Sharing a train window

I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Last Train Home, a new collection of haiku, tanka, and rengay celebrating train travel! The book is edited by me, with contributions from poets around the world.

Over the past year, many of us have had to cancel trips and stay close to home. But there are no limits to where our imaginations can take us. Last Train Home is an invitation to remember past trips, and imagine the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and emotions others have experienced crossing the Canadian prairies or the Australian Outback, climbing China’s Yellow Mountain, travelling at night between Paris and Madrid, glimpsing Mount Fuji, stopping at border crossings, and so much more. It also looks forward to when we can once again travel freely, get together with family and friends, meet new people, and explore new places.

In the meantime, I’d like to welcome you on a virtual train tour, beginning with a photo of sunrise from Saskatoon station on my first cross-Canada VIA Rail trip back in the mid-1980s. The haiku that follows speaks to more recent experience on the same train—sharing a dining table with different passengers each day.

sunriseacross the dining caran exchange of hometownsJacquie Pearce And a few more selections from the book:Paris to Milan trainthe baby criesin every languageKaren Hoydeparting Valenciaas my vacation endsscent of orangesRoberta Beach Jacobsondark nighta migrant catching sleepon the last trainAdjei Agyei-Baah

Last Train Home is available on Amazon in various countries. You can also drop into the Last Train Home -haiku Facebook page for more poems, photos, and stories related to the book and train travel in general.

To keep the virtual train going, I’m inviting other creative writing bloggers to share their train stories and photos and link back here.

Next stops on the tour:

kcdyer, Vancouver-based author of the literary travel adventure, Eighty Days to ElsewherePoet Julie Thorndyke from New South Wales, AustraliaHaiku Railroad Blues video with US haiku poet Alan PizzarelliCrafty Green Poet, Juliet Wilson, writing from Edinburgh, Scotlanda past train post by UK poet Alan Summers (also watch Alan’s blog Area 17 for an upcoming new post on trains)