an open field

Going organic: line break in free form haiku

2012-02-01T13:50:00.000Z

This essay first appeared in Frogpond Volume 34 Number 3

Going organic: line break in free form haiku

Lynne Rees

The line is the fundamental structuring tool in writing poetry and understanding how and when and why to use it is even more essential in the writing of free verse[1] where neither poet nor reader has the guide of a predetermined metrical pattern or stanza structure. I remember the moment, back in the mid 1990s, when I suddenly ‘got’ line break, a real eureka moment that illuminated the correlation between form and content in free verse poetry.

Over the years I developed and refined my ideas about the structuring possibilities available to free verse poets but when, in 2006, I started studying and writing haiku, my, by now inbuilt, free-verse poet’s attention to form was more of a hindrance than a help. Line breaks that could be supported in a longer free verse poem were now shouting from the page. ‘Yoo hoo!’ they called. ‘Aren’t I a clever girl?!’ And no one likes a show off.

With time I have managed to develop a lighter touch but attention to line break in free form haiku still remains an essential crafting element. As John Barlow says:

In a poem as short as haiku every word, and just as importantly every pause and silence – whether these be internal or at the end of the poem – has to play a full part in both meaning and rhythm.[2]

Line break, and the pause it creates, contributes to the meaning of the haiku.

The following list of possible reasons for breaking a line forms the basis of two seminars in all of my poetry writing courses:

To emphasise normal speech patterns and pauses.
As a form of punctuation i.e. to direct the reading of the poem
For the music of the line
To emphasise a single word on a line, or the last or first word on a line.
To confine an image to a single line or to split an image over more than one line.
To introduce a dramatic effect e.g. misdirection, temporary ambiguity, hesitancy.
To reflect the poem’s dominant mood or emotional tone.
To play with the surrounding white space on the page.
To express the poem’s organisation.
To suggest balance or imbalance.

I was interested to explore how well they might apply to writing haiku.

1. To emphasise normal speech patterns and pauses.

2. As a form of punctuation i.e. to direct the reading of the poem.

Because of its reputation for simplicity and lack of adornment a haiku with an understated form, i.e. one that comfortably fits normal speech patterns and subtly directs our reading, might be automatically accepted as the most effective, but if those lines/speech patterns also reinforce the theme then the effectiveness is increased.

the scent of cut grass

carried on a March breeze

a still-sleepy bee[3]

The line breaks in Brian Tasker’s haiku make it easy to read; they don’t cut or extend the breath, they reveal the images in turn, there’s no confusion. We feel the leisureliness of the moment because of this arrangement and also because of the soothing repetition of three principal stresses in each line. I admit to a certain suspicion of centred haiku – it often seems to be chosen for decoration rather than anything to do with the haiku itself – but here the choice seems conscious and I feel ‘centred’ too, at rest in the middle of the page.

3. For the music of the line.

I close my book –

a wave breaks its silence

against the rocks[4]

It is often because of their music that some haiku pin themselves to our memories and this is the case with Caroline Gourlay’s haiku. My free verse poem editor automatically identifies a line break at an obvious point in the middle of line two:

I close my book –

a wave breaks

its silence against the rocks

and I do believe that the new 3^rd line would make for a more interesting line in a free verse poem. But restraint is the better option here and the haiku is more memorable for the comforting rhythm of its opening and closing iambic lines that surround the three heavy stresses in the middle line.

4. To emphasise a single word on a line or the last or first word on a line.

Here’s a haiku from John Stevenson:

first warm day

the ground

gives a little[5]

Placing a word, or image, on a line of its own naturally draws attention to it so we need to be sure that the attention is deserved. Here, the weight we apply to the word ‘ground’ as we read it parallels the imagined physical weight the haiku wants us to experience: the change of the season we detect when the ground ‘gives a little’ to our footfall.

The verb ‘gives’ at the opening of the 3^rd line is separated from its subject and becomes a vehicle for other ideas: giving as in ‘gift’, the ‘little’ gift we are rewarded with as we realise spring is on its way.

5. To confine an image to a single line or to split an image over more than one line.

A three line haiku often segments the image, or images, it contains, but when we feel poets are working consciously with this technique we place more trust in them:

summer sales

a Caravaggio

chalked on the kerb[6]

The ‘…Caravaggio/chalked on the kerb’ in Matthew Paul’s haiku is a single image yet the poet breaks the line to slow us down in our reading. When we read ‘Caravaggio’ master paintings come to mind but the following line reverses our expectation. This is the work of a street artist, although not something we might appreciate any less. In fact, the skill and location of these works often have more power to attract us than paintings held in museums. When we read the haiku again the fracture created by the line break invites us to ponder on the ideas of value and greatness, and on what can be bought and sold.

In contrast, John Barlow lays out his imagery in a more traditional manner:

out between showers
her milk tooth grin
wobbling with her bicycle[7]

The poet wants us to experience the break between showers before we see the child’s smile and before we see her learning to ride her bicycle. The order of perception[8] is important: knowing the child is young (‘milk tooth’) impacts on our emotional response to the final line. There is tenderness and there is unease, in the subject of the haiku, in the viewer of the scene and in the reader. Once we have experienced the haiku in its parts we go back and absorb it as a whole and the concrete imagery – the breaks between showers, a child’s shaky smile during the rite of passage of learning to ride a bike – takes on the deeper significance about parenting and releasing a child into the world.

6. To introduce a dramatic effect e.g. misdirection, temporary ambiguity, hesitancy.

skipping stones—

the stuttered marriage

proposal[9]

In Terra Martin’s haiku the break in line 2 temporarily misdirects the reader as to the meaning (is the marriage itself ‘stuttered’ or fragmented?) and injects its own stutter into the phrase ‘marriage proposal’. This reflects the nervousness of the person doing the proposing and links wonderfully to the image of skipping stones in the first line – the way they bounce and rise and bounce again before finding their resting place.

A different dramatic effect is achieved in another of John Stevenson’s haiku:

a crowded street

I’m the one

who steps in it[10]

‘I’m the one’ is a phrase we might naturally associate with boasting or self-aggrandisement, particularly as the ‘I’ is fore-grounded against an anonymous ‘crowded street’. The line break creates a temporary ambiguity, as well as hesitancy… before we step, along with the narrator, into the unfortunate reality of the closing line. The line break is part of the self-deprecating humour in the haiku.

7. To reflect the poem’s dominant mood or emotional tone.

after the crash

the doll’s eyes

jammed open[11]

The shape of Michael Gunton’s haiku, the ‘weight’ of its square shape on the page reinforces the heaviness of the emotional theme. In addition, the two heavy stresses in each line further emphasise the sudden shock and grief associated with such an event. Notice too how the short 2^nd and 3^rd lines cut the breath slightly, reinforcing the theme of loss and distress.

An alternative layout, following a more traditional s/l/s pattern might have been:

after the crash

the doll’s eyes jammed

open

but we lose the compression of the original shape and the line break after ‘jammed’ adds a melodramatic element, the denouement hinted at but held back, and becomes unnecessarily titillating for such a serious subject matter and the understated approach of haiku writing.

8. To play with the surrounding white space on the page.

An unexpected line-break in another of Michael Gunton’s haiku:

summer evening

a man in a vest leans out

............................................ to water his plants[12]

(my dots to show indent)

contributes to the fun. This light hearted line-break uses the white space on the page so the reader ‘leans out’ along with the man in the haiku: we feel the stretch into the whiteness of the right hand side of the page but also feel the emptiness in the drop below as suggested by the indent in the third line.

9. To express the poem’s organisation.

Now looking back,
Where we had talked
Among the stones—
A wagtail in the rain[13]

This haiku, by Tito, has four lines rather than the traditional three. Why? My first response is that the first line might be redundant:

Where we had talked
Among the stones—
A wagtail in the rain.

I think that works. But critical analysis generally benefits from trusting the poet and attempting to discover their intention rather than imposing our own opinions too quickly. So what do the four lines and an extra line break achieve that the three lines don’t?

The extra line adds far more than just three words. When I read the original and then my cropped version aloud, the latter feels significantly more compressed, and hurries me towards the juxtaposition of the place among the stones and the wagtail. The addition of the opening line, with its pronouncement of ‘Now’, adds a gravitas to the haiku that’s missing completely in my three liner. It expands the haiku too, creating a more balanced and considered division of commentary (the first two lines) and imagery (the last two lines). And of course, ‘looking back’ can be read at different levels too: looking behind one, literally, but also looking back in time. The three lines I first suggested might make an acceptable haiku but the four lines are richer in terms of the human emotional experience.

10. To suggest balance or imbalance.

Wandering the supermarket aisles

the diagnosis

.............................................sinks in[14]

(my dots to show indent)

Ken Jones uses line break to throw the reader off balance: all the physical weight of the haiku is anchored on the left hand side while two small words float on their own in the white space on the right. The form is perfectly suited to the reality of the experience, how it takes time for some kinds of information to sink in, how we fill our days with the weight of the ordinary, and how the ‘truth’ of a situation can suddenly hit us and set us adrift.

Two lines can be an appropriate choice for haiku where the idea of balance is important.

in the darkness

pushing open a door[15]

Keith J. Coleman’s haiku balances one thing against another: darkness against possible light, the unknown with what might become known, and while a three line haiku could have been created with a break after ‘pushing/’ the reciprocation of form (one line set against another) and this content would have been lost.

