Haiku of the Dead

by David Nell (Editor), Jason Kirk, Jessica McHugh

Poetry to eat your brains. "Haiku of the Dead" is an anthology that pieces together a warm-hearted story of guts and gore. Told through the imagistic language of haiku, every flesh-ripping moment of the zombie apocalypse is covered, from dawn to demise. Thirty-five narrators take readers through infested streets and graveyards from the points of view of both survivors and the undead, with haiku from authors around the world.

48 pages, Paperback

First published January 20, 2014

Reviews

[Sipho Nkosi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an advance copy and was surprised by the quality. While each haiku is set in its own little world, they are structured in such a way that they tell a story. Ultimately, this is a fun and experimental collection. It's not for serious poetry collectors but if you're looking for a zombie book to read on the toilet, this is one to get.

[K.R. Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a disclaimer, I have mention that I am one of the contributors to this anthology.

I also have to mention that I'm not really into zombies, but the challenge of writing a haiku about them interested me.

The book is rather short of content - I think it would have been better to have more entries, but the anthologist can only work with what they receive, so perhaps there were not a lot of submissions. There were a number of good ones, but there were also several that did not follow the 5-7-5 pattern requested, and some of them were a bit forced. I did notice that, as another reviewer mentioned, the haiku were arranged in a way that hinted at a story - or at least a time line, so the anthologist did do a bit more work here than it might appear.

If you really have a thing for zombies, pick it up (too bad there's not a cheaper Kindle version). Perhaps they'll drop the price a little, too.