Dick Whyte - 'Same Old Moon: Haiku | Hokku | Hiraku' (2025)

Paperback & Ebook Available Now!

Kia ora all,

I am very pleased to announce the release of my new book Same Old Moon, a collection of haiku (including hokku and hiraku) covering the first ten years of my haikai writing life living in and around Pōneke/Wellington, in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Following last years Before the Earth: Haiku & Haikai—a collaboration with my writing partner Laurence Stacey—this is the first full length solo collection of my work to be published, and I am so excited to be sharing it finally. Available now in paperback and ebook—here’s a few selections . . .

Around 17 years in the making, the haiku in this book were culled from a few thousand fragments written between 2008-2019, and edited down to around 1000 ku between 2016-2020. This was further whittled to 200 ku earlier this year—newly edited and sequenced—representing what I consider to be the absolute best of my standalone haikai writing during this time.

Apologies for the extended hiatus! The weekly Forgotten Poets newsletters will resume next week—promise. Plus, I have a few announcements!

For the last month, I have been working really hard on a some big projects, of which Same Old Moon is the first to reach completion (alongside an overhaul of the design elements of the newsletter). Also coming really soon: a brand new book of translations of haiku and haikai by Ukō and Bonchō—two prominent poets of the Bashō school who have been largely overlooked in English,—a new website with a fully functioning bookstore, a new series of t-shirts and hoodies based on the Forgotten Prints series, and a poetry bookclub for paying subscribers! So keep your eyes peeled—there’s a lot of exciting things coming up!

Many thanks to all the readers of Forgotten Poets for the constant support in the way of community kindness, likes, shares, comments. I appreciate it so so much! Everything here at Forgotten Poets is free, with no paywalls or ads, and I intend to keep it that way. However, if you are in a position to help us out financially, please consider buying a book of two—it would really help (and if you do buy anything, leaving a review on Amazon also really helps)!

As gift-giving season approaches, it seems like a good time to remind everyone that Forgotten Poets also publishes boutique collections of out-of-print and obscure poets from the 1900s-1920s, bespoke with hand restored illustrations and ornaments from the time!

For those new to the Forgotten Poets book series, lovers of haikai and tanka should check out Jun Fujita’s stunning 1923 collection of original English-language tanka, Lewis Alexander’s tanka, haiku, and haikai-influenced free-verse from the 1920s, and the Hughes & Iwasaki translations of “modern” tanka poets Yosano Akiko, Takeko Kujō, and Akiko Yanagiwara. Other volumes include Harlem Renaissance poet Gwendolyn Bennett, Imagists like T.E. Hulme and F.S. Flint, and avant-garde poets like Jessie Dismorr and Mina Loy. Check out the full catalogue and some poems here!

Finally, if you’re reading this with no intention of doing any of these things, much love as well! I appreciate every single one of you. I really didn’t know if anyone would read this newsletter when I started it, and the fact that after just a year and a bit there are now over 1000 people who choose to get it delivered to their inbox every week—that just blows me away!

Vespers

Poems by Dick Whyte, and other miscellanea. Explore the archive . . .