The list is by no means definitive; it represents an ongoing investigation into my own editing processes. I am sure other writers will have more and different reasons for shaping their haiku. I am sure too that some will challenge the emphasis on crafting suggested here, haiku writers who feel that haiku emerge from the moment and ‘all a haiku often needs is a little tighter focus and a little polish.’[16]

Disagreement is good for critical debate and unanimity amongst poets is not a goal worth pursuing. What is important is each individual poet’s attention to the conscious crafting of their work if, that is, their aim is to transform the raw material of personal experience into something that becomes important to others too.

Lynne Rees is the author of a novel, a collection of poetry, and a volume of collaborative short prose. She was haibun editor at Simply Haiku during 2008 and 2009, joint editor of The Unseen Wind, British Haiku Society Haibun Anthology 2009 (BHS 2010), and co-editor, with Nigel Jenkins and Ken Jones, of the first national anthology of its kind, another country, haiku poetry from Wales (Gomer Press 2011). Lynne is a Hawthornden Fellow and the recipient of the University of Kent’s (UK) Faculty of Humanities Teaching Award. www.lynnerees.com

[1] ‘free verse’ is a misnomer in that it is only ‘free’ because of the absence of any pre-determined form on which to ‘hang’ the words. I prefer the term ‘organic’ because of the process of finding the form, during the conscious editing process, in direct response to subject matter, theme and emotional tone.

[2] ‘An Introduction to the Origins, Mechanics and Aesthetics of English-language Haiku’, The New Haiku, ed. John Barlow & Martin Lucas, Snapshot Press 2002

[3] Brian Tasker, a ragbag of haiku (The Bare Bones Press 2004)

[4] Caroline Gourlay, another country, haiku poetry from

Wales

(Gomer Press 2011), p.146

[5] John Stevenson, quiet enough (Red Moon Press 2004)

[6] Matthew Paul, The Regulars (Snapshot Press 2006)

[7] John Barlow, The New Haiku (Snapshot Press 2002) p.24

[8] For more on ‘Order of Perception’ see Lee Gurga’s Haiku: A Poet’s Guide (Modern Haiku Press 2003), p.37-38

[9] Terra Martin, tiny words 15^th June 2007.

[10] John Stevenson, Ibid

[11] Michael Gunton, Echoes in the Heart (Waning Moon Press n.d.)

[12] Gunton, Ibid

[13] Tito, Stepping Stones, a way into haiku, Martin Lucas (BHS 2007), p.91

[14] Ken Jones, The New Haiku (Snapshot Press 2002) p.94

[15] Keith J. Coleman, Stepping Stones, a way into haiku, Martin Lucas (BHS 2007), p.142

[16] Bruce Ross, How to Haiku, a writer’s guide to haiku and related forms (Tuttle 2002), p. 33

river 2012 - 31

2012-01-31T10:24:00.002Z

straightfalling rain both water and ice

With many thanks to Fiona and Kaspa for the inspiration and encouragement this month.

river 2012 - 29

2012-01-29T20:03:00.002Z

edge of sleep
turning the pillow
for the cold side

river 2102 - 28

2012-01-28T12:56:00.002Z

winter sunshine
the neighbour's pigeons
rise as one

river 2012 -27

2012-01-27T17:00:00.003Z

the setting sun fires
the edges of storm clouds
over the sea

home-made soup
before I leave

river 2012 - 26

2012-01-27T00:43:00.002Z

one of those days:
my great nephew asks me
if I'm a girl or a boy

river 2012 - 25

2012-01-25T20:54:00.002Z

the old stories we find
along the banks of the wild brook
leaf-mulch, fresh rain

river 2012 - 24

2012-01-24T14:00:00.002Z

driving the kids to school:
even in all this rain I can't compete
with Flo and Ramone

river 2012 - 23

2012-01-23T21:15:00.000Z

The metal detector man shows me his haul: 10p, 50p, some batteries, a hard lump of rock. 'And my mate found the 50p when I gave him a go,' he says. I am looking for treasure myself - the memory from my childhood of a wreck at the Ferry Bend. Mostly we never made it to the point where the River Neath divides the land, mostly we were distracted by the sand dunes, the carpets of shells, or we decided it was too far to walk anyway and turned back. Maybe there was never a wreck. There isn't today. But there is still treasure here.

river 2012 - 22

2012-01-22T19:54:00.000Z

another restless night...
the dunes wind-carved
into slides and hollows

river 2012 - 21

2012-01-21T20:10:00.001Z

the smell of fresh laundry
at what's left of the old hospital wall

a seagull dancing
on the grass in Vivian Park

the sun wrapped in cloud
one minute and free the next

even in the cold face of the wind
laughter and the smell of the sea

river 2012 - 20

2012-01-20T12:23:00.001Z

Some things don't change: the sound of the sea from a street away, a screech of seagull, the broken walls around some houses on the bend in the road. How I have started counting my steps to see how many it takes to get to school.

Some things change: the locked doors of the school, the posters in Welsh, the rise and fall of its syllables in the corridors, the mothers on the floor of the hall with their babies for free Language and Play.

Some things don't change: the little boy in Nursery who hugs the Headmistress's legs when she walks past.

river 2012 - 19

2012-01-19T09:18:00.002Z

home to Wales -
each time I check
the bend in the track
I'm sure I glimpse the train

river 2012 - 18

2012-01-18T12:38:00.001Z

Rain overnight and this morning
not a crackle of frost on the trees
or along the kerb around the yard
only a mist of grey above
and between the bare branches.

I miss the hills, the green roll
of them swallowed by cloud.
The day is too soft for clear thought.

river 2012 - 17

2012-01-17T11:04:00.000Z

Last night I played hide and seek with the cat. I know, it sounds like something you might hear in group therapy: My name is Lynne and I'm a cataholic. Play isn't a big enough part of our lives as we get older. Not playing games to win, but play that has no end result, no goal, beyond the enjoyment of the moment. Some people might call it silliness. Silly, from the Middle English 'sely' or 'seely' meaning 'happy'. Want to do something silly today?

river 2012 - 16

2012-01-16T10:21:00.002Z

sunrise
the apple trees
cloaked with frost

a stranger talks to me
about his father

river 2012 - 15

2012-01-15T11:32:00.000Z

Sunday morning
a sunlit patch of frost
in my neighbour's field

the first cup of tea
taken back upstairs
to bed and a book

iconography:
the symbolism
of things and images

a day of slowness
and perhaps a little
enlightenment

river 2012 - 14

2012-01-14T12:04:00.002Z

Synchronicity means while I am thinking about pancakes upstairs in bed, you are downstairs whisking up the batter.

27 years together
you show me your
pneumatic drill impression
for the first time

Lemon and sugar, butter and sugar. Good days start like this.

river 2012 - 13

2012-01-13T09:20:00.000Z

You could begin with the sky
hazy with sunlight and a shimmer of cloud,
a slate roof skimmed with frost.
A red, or green or blue front door, perhaps
a carpet of fresh moss, a flower you wouldn't expect
in winter. And woodsmoke. Or the sea
peaked with foam. A good book. Conjure
the things that lead you home.

river 2012 - 12

2012-01-12T13:35:00.000Z

Absence

When the morning doesn't fit, when I seem to be missing the lid of the jigsaw box that holds the pieces of my day, I leave the house and walk through the orchard to the row of leylandii and look at the depressions in the dusty ground beneath them where I'm sure the wild pheasants nestle during the day, even though I only know them from claw marks left in the dusty earth, that my hand never finds a trace of warmth in the shallow bowls, not even a feather.

Some days I catch a glimpse of them – the males barred bright gold and brown, their red wattles, the mottled females – skittering between the rows of apple trees, always keeping a distance. How could they trust us after all this time?

I startled them once, in the farmyard when I opened the back door, a dozen or more of them taking flight at the sound then sight of me: the whirr of wings loud enough to make me step back suddenly, alarm mixed with delight, flashes of green and purple returning to me at moments for the rest of that day, like a charge to the heart.

river 2012 - 11

2012-01-11T09:53:00.001Z

Do christmas cards count as cardboard or as paper recycling? Should they be in the green box, with the cans, or in the green bin with the cardboard packaging? It is sunrise. Through the winter trees the village looks like it could be on fire and the rest of us are watching in the dark. I decide on the green box. Part of me thinks, 'what does it matter?' while another part wants to get it right, this little thing that feeds into the bigger picture, the world beyond my life in this house where I feel safe.

river 2012 - 10

2012-01-10T12:37:00.000Z

37 years ago I cried when my sister got married and left home. For fifteen years she'd slept on the other side of the room from me. We'd hit each other with hangers and hairbrushes. I'd hidden behind the door of our bedroom to jump out and frighten her when she wandered back from the bathroom at night. She called me 'child' to annoy me. And now she was leaving and becoming a wife. In wedding speeches the fathers of the bride and groom talk about gaining a son, a daughter. But all I knew was that I was losing my sister.

mobile blackspot
I sing happy birthday to my sister
in the middle of a farmyard

river 2012 - 9

2012-01-09T10:15:00.000Z

Not a leaf remains on the apple trees in the orchard. We have used the last of the cherry wood on the fire. Last night we watched a movie about a man who could travel through time. Already the days are getting longer. The new year is pretty much like the old year when I remember to notice it. Today I feel lucky.

river 2012 - 8

2012-01-08T10:52:00.000Z

new bookshelves
the poetry my cat finds
in an empty box

river 2012 - 7

2012-01-07T14:11:00.000Z

Dream date

It's not going to work between me and Gerard Butler despite the way he hugs me, rocks me with his enthusiasm, his smile. Even though he turns away his ex-girlfriend who turns up in a gold lamé negligee. Even though he has a male assistant called Mitzi with a bald head.

