Sticks & Bones: Haiku and Senryuby Allison Douglas-TournerPublished by Your Nickel’s Worth PublishingReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$19.95 ISBN 9781778690433 I’m fond of image-based poetry, and it’s one reason I enjoy reading poems written as haiku and senryu. Likely you remember haiku from school days: in its traditional form, it’s a three-line, seventeen-syllable nature-based poem with a five-seven-five syllable count. It conveys a single moment in which the poet suddenly sees or realizes something. An aha! moment, if you will. Senryu is similarly structured, but it’s more concerned with human nature and often contains irony or satire. Both forms originated in Japan, and both are unrhymed. Victoria, BC’s Allison Douglas-Tourner recently released a lovely collection, Sticks & Bones: Haiku and Senryu, which reminded me of why I enjoy these concise forms so much. It’s easy to find inspiration from the natural world on Vancouver Island, and she explains that the island’s “beaches, woods, and meadows” have long been inspiring her. Ravens, those busy gatherers of “sticks and bones,” have also stirred her to write, and the attractive cover image of her small, square-shaped book features a single raven with twigs in its beak. There’s one page-centred poem per page with ample…