by Alan Bern

Photographs often capture moments. To collect these moments I walk my neighborhood streets and also beyond – and I capture moments, sometimes with the camera on my phone, sometimes with a few words for a title or poem, and sometimes with both. Snap snap.

Words can capture moments, too: a short poem or an evocative title. Combining the two can create a powerful haiga-like effect, a photo-haiga.* Snap snap.

*Haiga are “typically painted by haiku poets (haijin), and often accompanied by a haiku poem” (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiga) – with my photos standing in for the paintings.

Retired children’s librarian Alan Bern’s poetry books include No No the Saddest, Waterwalking in Berkeley (Fithian Press); greater distance and other poems, and Lines & Faces, his illustrated broadside press with artist/printer Robert Woods. Alan was first runner-up in The Raw Art Review’s Mirabai Prize for Poetry, 2020. He also won a medal in 2019 from SouthWest Writers for a WWII story set in Italia, and won the 2015 Littoral Press Poetry Prize. Recent photos have appeared in The RavensPerch, unearthed, and Thimble Literary Magazine. Alan performs with dancer/choreographer Lucinda Weaver as PACES: dance & poetry fit to the space and with musicians from Composing Together.