He has four dogs. He feeds them on broken biscuits and crackers. His house is a warren of tunnels and secret doors. And the forest fire is getting closer, flames wrapping the hillside, running down towards the edge of the lake, which may save us, or may not. His father was Spanish, he says quietly as we leave the house with only a picnic basket.

new year

a dead conifer leans

across the lane

river 2012 - 6

2012-01-06T12:00:00.002Z

after the storm
a squeeze of sunlight
through the bare trees
I salute a magpie

river 2012 - 5

2012-01-05T10:23:00.000Z

all night high winds,
the slap of rain, flower pots
rolling along the drive, a spruce
brought down in the orchard -

we believe we are safe
behind brick and glass, under tiles,
but in a small corner of our minds
we imagine the roof lifting, the wind

scattering the patterns of our lives
across the Downs, practicing, maybe,
for a time when we'll have to let go.

river 2012 - 4

2012-01-04T11:05:00.000Z

first week in january
happy with the woodpile's
weight loss

river 2012 - 3

2012-01-03T10:40:00.000Z

The people we sold the house too have lifted off the plaster on the far wall of the first floor and uncovered a section of a painted medieval wall beneath. I always knew it was there and don’t know why we didn’t do the same. But I am pleased to see it exposed now, the past rising into the present, keeping us company.

The dream is easy to interpret: I have a book to write about my hometown in South Wales. The photographs I take are the top layers of stories: at home I lift off each skin and slip deeper into other people’s lives. But I am slipping deeper into myself too: things half remembered, roads not taken.

so many questions
the wind whistles
in the wooden eaves

river 2012 - 2

2012-01-02T11:31:00.000Z

last day of the holiday
the glass monkey
slips off the tree

time to hide
the unopened chocolates

river 2012 - 1

2012-01-01T11:51:00.001Z

new year
heat from the embers
of last year's fire

2011-12-30T17:34:00.000Z

Thanks, tinywords:

at the top of the hill
I am still
the same size

Lynne Rees

http://tinyurl.com/c8vefjl

2011-11-20T10:59:00.001Z

Kissing Simon Cowell

It is not as I imagined: abrupt, inattentive. It is eager and tender but, to be honest, a little too wet, although my heart still does its excited little somersault even if he is just toying with me to pass some time in this small hotel while the rest of our group are in their rooms preparing for the road-trip ahead, or maybe the hesitance I detect is a shadow of guilt for his girlfriend, the dark l’Oreal-haired woman I could never hope to compete with beyond the confines of this dream, and when he says he’s going to take a nap I still don’t know if he wants me to join him, even when he jokes about my unshaved legs and his smile reaches his eyes and he stops cleaning his teeth and steps into the hallway to call out about the efficiency of electric toothbrushes, or even when he goes down to reception via the front staircase and returns via the back, slowing as he passes my open door, a glass of water in his hand, his face as smooth as the stone linen shirt he is wearing and I ask him if I should come and lie beside him and he says yes, his voice shy, hoarse, and uncertainty rushes through me like a cold river, the memory of how I have hurt myself in the past, how regret hung its old damp clothes in the corner of my heart until they started to rot.

The water is running in the toilet cistern and I cannot stop it. I have no fancy underwear with me. If I let myself cry I fear I will never stop. I have never been any good at interpreting signs.

a flock of birds twists

against the sky

I say I’m sorry

Modern Haiku Volume 42.3

Autumn 2011

Haiku as Poetic Spell - Martin Lucas

2011-09-02T11:33:00.001+01:00

Martin Lucas, editor of Haiku Presence magazine and author of Stepping Stones, a way into haiku has kindly allowed me to reprint his enlightening essay. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, for the way it makes me reflect on my own haiku writing practice and question what I'm doing and why.

Haiku as Poetic Spell

Haiku as an English-language form now has fifty years or so of history. There have been many trials of new approaches along the way, and much has been learned. At the same time, it’s probably true to say that only a minority of writers stay the course. For many, it’s an enthusiasm that burns brightly for two or three years – sometimes with brilliant results – and then burns itself out, as the writer comes to feel that s/he has exhausted either the potential of haiku or his/her own potential as a haiku writer. One consequence of this turnover is that although individual writers may make great strides very rapidly, the movement as a whole evolves much more slowly, and from certain angles it now looks as if it has reached something of a plateau. This plateau is a position of conformity, complacency and mere competence. And the pressures towards conformity are acute enough to make it difficult to remain true to your own original inspirations, poetic preferences and little awkwardnesses that resist hammering into shape.

To understand the context of this discussion, we need to appreciate that haiku in English developed largely using translations as models. Translations tend to concentrate on conveying content with accuracy, sacrificing any attempt to replicate formal effects such as rhythm and alliteration. The historical consequence of this has been that poets writing original haiku in English have focused on what is said and paid relatively little attention to how it is said.

The internationally accepted formula runs something like this (expressed here in 5-7-5 for my own amusement, though 5-7-5 is now outmoded as far as the arbiters of taste are concerned):

seasonal ref'rence—

then two lines of contrasting

foreground imagery

Seen in isolation, any one of these haiku can be impressive. Taken in quantity, the effect is numbing. For my point of departure I turn to Modern Haiku, not to single it out, because suitable examples abound, scattered like the innumerable stars right across the haiku firmament. But Modern Haiku comes close to the pinnacle of general respect, and the haiku I am using was highlighted as an award-winner in 40/1. This helps to make the point that it’s not bad haiku but generally accepted good haiku that are holding back the development of the form. With my profound apologies to Lynne Steel, because I could have chosen a haiku by any one of us, here it is:

Indian summer

the old fan slows

to a stop

Let’s be clear: it’s a good haiku. If it had been submitted to Presence, I would very likely have accepted it. But in Presence it would have kept company with haiku of more divergent kinds; it would have been less centrally representative of the journal’s guiding aesthetic. It is centrally representative of the haiku not only in Modern Haiku but in most of the other quality journals, whether print or web, and the Red Moon and other anthologies. It does what so many others are trying to do, and it has been selected for a best-of-issue award because it does it well. It is a good example of its kind; it’s the kind I object to. For one thing, it fits the formula too well. There it is – the well-worn seasonal reference, followed by the significantly juxtaposed foreground image. You’re only 23 poems into this same issue of Modern Haiku when you meet your next “Indian summer” haiku:

Indian summer

a knowing look

on the face of a pumpkin

Alan S.Bridges

While this one conjures a very different mood, it is nevertheless structurally identical. It fulfils identical rhythmical expectations, and the repeated encounter with this pattern throughout this (and many another) journal contributes to an almost hypnotic reading experience. To analyse Steel’s haiku more positively: the obvious focus is on the juxtaposition, which contains elements of both comparison and contrast. The year is drawing to a close, just as the fan is nearing the end of its useful life. But the year is flickering unexpectedly to life, whereas the fan is passing quietly away. It’s an intriguing mix, but almost all the interest is in this content, and almost none in the expression. I do note three s-words that end the lines and may contribute to the general feeling of lassitude, and a preponderance of single-syllable words that may mimic the old fan’s stuttering decline. But since all these word choices, not to mention the layout choice, are the most obviously appropriate to sketch the moment – appropriate, at least, in the eyes of a practised haiku writer – it’s hard to determine whether their formal qualities are anything other than accidental. Content rules, and the sole function of form is to convey that content as lucidly as possible. This it does well, but I do not feel I am being unfair in claiming that this appears to be the limit of its ambition.

Having outlined my point of departure, I will draw all my remaining examples from #37 of my own journal, Presence. This is partly for the sake of convenience, and partly because they are, by definition, to some extent representative of an apparently different guiding aesthetic. In recasting haiku as Poetic Spell, I wish to emphasise, firstly, an ideal that is poetic as opposed to prosaic, and secondly, an expression that is more akin to a magical utterance than a mere report of an incident, however consequential or inconsequential.

I make no claim that every haiku in Presence conforms to this poetic ideal. Nor do I think it desirable that it should. A complete issue of a journal should offer a variety of angles and a varied reading experience. Senryu, and some of the simpler kinds of descriptive haiku, can contribute to the total quality of this experience, even if individually they are nothing more than fragments of prose. On the approach to the ideal, some haiku of exceptionally resonant content read very much as poems, however fragmentary, even without any significant contribution from form. At another pole, we should have no difficulty in accepting as poems those haiku whose formal and language qualities detain us, independent of any consideration of their information content.

