Reviews

A taste for ‘A BREATH OF AFRICA’ – HAIKU

Lysa Collins’ highly recommended new haiku book, “A Breath of Africa” from Granville Island Publishing, shares dozens of one breath poems about her personal travel experiences with elephants and lions. Appended notes lightheartedly explain how a lion’s chuff is a noise like a big sniff, which is worrisome to hear from inside a cloth tent. Here’s a spine-tingler from the Okavango Delta.

blood moon–
young lions roar
just for practice

Please read on to see more of David McMurray’s wonderful reviews.

Here is a taste of Lysa Collins’ tantalizing writing.

monkeys
in the almond tree—
we put out the chair with arms

I was invited to read her adventure poetry and earmark those that I was
moved by. I took the manuscript with me to Hirakawa Zoological Park in
Kagoshima with a grassy pasture for zebra, giraffe and rhino flanked by a
magnificent backdrop of a live volcano. Sitting on a bench by a pool of hippos
where flamingos pranced about, I came to realize the magnitude of Lysa Collins
undertaking to observe and poetically record wildlife. Hippos really can lift
the entire surface of a pool with their huge mass!

with a snort
one hippo
lifts the lotus pond

Collins has paddled down the Okavango delta, traveled the Kalahari, trekked the Serengeti, and witnessed time begin in Ngorogoro.

Olduvai
echoes in the boulders
from before there was song

Many of her poems have been previously published in the Asahi Haikuist Network
and other discerning publications. This is your opportunity to read a carefully selected and arranged collection, fresh from “A Breath of Africa.” Highly recommended reading for the armchair traveler, unless you can go see the amazing fauna and flora for yourself before it is gone.

clear cut acacia—
I teeter
on the fallen years

David McMurray
Asahi Haikuist Network
International University
of Kagoshima, Japan