The Dry Bones

by Paul Chambers

“These haiku are not just haiku, they are poems that exhibit openings to higher consciousness. The haiku of Paul Chambers is both a haiku of self-awareness but it is also a poetry of cosmic awareness, exemplifying one’s own mortality as well as one’s own sense of eternity in the present moment. However, Paul Chambers can also be described as a modern-day Issa too, when his vision so exquisitely portrays the suchness in seeing things just as they are, and releasing his readers on a journey of quiet magnificence.”
Wally Swist


“For anyone who thinks the world of haiku is one of the wistful whispers, this collection is the antidote. Each of Paul Chambers’ haiku is a breath of cold wind cutting across high moorland, bringing us acutely to our senses. Read together, they create a landscape alive with nonhuman presences, a sense of deep time coded in their vivid moments.”
Philip Gross

Chapbook RCP80
A6 62 Pages
First published as a limited run of 40 copies.

63 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2021

About the author

Paul Chambers is a haiku poet, and was the founding editor of the Wales Haiku Journal.

Chambers's work has appeared in Modern Haiku, Presence, Frogpond, Acorn, the Heron's Nest, and the Red Moon Anthology, and has been collected in anthologies. He has published three collections of poetry.

Reviews

[Jerome Berglund · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recently I’ve found myself positively engrossed in the chapbooks of the UK’s Red Ceilings Press, and this little jewel I received in the mail today I have to thank for that, and is another sterling testimonial to the masterful taste and distinguishing selectiveness with which their demanding catalogue consistently has offered. Paul Chamber’s haiku epiphany The Dry Bones demonstrates this characteristic excellence to the utmost degree, and truly showcases the best in what contemporary applications the form can aspire towards. I’m deeply grateful for the thoughtful review in last issue of Frogpond turning me on to the collection, every element of which has been carefully orchestrated to to be handsome, meaningful, and aesthetically pleasing, from the size and shape to the cover photograph which while at first glance appears abstract and modernist, upon closer examination includes a tiny inscription etched within of perhaps the most recognizable and specific symbol mankind has yet devised. Indeed spiritual and overtly metaphysical undertones flicker obscurely and intriguingly about the contents of this Chamber’s third collection of haiku to date (astonishing, when one considers the amount of award-winning and publishing he’s done in that time, attesting to his rigorous meticulousness and precision, a preference for quality over quantity which translates beautifully into the medium) and infuses captivating layers of consequence and import into the many diverse selections included within. As one of the blurbs on the back cover notes, the imagery evoked and employed by Chambers is far from romanticized or sentimental, departs from that trivializing tendency of modern dilettantes and returns to the squalor and poverty coinciding with the hard nomadic lifestyle of those traveling monks who pioneered the tradition long ago in the East. If there are occasionally bursts of nostalgia or optimism, they come amidst a generally windswept landscape of carrion birds and cattle cars, instancing freezing and fragmentation. A few pages in I was struck immediately with a certain difficult to articulate synergy between Chamber’s visions, where he chooses to inspiredly train his lens, and the high contrast black and white desert landscape photographs of Anselm Adams. Yet there is also a distinctly European quality to all of the writing, preserving the haiku tradition but resituating it in a radically different space and time, which nonetheless it is perfectly suited for and applied to. It is as though a Welsch Basho has taken his bindle and Buddhism and set off through the moors of Wuthering Heights, or the apocalyptic landscapes of Browning’s Wasteland. I’m honored to have snagged a copy of this in its second edition, as the first of a mere forty copies I understand sold out immediately. Highly recommend you pick your own up as soon as possible if you think you may be inclined, as it’s uncertain how long their supplies will last. Dedicated to his grandmother, starting on a crucifix and ending on a prayer, there is certainly a fitting tone of grief and mortality in this collection too which is noteworthy, captures and lends an important voice to the feelings so many of us have grappled with throughout these last difficult years. If you’d like some more background and context about the work and its author I definitely suggest popping over to Frogpond where their book reviews are archived, as there is an excellent write-up (by Laurie D. Morrissey in issue 44:3) on this worth perusing additionally!