Tag: haiku

Congratulatory Certificate from MPP Wayne Gates

MPP

As part of the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Niagara Falls Poetry Project on April 9, 2026, Shannon Mitchell on behalf of MPP Wayne Gates presented this congratulatory certificate.

At the celebration, each speaker was introduced with a limerick, and each of the speakers was invited to write and perform a poem of their own.

MPP Wayne Gates speaking in the Ontario Legislature

The introduction to MPP Wayne Gates, written and recited by Andrew Porteus, read:

Our dear MPP is Wayne Gates
And havoc at Queen’s Park he creates
He’s got quite the ‘stache
That makes such a flash
When a cabinet minister he berates

Shannon Mitchell wrote and recited a haiku at the event:

Ontario budget
Deep cuts across the board
Community rises

At this event, the Niagara Falls Poetry Project 25th Anniversary Poetry Contest was announced. Click here for the rules and submission guidelines. 

Scene at Niagara Falls: a Haiga by James Penha

 

james
Scene at Niagara Falls. Daguerreotype by Platt Babbitt; Haiku by James Penha.
Daguerreotype is from the Getty Museum in the public domain.

gilded age fashions:
top hats and parasols rise—
niagara falls

An expat New Yorker, James Penha has lived for the past three decades in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his work is widely published in journals and anthologies. His newest chapbook of poems, American Daguerreotypes, is available for Kindle. His essays have appeared in The New York Daily News and The New York Times. Penha edits The New Verse News, an online journal of current-events poetry. Bluesky: @jamespenha.bsky.social

 

 

The Night of the Owl by Mia C.

 

owl
Eastern Screech Owl
Photo taken in Fonthill, Ontario, on September 22, 2019 by Dan Pay
Heavy owls swell,
Feeling overly wicked,
Watching the moonlight.

Source: The author via Tina Chivers.

 
Mia C., a grade 9 student in Tina Chivers’ English class wrote the haiku The Night of the Owl about the owls living in Niagara
 
 
Photo of the Eastern Screech Owl by Dan Pay was first published on the Niagara Bird Watchers Facebook page
 

Flow by Roslyn C.

roslyn
Image by Milo Miloezger on Unsplash

Flow, like ocean waves

Everywhere

Reaching

Roslyn C. is a student in Ms. Chivers’ special needs class at A.N. Myer Secondary School in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

See other poems by Ms. Chivers’ students

Sunny Day at Niagara Falls by Mellow Curmudgeon

mellow
Cropped photo of Iguazu Falls by Marcio Chagas. from Unsplash

‡Wet thunder booms as
water sweeps itself away.
‡‡‡A rainbow lingers.

Source: Mellow Curmudgeon, July 2022.

Visit Mellow Curmudgeon’s website

From the author: My haiku was inspired by the contrast between loud rushing water and a silent steady rainbow, as pondered by Boris Glikman in a prose poem about a visit to Niagara Falls.  The contrast cried out to be displayed in the kind of deliberate swerve common in haiku poetry, often between the middle and final lines.

View Glikman’s poem, Falling With the Falls.