Author: Dave Bonta

I'm the author of several books of poetry, including Ice Mountain: An Elegy, Breakdown: Banjo Poems, and Odes to Tools, but my real work is at my long-running literary blog Via Negativa, where I'm currently creating erasure poems from every entry of the Diary of Samuel Pepys. I'm also the editor and publisher of Moving Poems, a blog showcasing the best poetry videos on the web.

crow mimicking

a crow hunter’s
crow call

With the change in the calendar comes a major change in photohaiku presentation here. After years of resisting the urge to make haiga (or postal poems, as a short-lived journal I used to edit called photos incorporating text), I’ve finally given in, prompted by the discovery that the Snapseed app, which I’ve had on my phone for years, makes it really easy. (In my defense, the text option is hidden near the bottom of the tools menu.) I’ve long been bothered by the unimaginative text-image pairings and poor font choices in a lot of online photo haiga, so this is my chance to try and do a little better (while still failing frequently, I’m sure).

I’ll still split the text between title and post, for accessibility’s sake and to maintain consistency with the archive. I may still post photos without text in them. And I’ll continue to cross-post to Instagram (@neotoma_magister) and auto-post to Twitter (@morningporch), so you can follow me there as well if you’re a masochist.