Author: Kala Ramesh

Kala Ramesh co-edited the award winning Naad Anunaad: an Anthology of Contemporary World Haiku (Vishwakarma Publication 2016) and co-authored an e-book with Marlene Mountain one-line twos (Bones 2016). She is the author of two books: haiku (Katha Books 2010, reprint 2017) and beyond the horizon beyond (Vishwakarma Publication 2017) and a tanka e-chapbook unseen arc (Snapshot Press 2017). Kala's initiatives culminated in founding IN haiku in 2013. She teaches haiku and allied genres at Symbiosis International University Pune. To bring haiku into everyday spaces, Kala initiated HaikuWALL, haikuTRAIL, haikuTALK, haikuWORKSHOP, haikuYOUTH, haikuUTSAV, haikuDHYANA and haikuSAATSANGATH, the last being a stage performance with dancers and actors.

brooding
over my dog’s death
I miss the first nightingale

Gita chanting
  birds become
the ellipsis

(Originally received an Akita International Haiku Award, September 2014, Honourable Mention)

humpback whale!
for a split-second
the sky steps back

(Originally published in Presence Haiku Journal #76, July 2023)

patina
on dancing Shiva
                the guardian
of a ruined temple

who am i

   a falling leaf

gives the answer

notes trickle
down a riverbed of sand …
the memory of water

(Originally appeared in the 5th edition of the Santoka

mountain trek
my steps ringed
with birdsong

(Wales Haiku Journal, Autumn 2021)

I am
                        the city

twice born

                        imprisoned

with no key
to return

                         a nonchalant moon
                         passes through

thunderclap —
the darkening sky splits
into liquid night

(Originally published in beyond the horizon beyond)

an eagle shadows a wheat field’s yellow whisper


monsoons begin   with each day's rains
    the hills turn greener   greener

Originally appeared in beyond the horizon beyond (Vishwakarma Publications 2017)

the darkness of my skin
 on my soul
 this stickiness

(Originally published in is/let, November 2017)

The Look

Two or three times a year I make trips to Chennai to be with my parents for a few weeks. My mother is 85 years old. I notice every shade of emotion that runs

blossoms . . .
the dog leap-curves
toward the frisbee

(originally published in Frogpond,Vol. XXX, No. 2, 2007)

after sunset
mountains become the sky
a muezzin’s call

(originally appeared in Frogpond 38:3., Autumn 2015)

her plait in step with her hips a string of jasmine

(First published in Bones, an e-book in PDF format by Kala Ramesh and Marlene Mountain)

how little
I know of bird calls
distant thunder

(Akita International Haiku Award, First Prize, September 2013)

midnight jetty
the sound of water
slapping water

(Originally published in A Hundred Gourds 1:3, June 2012)

an evening
of tangled thoughts . . .
through branches
even this rugged moon
looks tattered at the edges

(originally appeared in American Tanka, June

Gita chanting —
as each stanza ends
the bell

male gaze the female in me squares up her arms

twilight trees
birds go in and out
of song

(previously published in Acorn #26 — Spring 2011)

liquid sky . . .
a steel bucket hits
the well water

ceiling mirror
between screams I see
my child being born

Shiki Monthly Kukai, February, 2011

white water rafting
         we spin around
our laughter

Previously published in Mayfly, Summer 2008

slipping in
beneath the kitchen door
—first sunlight

painting class
children color each other
into laughter

dense fog
the train evaporates
into a distant horn

the wind howling horizon on a wave