Editor’s Note
And so the 3LIGHTS Gallery closes its doors. After three yearsand twenty five successful online exhibitions of haiku, senryu,tanka, kyoka and haiga from some of the world’s finest writersand artists, it’s with a mixture of sadness and pride that my wifeDiane and I lock the old back door and slip quietly away.Well, not so quietly.When I announced that 3LIGHTS would return in 2010 in theguise of a free online quarterly journal, the response wasstaggering. The names of old friends began appearing in myinbox daily, and with them, new names and shiny new poems.Before the end of September 2009, the top drawer of my deskwas brimming with some of the finest haiku I’ve had thepleasure of reading, let alone editing for a brand new journal.This first edition of 3LIGHTS is nothing short of a feast of newwork. Like
Launch,
the 3LIGHTS Gallery’s first exhibition threeyears ago, this edition presents a selection of haiku and relatedforms without a running theme, arranged with particularattention to the visual presentation of the short forms. It has,and always will be, our intention to ‘exhibit’ poetry rather thansimply dishing it out. And, from our spring edition onwards, wewill reintroduce ‘themed editions’ to 3LIGHTS – the first of which being
music
.Each issue of the 3LIGHTS Journal will also include a workfrom a featured poet. We’re delighted that our debut editionfeatures new work from master of his craft, Michael DylanWelch.