To approach the Poetic Spell via imagery often appears to involve nothing more than mere description. The difference is that what is described is somehow so satisfying that we linger in the moment, and almost seek to dwell in it. This resonance is more readily evoked in rural scenes that have about them something almost primitive or archetypal, than in urban scenes that so often rattle with the shallowness of modern social life. I’m not saying by any means that it’s impossible to write resonant urban haiku, but resonance is a natural consequence when the human focus shrinks and the horizon expands:

mountain home the distant clunk of the cattle grid

Pamela Brown

paddy field by the river ...

the voice of a farmer

speaking to the bulls

K. Ramesh

The first of these centres on a relatively modern contrivance, the cattle grid, but the implications of solitude and silence, not to mention the opening phrase, suggest the ancient lineage of Saigyō’s tanka. The second, set, I feel confident, in India, seems to stand in a direct line of inheritance from Bashō’s Japan. There is such profound satisfaction in the image that even without any notable contribution from the language, I’d happily regard it as an example of at least one kind of Poetic Spell.

To approach the spell via language, we need more emphasis on form as opposed to content, and on expression as opposed to information. This haiku by Tito has it:

Rained from the morning’s

Clear blue,

Settling on peony petals, too –

Ash from Mt Asama.

It is constructed indirectly, delaying resolution until the final line; with the unusual opening of a passive verb that is also marginally metaphorical. It has evident alliterative patterning – “peony petals”, “Ash / Asama” – and, crikey!, a rhyme. Tito, a.k.a. Stephen Gill, has been writing this style of four-line haiku for very nearly as long as Modern Haiku has been publishing, but very few have followed his lead, and outside his local circle in Kansai, Japan, this approach is almost entirely neglected. This is in many ways unfortunate, because this rich four-line style offers far more poetic nourishment than the clipped three lines of the international formula. If I had to speculate on the reasons for this neglect, I might suggest that in the very act of giving the poem such a defined beginning, middle, and end, the prized directness of haiku has been sacrificed. But I might also suggest that a rich four lines requires more effort from the writer and more effort from the reader, and in a creative community notorious for its short attention span there are too few willing to do this little extra work.

Without departing at all radically from the familiar three-line format, it’s possible to approach the Poetic Spell through both imagery and language. This haiku by Matthew Paul does so, though it may stand in need of some explication:

on a day the colour

of rolling tobacco

ragged-robin

To access the haiku it’s more or less essential to be able to visualise “ragged-robin”, or at least to know that it’s a flower. Found in verges and woodland margins, it’s barely knee-high, and its beautiful pink flower is cut into thin filaments – so “robin” probably from the colour, and “ragged” from the shape. One criterion of the Poetic Spell would be original rather than conventional use of season-words, and this poem meets that test immediately. In imagery, too, it has no apparent antecedents – I know of no other haiku that compares the day to “rolling tobacco”! This has to be an exaggeration – even the old-fashioned London smogs were hardly a thick tobacco brown. I assume it’s the sky that’s meant, but it might be the landscape, or it might be a subjective mood. It certainly seems to feed into a mood – a kind of depression, perhaps, that’s so intense there’s almost a perverse pleasure in it; and growing out of it, complementing it, or fulfilling it, or counteracting it, there’s the unassuming wayside flower, frail and lovely. Original thought; original imagery; and, with its unobtrusive alliteration, pleasingly musical language. Importantly, it also resists definitive interpretation. My own speculations about “depression”, for instance, might be well wide of the mark as far as the writer is concerned. It’s very much the reader’s poem.

Even greater fluidity, ambiguity and reflectivity are made possible by the single unpunctuated line, deployed with striking effect in the pages of Presence over the years by my friend and colleague Stuart Quine. Stuart’s lead has now tempted so many to follow that, for the first time in #37, I found myself discouraging one-liners, rather than encouraging them, as a necessary step to avoid devaluing the currency. The one-liner has great potential for authority, inevitability and ineffability. It heightens both ambiguity and immediacy, and seems more tolerant of effects that are in essence poetic rather than prosaic, without any sacrifice of the haiku ideal of image-based understatement. Here are four favourites from Presence #37:

hatless the seeds of winter in the morning sky

Duro Jaiye

torn clouds the horse’s black tail trailing

Pamela Brown

my sister skating here comes her yellow hat

frances angela

sharpening this night of stars distant dogs

Stuart Quine

What we notice immediately in each of these examples is a driving rhythm, which makes the decisive contribution in transforming each of these fragments into something akin to a spell or charm. Equally we notice that this rhythm, and the placing of pauses and stresses, varies considerably from poem to poem. We cannot – on the basis of these examples, at least – draft any kind of formula. There is nothing here akin to the predictability of the “Indian summer” haiku with which we are, by now, over-familiar. In relation to the idea of haiku as charm, Stuart Quine sees a connection with dharani. He asserts that, although mantra and dharani share structural and rhythmic similarities, they have different functions. Mantra are means of centring and settling the mind, whereas dharani are essentially invocations. However, it is important to realise that dharani are not calls upon Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. The dharani is in itself the manifestation of the particular Buddha or Bodhisattva invoked. The dharani of Jizo Bosatsu is the actualisation of Jizo Bosatsu. Nembutsu, similarly, actualises Amida Buddha and the Pure Land.

In considering a haiku-spell, it’s hardly possible to determine who or what is being invoked. Yet the idea has relevance in the sense that for the charm or spell, the final effect depends on the totality of the utterance: form and content unite, and the latter does not claim all our attention. I find a prose paraphrase of Duro Jaiye’s poem impossible, because I can’t with any confidence say what is happening or what it’s about. I assume it’s the poet who is “hatless”, but we’re tempted by the fluid syntax to attach the adjective to the seeds. The seeds may be actual seeds of some late-flourishing plant or tree, or this may be a poet’s way of saying “the signs of winter”, early indications, something like that. Although I took “winter” as a season-word and placed the poem on the winter pages of Presence, I could readily accept an interpretation that placed it at any time of year after the summer solstice. Where you place it in time in turn colours your interpretation of “hatless” and its associated moods. This ambiguity is of the essence: you can’t nail it down; you can’t boil it down; and you can’t say it any other way. The form of the poem, in its authority and inevitability, adds dimensions far beyond the information-value of its content.

Pamela Brown’s seems easier, until you start to analyse it. It’s stitched together by alliteration, as if in imitation of the tapping of a horse’s canter. The internal comparison suggests the tail either is, or appears to be, ragged or “torn” and, in reverse, the clouds are, if not “black”, then dark, threatening, and moving on a rapid wind. All other background clues are absent – is there a field? is there a fence? is there a rider? is there actually a horse at all, or just the suggestion of a horse in the tail-like threads of cloud? We can make our own choice, but we can’t know for certain. It’s fundamentally resistant to any kind of reductionist solution.

Frances Angela’s, by contrast, seems absurdly easy to paraphrase. Surely this isn’t poetry at all, but two prose sentences run together: “My sister (is) skating. Here comes her yellow hat.” But running them together, in a single breathless utterance, results in a masterpiece of what I call “non sequitur” haiku. The poetry of the yellow hat lies not in its relevance but its irrelevance. If you’ve read R.H. Blyth, you’ll know that time and again he counsels against cause-and-effect in haiku. If you explain something, you explain it away, and all the poetry seeps out like air from a slowly punctured tyre. Here there’s no explanation. Everything builds to the climax of the yellow hat as if it were the most meaningful thing in the world; yet in terms of prosaic everyday meaning it has no obvious significance whatsoever – other than being attached to the head of a sister, with whatever feeling that conveys; and even this is conjecture, since the hat may have fallen free. Like an object in a dream, it is preternaturally pregnant with importance, and it’s this bare-faced irrationality that makes this a poem.

The unintentional inspiration for Stuart’s haiku was probably my own at dawn the din of distant dogs, but that’s by-the-by. His haiku conjures a radically different scene, and what a contribution is made here by the opening word! Its appropriateness is not in question, but its prose equivalence eludes us. Is it a night of “sharp” frost? Is it therefore cold and harsh, and colder and harsher against the background of dogs barking? Well, something like that, no doubt, but that’s not actually what the poem says. What it says is

sharpening this night of stars distant dogs

and this is the starting-point and the ending-point of each reader’s individual reflection. Through the clarity of imagery, feeling emerges: a cold, dark, sharp feeling that is at the opposite pole from sentimental assumptions of what makes a poem, far more alert, far more alive:

sharpening this night of stars distant dogs

There is no other way of saying it. That’s what I mean by Poetic Spell. Words that chime; words that beat; words that flow. And once you’ve truly heard it, you won’t forget it, because the words have power. They are not dead and scribbled on a page, they are spoken like a charm; and they aren’t read, they’re heard. This is what I want from haiku: something primitive; something rare; something essential; not some tired iteration of patterns so familiar most of us can produce them in our sleep. It’s not the information content that counts, it’s the way that information is formed, cooked and combined. Poetic spells don’t tell us anything, they are something, they exist as objects of fascination in their own right. You can hold them in the light and turn them about and watch each of their facets gleam. They begin and end each reader’s unique reflection.

Martin Lucas, with Stuart Quine.

Concluding note: the appended table outlines the “battle positions” between what I’m calling the International Formula and the Poetic Spell. Note that no one poem will exhibit either set of characteristics perfectly. Some that are written to the formula possess one or more characteristics of the Spell, and others that I’d want to class as Spells possess one or more characteristics of the Formula. It’s also possible that a haiku written in close conformity to the formula nevertheless appeals as a lively and satisfying piece of work, while one that possesses many of the outward qualities of the Spell somehow falls short on inscrutable charm. Nevertheless, as a generalised table of opposites, this account holds true and is potentially useful.

