NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

Canada has long been a great haiku nation and RAW NERVZ is testament to a continued spirit of adventure and exploration. Its densely packed pages contain a rich seam for prospectors on the frontier of haiku — some solid gold nuggets, plenty of beautiful, glittering pyrites and, it must be admitted, a quantity of mud (one or two of these contributions seem too self-consciously literary).

Among the rewards, the rueful humour of Tim Bravenboer:

	late for meeting
	last seat
	by the boss

	young Goth
	a skull painted
	on each fingernail

	and a second time
	the far-wailing of night trains
	wakes me to sadness

	passing shower hangs around longer than its intent

A magazine of haiku, senryu and tanka. A poet is often given space for three or more examples of his/her work, and an interesting element is the occasional piece where prose is used to set the scene/time that led to the haiku, or even just to stand in contrast to it, although sometimes the evocation of a particular scene/memory in prose is more effective than the few words of the poem.

Haiku, because of the distilled paucity of its expression and reliance on what is evoked rather than stated, is perhaps even more of a random hit or miss affair than other types of poetry. Although, as expected, there are a few misses here, there are nonetheless quite a number of hits. I pick out as examples the following by Chad Lee Robinson, Mykel Board and Daniel Py:

	with my sweater
	she returns
	the shape of her breasts

		from under the bamboo
		I watch the rain fall
		on someone else

	ma soeur habitait un ruisseau
	sur un fil d'ombre
	le soleil dansait

A magazine that is cleverly put together and has the feel and look of having been in its composition a work of love and devotion.

This is an A5 stapled booklet containing 52 pages. The pages contain a variety of short poetry. It also contains haibun. It is diverse enough to please a wide range of readers, but the journal retains its focus. I recognise the names of many contributors, probably because the poets able to write respectable haiku and tanka are few.

The topics are varied and Patricia Prime provides a mystery:

	spring thunderstorm
	the unexplained noise
	in a rented room

	my raincoat —
	in the pocket
	last summer's shells

		dawn sky
		the space the clouds make
		for departing birds

	snowstorm . . .
	without knocking off anything
	bush chickadee

	passing my old girlfriend's house no seats on the train

		Like Gaughin's 
		violet lover
		palm open
		I offer this
		raw heart.