“while the lily blooms, a collection of monoku and dua by visual artist and poet Norma Bradley, is painted in the hues of wild violets, winter berries, and dogwood blossoms. These meditative moments span the life-cycle of birth, death, and everything in between. Norma’s observation of nature, be it the migrating birds or the alpenglow, reflect her inner world and the transience that is us, often connecting to the continuum of generations past. The sights, sounds, and tastes in these poems are sensorially rich, yet expressed without embellishment.”
— Geethanjali Rajan, Haiku Editor of cattails
while the lily booms
“Tazeen Fatma playfully brings to light unquestioned notions and habitual ways of seeing. Take for instance, the following single-line poem: ‘windsock wherever life takes me.’ We may like to think of ourselves as going with the proverbial “flow,” but something or other may still be rigidly holding us back. Her line, then, has us asking what is doing this. If Fatma’s poems do not pull the carpet out from under you, they may very well give it a tug.”
— Joseph S. Aversano, Founder of Half Day Moon Press
Fireflies and Umbra
“Twenty-five poets, a little over hundred poems, and one Master teacher: these are the ingredients that make any moment now a publishing event worth celebrating. This anthology of short poems includes the haikai forms as well as cherita, all written by students of Shloka Shankar. Some of the featured poets have already issued a chapbook or two, many have appeared in well-known haiku journals, while the youngest poet, at age twelve, skillfully elicits the spirit of senryu in his lines: ‘old schoolbag / I pull out / a familiar smell.’ Savor this exciting book as these poets share their worlds with you.”
— Peter Jastermsky, Author of into the stillness & Backpedaling
any moment now
“Ajay Kumar’s writing has that rare quality of catching the miraculous real in medias res—each word’s labour wrought effortless with the iridescence of movement. Intimate moments charged with feeling accumulate slowly in the plots of his poems. His poetic imagination transforms material and psychological realities, turning language into a living thing, giving sensation to experience. Metaphor frees the poems, pulling the reader right into the vortex of his evocative world. This is an honest voice filled with wonder, and a profound contemplation of human emotion, speaking in an idiom that is compellingly contemporary.”
— Aranya, Poet and Curator of Poetly