“when honey is scarce”

Kashiana Singh created “when honey is scarce” from Anna Botsford Comstock’s How to Keep Bees (1905). Please click here to read.

About the piece and the process of composing it, Kashiana writes:

After choosing How to Keep Bees, I navigated the chapters and narrowed down a few I wanted to read in more detail. Then I read these chapters and as I was doing so, I isolated a few words and phrases that I thought would weave into a poem, keeping in mind a gathering process like the bees themselves. I developed a few different stanzas and poems. Then I started the reduction process to take away words and make the poem speak for itself. It was very rewarding to see what emerged. Finally, I landed at the haiku which I thought synthesized the essence of the process, the words, and created both a new form and a new meaning.