International Formula

Predictable seasonal phrase, in predictable position
Predictable word order and “cut” position
No significant word music or language effects. Predictable rhythm.
Essentially rational – prose paraphrase possible
Can be analysed in terms of information content alone
A written form, not readily memorable
Linear / Static
Clear
Reductive / Descriptive
Simple
Confirms security
Goal: acceptability

Poetic Spell

Original seasonal phrase, in unusual position
Original word order and “cut” position
Significant contribution of word music and language effects – notably rhythm
Essentially irrational – prose paraphrase not possible
Cannot be analysed in terms of information content alone
An oral form, readily memorable
Circular / Fluid
Ambiguous
Expansive / Reflective
Complex
Induces insecurity
Origin: integrity

july river 31

2011-08-01T08:18:00.000+01:00

family dinner
as night falls we rattle
a few skeletons

july river 30

2011-07-31T07:50:00.000+01:00

the first ice-cream,
because he's a guest,
the 4-year-old tells me

july river 29

2011-07-30T09:43:00.001+01:00

remembering who we are
as the sun goes down
we swap stories around the table

july river 28

2011-07-28T11:11:00.000+01:00

unexpected gifts
the paddling pool deeper
after the storm

july river 27

2011-07-28T11:07:00.002+01:00

all day rain
the edges of the playing cards
start to curl

july river 26

2011-07-27T14:32:00.000+01:00

evening swim
the sea saltier
in the losing light

july river 25

2011-07-25T20:24:00.000+01:00

a moment alone
I read my book
in the paddling pool

july river 24

2011-07-24T20:59:00.000+01:00

Sunday morning:
a queue at the bakery
then sandcastles
and tiny silver fish
darting in the shallows.

Some days open to us
effortlessly.

july river 23

2011-07-23T17:27:00.000+01:00

the distance between us
I watch my step-daughter's plane
start to descend

july river 22

2011-07-23T17:25:00.000+01:00

rotisserie chicken
I walk back
towards the scent

july river 21

2011-07-22T12:29:00.000+01:00

beach beggar
her little girl
trickles sand
between her fingers

july river 20

2011-07-21T14:17:00.000+01:00

the tiny waists
of girls in bikinis

the boys dive
into the waves

july river 19

2011-07-19T23:37:00.000+01:00

thunder clap
I think about
the promises
he won't keep

july river 18

2011-07-18T23:16:00.000+01:00

time to go home
a little boy fills up
his Crocs with sand

july river 17

2011-07-17T22:19:00.001+01:00

the wind picks up
beneath dark clouds
the sea takes on
the colour of petrol

and now the rain

each day this week
summer has turned
against itself, as if it has
forgotten its own name

july river 16

2011-07-16T12:06:00.000+01:00

the sea as clear as light this morning

a little girl stands under the beach shower
and opens her mouth

a rose tattoo
above a woman's right buttock

I step around the pebbles on the sea-bed

july river 15

2011-07-15T21:54:00.000+01:00

the sound of children
playing in the garden
and the house sings

july river 14

2011-07-14T10:09:00.000+01:00

Bastille Day
a boy on the beach
tramples his sandcastle

july river 13

2011-07-13T10:37:00.002+01:00

a young girl turns
cartwheels in the shallows

the waves break short
like a splash of applause

july river 12

2011-07-12T09:16:00.000+01:00

sunset
the fisherman's silhouette
edged with light

july river 11

2011-07-11T10:50:00.000+01:00

these gorgeous girls
in their Italian sunglasses
and sparkly flip-flops
who move like water

I want to press a fingertip
to their golden skin
just to watch it spring
back into place

july river 10

2011-07-10T13:50:00.002+01:00

holiday season
an english tourist reads
a tin of Cassoulet au Magret de Canard
twice

july river 9

2011-07-09T11:38:00.000+01:00

in the queue at the bakery
the scent of Ambre Solaire

july river 8

2011-07-08T11:18:00.001+01:00

all day now
the chitter of cicadas
all night
the whirr of the ceiling fan

last night I dreamed
of a dark restaurant
an unpaid bill
I walked away from

july river 7

2011-07-07T11:19:00.000+01:00

My father once gave my mother a driving lesson on the beach carpark while the three of us were in the back of the car. She remembers us shouting, 'No Daddy, please don't let Mammy drive.' She never learned.

45 years later my niece sends me a photo of her on a mobility scooter for the first time, negotiating Debenhams and M&S, her handbag in the front basket, her walking stick slotted behind the seat.

'Go, Mam,' I am shouting from 1,000 miles away.

july river 6

2011-07-06T11:19:00.000+01:00

Almost nine in the evening and the beach is full of picnics: two kids and their parents eating sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil, an extended family on deckchairs around a line wobbly tables pushed together and leaning into the sand from the weight of tupperware dishes and bottles of wine, some volleyballers on towels with cigarettes and bread.

Sand, sunset, the voices of people who know you. The day's end like a pillow.

july river 5

2011-07-05T11:14:00.000+01:00

summer rainstorm
the balloon man
sells umbrellas

july river 4

2011-07-04T11:38:00.000+01:00

croissant crumbs
I try and find
the right words

july river 3

2011-07-03T08:49:00.000+01:00

there can never be too much light

july river 2

2011-07-02T14:57:00.000+01:00

Much less than a nest, these few snatches of twig and grass, yet the pigeon settles and resettles herself on the high ledge under the arcade, a ledge so narrow she has to sit with her tail feathers flattened to the wall behind her. And when her mate arrives and perches on the tiniest lip of stone before resting his head across the back of her neck, so for a moment I can't see where his grey feathers end and hers begin, I am reminded of love, love that shows itself in kindness, and I am pleased to be, even if it is an invention of my own making.

july river 1

2011-07-01T09:46:00.000+01:00

the sun's heat
in a ripe plum
cicadas
cicadas

a river of stones July 2011

2011-06-28T12:19:00.000+01:00

In February of this year Fiona Robyn introduced NaSmaStoMo to the world and I managed to write a small stone every day for a month. So did hundreds and hundreds of other people and we all felt better for it, for a moment of stillness and reflection on the wonderful ordinariness of our lives.

I recently read back over my month of daily stones and was surprised by some of them, couldn't remember writing others, and re-felt the contentment of being part of the project. I shouldn't have been quite as surprised; I'm forever encouraging writing students to 'free write', to be spontaneous. 'You'll surprise yourselves,' I say. Sometimes I need to remind myself of my own advice.

So, I've decided to take part in the July river. I know that somedays I'll struggle to write anything. I might even miss a day and catch up. Other days I'll feel pleased with the few words and images I capture. But what happens on a day to day basis is a small shadow in comparison to taking part in something bigger than me.

I'm looking forward to the river, with meeting up with old friends and rediscovering new ones.

3 days to go. If you haven't already joined the river and you'd like to, check out this post.

another country, haiku poetry from Wales

2011-04-01T20:18:00.001+01:00

This is the first ever Welsh national anthology of haiku poetry. Concise, precise and evocative, and taking us on a journey through and around the ordinary and extraordinary aspects of everyday life, these poems have been selected and edited by three highly respected pioneers of the haiku in Wales - Nigel Jenkins, Ken Jones and Lynne Rees.

another country was launched in Wales in March 2011 at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea and at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre.

Available from Gomer Press.

2011-02-21T21:23:00.000Z

Ray Rasmussen's new online journal:

Day's End: Poetry and Photography about Aging

2011-02-10T18:36:00.000Z

dusk
a fresh baguette
crackles in my palm

three sneezes
all that’s left
of the snowman

Both published in Presence 43

Water-Ways: A Haiku Journey in Ghent

2011-01-31T18:53:00.003Z

International Haiku Festival in Ghent, Belgium

13th to 19th September 2010

Zilvervisje glimt

Langs ’t onzeekre watervlak

En hapt er een ster

August Vermeylen (1927)

silver fry flicker

along the shifting waters

and snaffle a star

Trans. David Cobb (2010)

The festival haiku by Vermeylen is one of the oldest haiku written in Dutch but also a natural choice given that Ghent is a city of rivers and waterways that weave through and around its gothic buildings and cobbled streets.

And the theme of water was more intimately introduced to the delegation of assembled haiku poets after dinner on Monday and Tuesday evenings with candle-lit ‘ginko’ in hand-made and man powered, long-oared, wooden boats. With blankets over our knees and notebooks in hand we were steered silently along the dark water, under low stone bridges, with the lights and stepped gable roofs of the city above us.

someone singing

from an open window

the boat drifts

Lynne Rees

The boat trips were repeated by day to allow us the maximum amount of exposure to the city that would be the inspiration for our haiku. Haiku by over 30 poets from more than 20 countries that would, within the space of five days, not only be translated into four languages and published in a perfect bound anthology, but also be printed in more than 15 languages on banners fixed to the stone walls of houses and bridges along the city’s rivers.

It was an astonishing accomplishment by the festival’s organisers, Ip Man of Viadagio vsw (Chairman) and Diederik de Beir (Programme Director) and their team of volunteers. Viadagio literally means ‘slow way’ and the organisation is dedicated to sustainable living and a lifestyle that respects the environment. Its flagship restaurant, Panda, in the historic centre, was a welcoming and nurturing base for the poets each evening where we were served delicious vegetarian suppers and organic wine by Ip Man’s wife, Denise, and her team of cooks, before returning to our host families around the city.

far from home

an extra squeeze

of honey in my tea

Lynne Rees

David Cobb

David Cobb’s hosts owned a pet turtle which had the freedom of their living room and kitchen, a splendid exemplar of ‘Viadagio’! Asked to compose a souvenir of his visit, David created a haiga of this haiku:

Take your time, Turtle —
there’s plenty of it yet
in timeless Ghent!

