an open field

good days bad days always the light at our feet

sunday morning the light beyond the church window

‘What’s the word for the sky in your house?’ my granddaughter asked as I was putting her to bed.  ‘The sky in my house?’ And I looked up towards the ceiling, imagined the open space above it, between floor joists and the roof’s wooden rafters, and I saw what she was seeing, saw it confined there as if it had forgotten to move before we’d converted the derelict barn to a home. ‘Ah, the attic,’ I said.  Fifteen years later I live in a house with no attic and sometimes I stare at the sky and wonder about all that time it was living with me and I hadn’t known.   In his Afterword to The Wonder Code Scott Mason asks, ‘… where does wonder begin?’  And answers, ‘I believe it begins with a sense of discovery.’  discover (v.)   from the Old French  descovrir,  which meant, satisfyingly in the above context, to unroof, and also to unveil, to reveal.   We discover things when we lift the veils of self-importance, fear, ...

Sometimes life and poetry intersect naturally. I had a brutal wardrobe clear-out yesterday, as witnessed by the pile of clothes hangers in the centre of the bed and a bulging large carrier bag destined for the charity shop.  And then, through one of those random extended internet excavations, I came across this haiku by  Annette Makino , published by  tinywords  a few years ago which I'd commented on briefly.  hanging in my closet the person I used to be Reading it again still elicited a similar variety of responses: laughter, recognition, resignation and sadness. And this time part of ‘the person I used to be’ was neatly folded at my feet!  Most of us keep clothes that no longer fit us, or suit us. I still have an ostentatious, ostrich feather bolero that I bought in the early 1980s and will never wear again but hold onto from a sense of nostalgia. But the haiku also propels me towards imagining clothes that belonged to someone else, a...

Haiku Rebellion Studio, The Poetry School, London, April 2018

haiku how many become one sound of rain           — Jacob Salzer , Frogpond 38.3 I have a particular fondness for line-break – perhaps because I came to haiku from writing free-verse where line-break is the principal structuring tool. But it’s still something that matters to me in constructing haiku, although I approach it with a lighter touch to avoid any overly dramatic effect that a longer poem might be able to carry and dilute. And it was the idea of line-break that immediately hit me when I first read Salzer’s haiku, on the page and out loud… the idea that the haiku would work as well without any: how many become one sound of rain The haiku’s theme of oneness, alongside the option for the reader to pause in multiple places to play with the sense of what Salzer is saying, make it perfect for the monostich form. BUT… that’s not what Salzer chose to do so instead of simply imposing myself on the poem I want to look deeper and appreciate the a...

the sky's blue gong an orange in my hand           　　　　　　　　　　— Peter Yovu I don’t think Yovu could have packed any more into this haiku. Colour and sound.  The human experience and the natural world. Distance and proximity. And the beautiful simplicity of concrete language that injects it with vibrancy and authenticity and communicates an experience we can all recognise and share.  Add to that the use of colour as adjective and noun, the onomatopoeia of ‘gong’ and the almost-eye rhyme with ‘orange’, as well as the monostich form that encourages us to experience this moment in one celebratory hurrah, and this is a haiku that makes me feel good to be alive on this day in the world. A day when that orange could almost be the sun sitting in my own small palm.