Background photograph of feathers adapted from the original,
copyrighted © by Katherine Raine. All rights reserved.

Editor’s Note:

Verses in plain text are by Katherine Raine, and those in italics are by Sheila Sondik. The rengay is a North American linked-verse form invented in 1992 by Garry Gay, former president of the Haiku Society of America. Originally, the rengay was a six-link collaborative poem by two poets, each contributing two haiku and one haiku-like verse, but the form was soon adapted for three collaborators. For details about its structure and history, please see The Rengay Verse Form by J. Zimmerman.

Katherine Raine

has lived in the USA, Canada, Tasmania, Japan, and New Zealand, working as a landscape architect, garden historian, and design teacher. Now retired to a coastal farm in southernmost New Zealand, she is indulging her love of poetry-writing, garden-making, and photography. Her haiku and tanka have been published in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, the USA, and online. Poetry is one of the strong links in her friendship with Sheila, keeping their connection going across the Pacific.

Sheila Sondik

is a printmaker and poet in Bellingham, Washington. She is interested in finding and celebrating the mysteries in things small, close at hand, and easily overlooked, like lichens and eroded rock. She has been writing haiku and related Japanese forms since 2010 and enjoyed composing this rengay with her friend Katherine.

www.sheilasondik.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Writing Rengay by Garry Gay, the founder of the form, in Graceguts (December 2012)

⚡ Learning to Write Haiku: A Teacher’s Guide by Katherine Raine (New Zealand Poetry Society, February 2016)

⚡ J.I. Kleinberg on Finding: three good books on finding, including Sheila Sondik’s chapbook of 30 Pulitzer Remix poems Fishing a Familiar Pond: Found Poems from The Yearling

⚡ Haiku by Katherine Raine in Haiku New Zealand Showcase