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Praise forSnow Moon by Steven Carter, published October 2011
"Steven Carter's Snow Moon is a beguiling collection of haiku/haibun. The writing is nuanced, ranging from lyrical to haunting... with touches of wry humour."
Cynthia Rowe, Editor, Haiku Xpressions & President, Australian Haiku Society
"Snow Moon offers a winning combination of haiku and haibun. Carter's lightness of touch, sureness of tone and teasing subtlety deploy the potencies of dream, memory and imagination across an impressive range."
Jim Norton, Founder Editor, Haiku Spirit
"From the Magrittian Equinox to the Munchian 1991, Carter displays consummate artistry in both his haiku miniatures and in the broader canvas of his haibun."
Maeve O'Sullivan, Founder Member, Haiku Ireland
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Excerpts from reviews of Initial Response by Maeve O'Sullivan, published April 2011
Summing up, we must say that Maeve O'Sullivan has authored a subtle, honed, personal collection, which encapsulates a keen eye for the natural world; together with a gentle humour. However it is her studies on the human heart that are most deeply affecting: an 'initial response' to the pattern of life perhaps?"
Sharon Burrell, Shamrock Haiku Journal (Read)
"These haiku remain private in essence but can be understood by anyone. There is a wide variety of experience and a splash of colour - a textual tour de force ...this is poetry of pauses and silences, of inner contemplation, and the act of trying to absorb the concepts of emotional realities, life and mortality. O'Sullivan is less a poet of the small and domestic, than of abiding metaphysical questions. The haiku are variously loving and languid, surreal one moment and sharply picturesque the next. Possessed of a quiet wisdom, O'Sullivan's haiku will stay with you long after you put the book down."
Patricia Prime, New Zealand Poetry Society (Read)
The device of the alphabetical arrangement succeeds to the extent that it provides context to haiku that might be insufficient without it. Additionally, the arrangement ensures that we get just enough haiku on any given theme without getting so many that we begin to tire of the system. In short, one of the main challenges of any haiku collection has been met: the whole has the feel of being greater than the sum of the parts."
Martin Lucas, Presence Journal (UK)
This (A-Z structure) is a clever way of doing it as haiku have a brevity and economy to them, (it gives them) a thematic bind. The best ones are personal ones ... very simple, very sparse but conjuring up hundreds of emotions and images ... very cute observations, fleeting moments captured ... and she does it very well, very lyrically, a lovely collection."
Sinéad Gleeson, arts critic and journalist, on RTÉ Radio One's Arena programme (Read)
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Excerpts from reviews of Double Rainbow by Maeve O'Sullivan and Kim Richardson, published in November 2005
"DOUBLE RAINBOW is a book that you'll want to return to often. It offers so many essential insights into our relationship with each other and with a natural world from which we are so often alienated. Some haiku display powerful emotion and others, tenderness and vulnerability ... the resultant tone is one of experience, imagination and skilful crafting of the haiku form."
Patricia Prime in the New Hope International Review (Read)
"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... altogether an engaging, attractive and worthwhile book."
Maurice Tasnier in Blithe Spirit, the journal of the British Haiku Society (Read)
"Haiku is a tough form to pull off successfully. There is so little space and if you don't get your image precisely and deftly, the poem falls flat... the arrangement does create a sense of two voices weaving around each other, responding consciously and unconsciously to the vision of the other. The result is a deeper resonance for the reader."
Nessa O'Mahony, Orbis Quarterly International Literary Journal
These swift, slight poems indicate how the skein of the entire group reverberates with that keenness of feeling and sharp observation associated with Tu Fu, Li Po, even Rumi, while, at the same time, releasing a plaint about the complex tones of contemporary life. Thus, in Double Rainbow, vapor trails, tattoos, bricked-up doorways, prams, lapsed Irish Catholics, soaps, Saddam, and mortgage payments intersect with snails, fuchsia, swans, summer hailstorms, swallows on the river and, of course, the glance of sunlight which brings the bow of beauty every time. An unpretentious, often humorous, sound and lyrical volume. A gift."
Devon McNamara (USA / various)
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