David Cobb

The Poetry Centre in Ghent
(photo by George Swede)

On Tuesday afternoon everyone gathered at the Poëziecentrum, for a tour of the four-storey converted guild building in the centre of Ghent, which since 1980 has been a dynamic, independent and democratic supporter of Dutch and Flemish poets. The centre boasts a publishing house, organises educational activities, offers a ‘search for/identify a poem’ service to the general public, as well as housing an extensive collection of poetry books, pamphlets and anthologies in Dutch, Flemish and Afrikaans from all around the world.

Wednesday was the principal day set aside for writing, editing and translating our haiku and while certain poets and editors had been appointed as official translators there was also a lot of informal and friendly discussion between the 7 native English speakers (Sharon Burrell, David Cobb, Jim Kacian, Anita Krumins, Anthony Kudryanvitsky, Lynne Rees and George Swede) and their European counterparts.

Thursday was designated ‘International Haiku Day’ and saw us back at the Poetry Centre, in the Het Toreken (Little Tower), for a full day’s programme of seminars, workshops and readings, wonderfully punctuated by the classical guitar virtuoso, Alexander Makay.

Jim Kacian (USA, founder of the Haiku Foundation and owner of Red Moon Press) gave the keynote lecture on ‘Haiku Mastery’, identifying the need for form, content and style to work together. This was followed by a history of haiku in Flanders by Diederik de Beir, Ion Codrescu’s (Romania) ‘The Art of Juxtaposition of Image & Text in Haiga Painting’, an insightful demonstration of the different ways to read haiku by Pietro Tartamella (Italy), ‘Humour in Haiku’ by Zinovy Vayman (Russia), ‘The Use of Iconic Place Names (uta-makura) in Western Haiku’ by David Cobb (UK), and ‘Haiku Transcription of Chinese Poetry’ by Paul Mercken (Belgium/The Netherlands). The day was brought to a close with haiku readings by Jean Antonini (France), Serge Tomé (Belgium) and local haiku poets.

Ghent's streets and stepped gable roofs

On Friday, after an official reception at City Hall hosted by Alderman Lieven Decaluwé, we strolled through the streets of Ghent with Luc, our formidable tour guide, unravelling the city’s past for us: its architecture and achievements, its people and punishments, the squares and churches and halls where people’s lives were written into history.

at her window box
Rapunzel in a garret
dead-heading flowers

David Cobb

Before the festival began there had been rumours that Herman van Rompuy, President of the European Council and haiku poet in his own right, might possibly attend one of our events, but, as the week progressed, the rumours subsided. The level of security surrounding our entrance to the Stedelijke Openbare Bibliotheek Gent, Ghent’s Public City Library, on Saturday morning should, perhaps, have alerted us that something was afoot. But it was not until several burly men in dark suits positioned themselves at the windows and doors of the conference room, and a slight but elegant man made his entrance, that we realised what was happening.

Mr. Herman von Rompuy

Mr van Rompuy walked around the room shaking hands with each of the haiku poets before speaking to the assembled public audience, with humility and humour, about his outing by the Press as ‘Haiku Herman’ and we were all delighted to hear that his own haiku would appear alongside ours in the festival anthology. A subsequent musical interlude by local musicians, Trio Guaraja, led to panel discussions hosted by the well-known journalist, John Vervoort, (De Standaard and Poëziekrant) who quizzed selected participants, including David Cobb and Max Verhart (The Netherlands), about haiku and why it appealed to them.

The end of the week had arrived and was celebrated in style on Saturday night with a Gala dinner at Panda Restaurant for poets, their hosts, and invited guests. A champagne reception was followed by dinner and wine, a stunning performance of Chopin by four talented young musicians, an announcement of the winners in the Flemish/Dutch haiku competition, ‘Along the Water’, and a reading of the anthology haiku in Flemish, French, English, German and some Japanese.

It was after midnight when we left the restaurant, our footsteps echoing along the quiet streets, with our silver gilt-decorated anthologies in our hands, the week’s activities still bubbling through our minds. The next day we would be even more excited and proud to see our words printed on banners and strung along the river, being read and photographed by inquisitive and surprised audiences as they motored past in the tourist boats.

day moon

the river and I

don’t say a word

Lynne Rees

First published in Blithe Spirit, Journal of the British Haiku Society, December 2010
Also published in Haiku Novine, Haiku Reality and on the Viadagio website.

A River of Stones: National Small Stone Month January 2011

2010-12-21T09:33:00.002Z

Fiona Robyn

The dynamic Fiona Robyn, creator of a small stone and a handful of stones is dircting this fabulous project, NaSmaStoMo, to encourage as many people as possible to write a small stone every day during January. What's a small stone? This is what she says:

What is a small stone?

A small stone is a polished moment of paying proper attention. You can see many fine examples at our sister blogzine, a handful of stones.

Why would you want to join in?

Because choosing something to write about every day will help you to connect with yourselves, with others, and with the world. It will help you to love everything you see - the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the beautiful and the ugly.

You don't have to be a 'writer' to get involved. The PROCESS of paying attention is what's important. I'd especially like 'writers' and 'non-writers' to get involved. If you'd rather not publish your small stones on a blog, you can write them in a note-book. It could change your entire year...

For more information about joining the project, and getting a badge for your blog or website, visit a river of stones. I can't think of a better way to start the year so I'll be taking part and posting my own small stones right here.

2010-11-22T11:24:00.000Z

moonlight
the illusion of being
alone

Second Prize
International Kusamakura Haiku Competition 2010
judged by Dr Richard Gilbert

2010-09-28T11:02:00.004+01:00

sunset over the sea
I remember when my mother
ran faster than me

Blithe Spirit Volume 20 No.3

Wherever We Go, There We Are

2010-09-17T22:35:00.005+01:00

moonlight the shadow of a tree masks the crack in the path

It is 3am on Florida’s Atlantic coast. Already 9am in France. My body says it’s time to start the day yet the darkness outside says, ‘middle of the night, go back to bed’.

Recently there has been too much impatience between us. Kinks and ruts in the road we cannot avoid or fill, that see us blaming each other. Even the smallest roads since we arrived: filling in our immigration forms, a luggage trolley, the small trunk in the rental car.

Things in their right place at the right time. This is what I try to do too often. Like pinning butterflies to boards.

The clock is too loud. It keeps time too stringently and that is what we need to be away from: days marked by so many jobs to be done, what must be completed in the hours between waking and falling asleep.

Then I hear it. A background hum, a soft engine shifting gears. A sound present at the moment I was born: the sea.

high tide in a dream you write the word ‘reef’

First published in Frogpond vol 33:3, Fall 2010

Drawing

2010-09-17T22:31:00.004+01:00

18” by 16”, felt tip pen on coloured paper by Ffion, age 4

There is a red house with orange windows and a pink door. There is a black cat whose feet have slipped off the bottom of the page. There is a tree sprouting flowers, petals pushing against the paper’s edge, a lavender sky with a sun and a crescent moon. And floating above the roof of the house, two stick people, holding hands, unwilling to come down to earth and decide whether the sun is about to set, or if the moon will make way for dawn, or whether the cat is trying to escape or climb into the picture and run towards a door that could be closed, or might be on the point of opening.

all the times
I have been wrong
fresh paint

First published in Frogpond vol 33:3, Fall 2010

2009-10-29T21:47:00.002Z

again this year
the wind-sown poppies
flower between stones

The Haiku Calendar 2010 (Snapshot Press, 2009)

I Dream of Speaking Italian

2009-10-29T21:41:00.004Z

so obvious things were falling apart when I had to walk up the street with a plateful of red pesto dressing to find out what had happened to my salad, though my haute couture dress — an off the shoulder taffeta Gina Lollobrigida little number in wine and black — was particularly appropriate for the restaurant, the army of Italian men appearing / disappearing through doors, but I couldn’t find the one in the silver suit who’d approved of my choice of sun-blush tomatoes, roasted aubergines, peppered salami, and had to speak to a woman with black eyebrows who was busy stacking up billowing leaves of oversized lettuce — radicchio, sweetheart, frisée — so I decided on a sandwich instead, buffalo mozzarella and black olives on ciabatta, and no, not toasted, or open, just give me the bloody sandwich will you, banging my fists on the glass counter, attracting the attention of a ginger-headed freckled Italian in pinstripes who smiled too much when he apologised, glanced down at my shoes. It was then I knew I should have listened to you, gone for the cheese and tomato on white, a bag of crisps, half a lager and lime, but I couldn’t resist the temptation of those slippery slices and curls and it’s not that I want to be different, look, we both have those little knots in the tendons at the back of our heels, and even though you say you wouldn’t, I know you’d love those studs of green peppercorn firing your tongue, oh yes dancing over the roof of our mouths

like firecrackers
the dreams we have
the dreams we never had

Modern Haiku, Autumn 2009

2009-08-24T11:28:00.002+01:00

the sound of the sea
speaking to my mother
on her birthday

Joint 2nd Prize
With Words International Online Haiku Competition (2009)

Living Things

2009-04-12T14:53:00.004+01:00

The weeping willow, despite its name, its curtain of low-sweeping boughs, does not weep over what is lost,does not grieve.

after her death
watching the rain
meeting the river

Beneath the bark, a layer of living cells divides and multiplies, expanding sapwood and heartwood, stretching the bark until it cracks and sheds to fit the new girth.

laughter lines—
the scar around my breast
faded now

Growth: out into the world, down into the dark earth, and up into the light.

