Parts of the moon

A collection of haiku and senryu. Christchurch poet, editor, critic, and winner of the open and haiku sections of the 2006 New Zealand Poetry Society International Poetry Competition, John O'Connor is arguably one of New Zealand's finest contemporary poets. Acknowledged internationally for his work in haiku, senryu and related forms, his haiku have been anthologised and published in eight languages. With this selection, drawn from the best of his published and unpublished work, the specificity of voice and images demonstrate O'Connor's stature as haiku master with a particular antipodean sense of season and place. For those who seek to push the boundaries of the craft or to return to the origins of the written form in symbols and hieroglyphs, O'Connor's brief and concluding essay, Technology and Verse, discusses the application of graphic words (computer graphics) in haiku, as evidenced in some of the haiku herein. And for those who know and appreciate the haiku moment, the insights and apprehensions of this collection will resonate long after the book is closed.