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to wade through the wind as a night, a collection of the multi-haiku form sudo-ku, was selected for curation as part of the fabulous Ghost City Press 2025 Summer Series.
Many thanks to guest editors Gabrielle Grace Hogan and Tom Snarsky for including my work in the series! The collection is available on the publisher's site as a free download. Add your reviews, thoughts, and ratings on Goodreads. I'd love to hear what you think! |
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'to wade through the wind as a night' is the chapbook that named itself. To see what is meant by that, you will have to read the book ;)
This is the first collection of sudo-ku, a woven grid, contemporary multi-haiku form created by the author in 2020. To take the collection a step further, the individual sudo-ku in this manuscript are organized into a higher-order, tiered structure; it's what this set of poems wanted to do.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR ON THE SUDO-KU FORM:
Sudo-ku had their start while I doodled and played with Basho's famous "old pond" haiku. I wondered if there was a way to structure the haiku such that the words created a short poem when read in more than one direction. How would the interwoven poems—which utilize the same words—resonate and speak to each other? This exploration of syntax became a part of the work. How does an arrangement of words combine into phrases that hold meanings that are parallel or antithetical to one another? Can the richness of an experience be expressed succinctly this way?
Soon, I was writing sudo-ku from scratch, naming the multi-haiku form both for its visual similarity to a sudoku math puzzle, and for the homonym "pseudo-ku," as a subtly joking way to dismiss my multi-ku experiment before anyone else might do so. Well, I was wrong, as the reception to sudo-ku has been enthusiastic, both inside and outside of the haiku community, with other poets now writing their own.
Although the grid format might appear restraining at first, I have found it unlocks a meandering discovery for the reader as the poem describes a layered experience. The title is both a prime for the reader and a touchstone as the woven poems unfold.
Some of the individual sudo-ku have previously appeared in Frogpond, Human/Kind, Rattle, and Sonic Boom. One was nominated by Rattle for a Pushcart Prize and was #8 in their Top Poems / Most Read Poems of 2023. A longer and earlier version was a finalist in the inaugural Purple Ink Press Chapbook Contest.
Cover art by the author. AI was NOT used to create any of these poems.
This is the first collection of sudo-ku, a woven grid, contemporary multi-haiku form created by the author in 2020. To take the collection a step further, the individual sudo-ku in this manuscript are organized into a higher-order, tiered structure; it's what this set of poems wanted to do.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR ON THE SUDO-KU FORM:
Sudo-ku had their start while I doodled and played with Basho's famous "old pond" haiku. I wondered if there was a way to structure the haiku such that the words created a short poem when read in more than one direction. How would the interwoven poems—which utilize the same words—resonate and speak to each other? This exploration of syntax became a part of the work. How does an arrangement of words combine into phrases that hold meanings that are parallel or antithetical to one another? Can the richness of an experience be expressed succinctly this way?
Soon, I was writing sudo-ku from scratch, naming the multi-haiku form both for its visual similarity to a sudoku math puzzle, and for the homonym "pseudo-ku," as a subtly joking way to dismiss my multi-ku experiment before anyone else might do so. Well, I was wrong, as the reception to sudo-ku has been enthusiastic, both inside and outside of the haiku community, with other poets now writing their own.
Although the grid format might appear restraining at first, I have found it unlocks a meandering discovery for the reader as the poem describes a layered experience. The title is both a prime for the reader and a touchstone as the woven poems unfold.
Some of the individual sudo-ku have previously appeared in Frogpond, Human/Kind, Rattle, and Sonic Boom. One was nominated by Rattle for a Pushcart Prize and was #8 in their Top Poems / Most Read Poems of 2023. A longer and earlier version was a finalist in the inaugural Purple Ink Press Chapbook Contest.
Cover art by the author. AI was NOT used to create any of these poems.
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The Ghost City Press 2025 Summer Series works are all available as a free download from the publisher's site.
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