Contemporary Haibun Volume 10
Red Moon Press 2009

From 'Antibes Journal'

2008-08-27T09:41:00.004+01:00

1.

55 years of marriage
my dad falls asleep
before we cut the cake

My mother has angina, osteoporosis and Raynaud’s Syndrome. On the telephone her voice sounds broken, but she doesn’t know why.

I am moving 1,000 miles away from my parents at a time in their life when they could need me more than ever.

My mother will die before my father. Even though he is almost deaf he will move around the house listening for her. Sometimes he will call her name, then wait.

2.

Moving house is no.5 on a list of stressful life events. I don’t think this includes moving to another country where you don’t speak the language, and so many ordinary things you’ve taken for granted – making phone calls, getting house and car insurance, or keys cut, knowing that the words you need to get through the day are already waiting for you to call on them – become small mountains to conquer, or at least to begin ascending.

top ten stress busters
smile
exercise
get enough rest and sleep
positive thinking
reach out to others
achieve a good work life balance
relaxation
eat a healthy diet
hugging
seek professional help

condensation
I draw myself
a happy face

3.

The light here continually surprises me. It illuminates ordinary things: edges of buildings, reflections in shop windows, my hands. This is what getting old means, I think, when I look at them. But maybe if I could magnify the skin I’d see the life I’ve lived filling every fissure and wrinkle. I have been lucky.

sunset
the golden belly
of a gull

4.

sun along the shore
even the grey cockle shells
surprise me

It has taken me thirty years to return to the sea. Here, on the Côte d’Azur, the water shifts through a palette of blues and greens, unlike the sea along the coast of South Wales, that steadfastly maintained its shade of gunmetal grey regardless of the season.

My parents still live in the house where I was born over fifty years ago. When I go back, I return to the place where I took my first breath of salt-air.

5.
an egret’s feather
in the pages of my book –
a drift of snow

I remember the hard winter of ’63. I remember standing on the sofa in the front room staring out at the falling snow: Chrome Avenue, its pavements and gardens all hidden. But who is watching this little girl in the plaid pleated skirt with all her weight on her finger tips pressed onto the back of the sofa? If it was a true memory wouldn’t I only see the view through the window? How much of my past is invented, imagined?

The peaks of the Alpes Maritimes are still scattered with snow, while on the beach at the end of the road, people are pick-nicking playing Frisbee, taking their first swims of the year. The bakery is now open every day of the week until the end of September. Each morning the pavement tables are full of baskets of croissants, white china coffee cups, women with small dogs, couples on holiday content to just sit and stare out to sea.

6.

The maçon has knocked a hole in the wall of the dressing room to make a second bathroom and the 1st floor landing is flooded with sunlight as it has never been since the house was built over a hundred years ago, and, from where I am at the top of the stairs, I can see through to the window at the other end of the room, out to the leafing plane trees, the rough trunk of the big palm. Plaster dust swirls in the air in front of me, to move forward I have to step over bags of rubble, past the shattered edges of brick, but none of this matters when light unexpectedly greets you.

our English neighbour
complains about the rats
wisteria in bloom

7.

Three sad and beautiful things:
• a stray, pregnant cat at the autoroute rest area
• the smell of the sea mixed with the smell of jasmine
• the sound of the word echantillon.

insomnia
under the bed our sandals
press toe to toe

8.

Bags of rubble accumulate at the side of the house. Half a dozen at first, then a dozen, then more that turn the corner of the house and are stacked along the roadside wall, until we run out of ground space and they’re piled on top of one another, and we stop counting. Sacs à gravats – thick, black plastic bags we bought at Castorama and heavy, white woven sacks the maçons brought with them – full of hollow clay bricks from the dividing walls we’ve knocked down, chunks of rock from the false windows we’ve opened up, broken floor tiles, wallpaper of every thickness and material and design, from every decade of the last century, metres of shattered wooden moulding, every length of old wire and stretch of iron pipe that ran through each of the four storeys. The flesh and bones of the house stripped out.

portraits of strangers
in the corner of the attic
someone else’s dust

9.

When we take out the fireplaces and their chimney breasts I keep hoping to find a reminder of the people who have lived here during the last hundred years: a coin, a shoe, something secreted away. There is only old iron, sooty terre cuite and stone. These are the things that held up their lives, not what they added to decorate it.

I examine the two framed pastel portraits signed by an Italian artist. The woman wears a blue dress; her face is flushed and smiling. The man is bearded, in a jacket, waistcoat and cravat. A watch glints from his pocket. What happened to them? Were they happy here? Were they kind to each other? Did he hold her and tell her that he loved her? The way Tony holds me and tells me not to worry?

10.

My soucis:
• the kitchen units will arrive and there will be no floor laid in the kitchen
• we will not have a bathroom by the time we move in
• the new windows will not fit
• we will fail the diagnostic test by Gaz de France
• we will run out of money
• the roof will leak

all the puddles
I step in
yesterday’s rain

11.

The maçons dig up the old tiles on the kitchen floor, hack away at the concrete screed beneath and come to damp sand.

When my parents moved into their house on Sandfields Estate in 1957 there was no garden, just sand pegged out with fence posts. Only dunes separated them from the sea, 200 yards away. My father brought in topsoil and turf. Over the years he dug in compost and manure. Today their garden flourishes with potatoes, onions, carrots, cabbages, runner beans, soft fruit, but if you dig deep enough you still find the sand. The grains bury themselves in the quick of your nails.

12.

almost a ‘local’
the neighbour’s ginger cat
ignores me

The people who live at Le Grillon, another of the few original houses that remain in Avenue des Chênes, invite us for an aperitif on Saturday lunchtime in order to introduce us to some neighbours. ‘In France, an aperitif is always at midday,’ Madame tells me on the phone, and we make sure to appear by 12.10 at the latest.

Only two other neighbours are there and the six of us sit in a circle handing around a plate of thinly sliced brioche spread with liver paté. They tell us about:
• the unpleasant neighbours
• tourists parking right outside their gate
• the neighbour who shot himself in the foot trying to kill a rat

We tell them about:
• the walls we have knocked down
• the windows we have opened up
• the plans for our house-warming – la crémaillère – at the end of the year

Just before two o’clock there’s a noticeable shift downwards in the briskness of the conversation and our excuses to leave are quickly accepted.

13.

A week of sun and rain. The season hasn’t settled yet but there are lots of women, usually in pairs, who walk past the house to the beach in the late morning, and back up towards their apartment blocks at the end of the afternoon. They wear brightly coloured, long-sleeved beach tops made from some sort of voile that flutters around them in the breeze but still modestly covers their bottoms. Mostly they speak Dutch or Norwegian and I imagine a whole country of middle-aged, northern women living together at the top of the steep Sentier de la Vertu.

50th year
‘bikini line’ slips down
my list of things to do

14.

While I am scraping thick vinyl off the lounge walls, Tony takes a break from filling holes with colle universelle and plays the piano. The piano is the only piece of furniture in the house, the only piece we bought from the old proprietor, and, while it needs tuning, when Tony plays I can feel the house breathing, as if music is what it’s been waiting for. He plays the theme from ‘Love Story’.

When the movie first came out in the 70s my older sister went to see it with some friends and came home with tears streaming down her face. I laughed at her standing in the kitchen and sobbing but when I went to see it the following week I was the same wet wreck and cried for days afterwards. Where do I begin, to tell the story of how great a love can be… A girl who loved Mozart, the Beatles, and me… Love means never having to say you’re sorry. Song lyrics, script, cliché – but as vivid in my memory as any real experience. At thirteen, I had never imagined there could be such sadness, that life could be so unfair.

This is a love story too. A love story with a house that came to be ours through a whole string of coincidences. And here I am with my couteau à grattoir and my décolleuse standing on a stepladder scraping walls back to their original surfaces. And there is Tony closing the piano lid. And on the other side of the French doors the sun spatters the terrace through the leaves of the plane trees. And Tarek, one of the maçons, comes in and says, Madame, j’ai fini la cuisine. And here is our first floor laid. A blue tile, aged with ochre and cream, called La Douce France.

washing-up
the evening’s last shimmer
of sunlight

2008-07-18T09:31:00.002+01:00

market stall
buying the smell
of tomatoes

'July' from The Haiku Calendar 2008 (Snapshot Press, 2007).
www.snapshotpress.co.uk

Some Weekends

2008-07-14T15:03:00.002+01:00

It looks like rain. Your throat hurts. The prawns are off. The cheese is bland. The wine is past its best. I get my period. You burn your arm. The promised sunshine never comes. We lose the planning appeal. The Aberdeen Angus steaks are rancid. I shout. The TV loses its sound. In the middle of the night the alarm goes off. Your throat still hurts. It rains. The mango is rotten at the core.

break
in the rain
birdsong

frogpond - Volume 31:2, 2008

Little Brother

2008-05-11T22:31:00.003+01:00

My brother is five years old again. ‘Do you want to go on an adventure?’ I ask him. I have money in a plastic envelope, bags of sweets, our thick coats. He looks out of the window and says, ‘But things are going to get worse.’ He’s right. The moon shivers across the dark sea as we look out at the lines of rising surf, our hands pressed to the glass. When the storm comes I feel it pound against the chalet’s thin wooden walls, through the veil of my dream.

a little boy stares
at his fists full of sand
sails on the horizon

He is 44 this year and has children by three different women: a daughter of eighteen who has lived in the States for the past ten years, a boy of eleven whose mother disappeared with him when he was only a few months old, and Morgan, his baby son with Manuela. The invitation to their wedding arrived this week. 'This time,' I say to myself, 'things will work out.'

warm wind
a man lifts his hands
from the handlebars

My sister and I taught him how to play cards in a caravan on a rainy afternoon in Devon. His hands were so little he struggled to hold them all and when he dropped one, and crawled under the table to fetch it, we spiked the remaining ones, giving him the four Jacks that would easily win him the game. His eyes widened and a grin spread across his face as he picked up one card at a time. When he finally realised we’d set him up, he looked at us and said, ‘You scrumptious girls.’

crowded promenade
a little boy jumps
the long shadows

Dover Beach and My Back Yard
British Haiku Society Haibun Anthology 2007

Fast Train

2008-02-23T21:44:00.003Z

When the 17.22 heads out of Victoria and begins to pick up speed I start thinking about seatbelts, or the absence of seatbelts, and how in an emergency I might be thrown onto the woman opposite, cracking my head against hers, or puncturing my face on a corner of her open hardback book. But then I notice her breasts which are packed beneath a bib of pink frills, her tiered paisley skirt rumpling in waves over plump knees, her curly hair the colour of hazelnuts, her milky skin, which takes me back to her breasts which are pendulous, generous. And I’ve forgotten about seatbelts, as I shift my knees to one side to get a view of her feet, the shoes she’s wearing which I know will make all the difference to whether she’ll scream and push me away as I fall, or cradle my face away from her book, those wonderful breasts receiving me like a tumbled duvet.

not knowing
how to hold her
my mother at eighty

Frogpond 2007, Vol XXX, No 3, and
dust of summers (Red Moon Press 2008)

2007-12-23T10:31:00.000Z

wiping the dust off
my grandmother’s clock
another year

Planet 2007

2007-12-04T23:10:00.000Z

For Summer

bathtime
for once she wants
to keep her socks on

bedtime
suddenly she's learned
how to hop

Planet 2007

Blow

2007-11-23T14:43:00.000Z

the silence of rain
through double-glazing
the tick of a clock

‘It doesn’t matter anymore,’ he says with his back to me.

He was looking out of the bay window when I got out of the car and waved and I thought he hadn’t seen me. ‘Dad, I thought about calling you back,’ I say, ‘but it was late when I got in and I didn’t want to wake you.’

He parts the net curtain as if something in the street has caught his attention.

‘Look, I’m sorry. If I’d known it was such a big thing I would have called.’

He turns round at this. ‘A big thing? I’m not “a big thing”…’ and his voice breaks.

When did my dad get so old? He walks in small tight steps, wears two cardigans to keep warm. He calls me if his newspaper is late.

I walk over to him and put my arm around his shoulders. ‘Dad, c’mon,’ I say, ‘you know I love you. You know that.’ He trembles like a child caught in the rain.

When I was little he always had a hankie for me. He’d press the smooth cotton to my nose and say, ‘Blow’. I search in my bag and hand him what he needs for now.

dad’s slippers
shuffle along the path
windfalls

Blue Tattoo November 2007

2007-11-15T09:54:00.000Z

stone chapel
the bleating of sheep
on a high ridge

Honourable Mention
R H Blyth Award 2007

What’s Unsaid

2007-11-13T08:28:00.000Z

two people kissing
through the café window
the glitter of rain

That’s what she told me when she came home.

It was already dark. Everyone had left except for the old man. She turned the ‘Closed’ sign to face the street, wiped down all the other tables, emptied ashtrays, refilled ketchup bottles, and straightened the plastic menus. She went out back for the steel pail and mop and washed the floor. The old man had his back to her. Five to six.

‘Have you finished, love?’ she said.

She walked over to him. ‘I’ve got to lock up now.’

‘Five minutes,’ he said without looking at her.

She leant against the counter and watched the traffic lights change on the High Street.

At six, as usual, the old man got up from his table.

‘See you tomorrow,’ she said.

The bell on the door clattered.

She slurried the mop around where he’d been sitting. She picked up his mug and left it in the sink. She dropped the crumpled sugar packets in her overall pocket because she’d already taken out the rubbish.

And that’s when she saw them. After she’d turned out the main lights, just as she was opening the door.

a black umbrella
blows inside out — too late
to say sorry

Blue Tattoo November 2007

2007-11-13T08:25:00.000Z

fiftieth year—
‘bikini line’ slips down
my list of things to do

Planet 2007

Child’s Play

2007-10-20T11:41:00.000+01:00

How about drawing? We could go and see the sheep? Riding your bike around the farmyard? I pick up some red and green juggling balls that have been gathering dust on the windowsill and manage a dozen or so throws before one thuds to the wooden floor. His face lights up. He drags over an empty cardboard box, stands in it, and asks me to throw the balls at him. To see if I can hit his nose.

three now
he thinks I should wear
the blue skirt, not jeans

Stylus October 2007

2007-10-20T11:37:00.000+01:00

after her death
watching the rain
meeting the river

Shamrock Autumn 2007

Fish-girl

2007-10-15T15:42:00.001+01:00

‘Julia was staying with her grandmother in Antibes and could hear the sea through her open bedroom window,’ I begin as we head towards the seafront, her hand small and warm inside mine. ‘So even though it was a windy evening, she decided to go for a walk.’ We pass brightly lit cafés; take a shortcut to the ramparts through a small park of palm trees, the sea so close now I can feel the spray on my face. ‘At the old town walls, she stopped to watch the surf crashing against the rocks below and that’s when she saw...’

‘I know, let me!’ my granddaughter interrupts, and the story is hers now: mermaids and black rocks, a girl dragged under the wild frothing sea. ‘Your turn,’ she says as we take a cobbled street into the town, away from the sea-wind.

I could let the girl drown, the mermaid’s cold arms wrapped around her tight as weed, her breath racing away to the surface of the sea, and pass back this story of danger and treachery. But not yet. She can breathe under water, will wake up the next morning with a necklace of pink seashells, proof that the unbelievable sometimes happens.

full moon
surprised by seagulls
flying between stars

French Literary Review Autumn 2007

2007-09-28T15:39:00.000+01:00

empty platform
ivy clings to the face
of the station clock

Moonset Competition 2007 – Honourable Mention

What’s Hidden

2007-09-28T15:37:00.000+01:00

The girl in my dream is trapped in a snowstorm of chicken feathers, unable to breathe for the fine white down. She’s tied up on a bed with a small glass jar forced between her big and second toes so she can’t use her right foot to unpick the lock. Then she bathes with her lover in a sunken pool the size of a room, lit by candlelight and crowned with bubbles. They cling to her as she rises from the warmth and walks through the cold, dark house where she opens the door to another room, its harsh light. She’d forgotten all this: the mountain of dead chickens, the stink of rot.

midday:
a black cat in the shade
of a whitewashed wall

Modern Haiku 38.3 Autumn 2007

2007-09-28T15:13:00.000+01:00

winter twilight
yellow apples cling
to the high branches

Shamrock Autumn 2007

Skin

2007-09-28T15:11:00.000+01:00

The curved pale plains of male and female calves. Tattoos snaking past the waistbands of jeans. Shoulders with spaghetti straps. So much skin on the streets of Antibes today. At the supermarket checkout, a blonde girl in cream shorts and flip-flops. My boots suddenly feel too heavy, too warm, my own calves resentful of their prison of lycra and suede as I head down Boulevard Albert towards the sparkling sea. So very far away, that harsh northern climate with its cold wet winds I expected to be tramping through. At the bakery door, the smell of crème anglais and caramelised apples. A woman hands me a fresh baguette wrapped in a twist of paper, brushes a wisp of hair from her damp cheek. Il fait chaud, she sighs.

I paint my toenails red
heat
at the back of my knees

French Literary Review September 2007

2007-09-28T15:07:00.000+01:00

the house so quiet
I open the wardrobe
to look at your shirts

Presence Autumn 2006

Ordinary Women

2007-09-28T15:04:00.000+01:00

Waiting in line at the supermarket checkout late at night, I find myself listening to a woman at the next till who’s just paid for her groceries. She smiles at the cashier and says, ‘thank you for all your help’, still smiling as she tucks her receipt and change into her purse. And the smile remains as she pushes her trolley towards the door.

She’s still with me while I drive home. Her pale blue coat, how her shoulders were a little hunched. And the way her eyes and cheeks, not only her lips, carried her smile, how it seemed rooted below her skin.

Today, I am still thinking about her. Thinking I should smile more. Thinking about softness.

winter sun
the shadow of a leaf touches
my shadow

Roadrunner February 2007

2007-09-28T15:03:00.000+01:00

sunlit garden
when did my father grow
an old man’s neck?

Frogpond, Fall 2006