Bamboo Shoot: MEETING PLACE

.

As we descend the well worn path towards the gate, he paces casually down the other side to meet us. He is seriously big. There can be no mistakes with this one. No thoughts of flamboyant veronicas with an old anorak; and side-stepping him would be like trying to cross the road outside my house on a sunny bank holiday weekend. We close in, and without so much as an excuse me for a minute – he engages us with a full profile pee.
.

Frustrated and bored,
but friendly enough – the bull
in our next field
.

Once he has quite finished, two of us lean over to scratch the enormous four hands-width head. I look at the steepish hill beyond, and then at his massive bulk and think Years ago, with that escape route over wired fence to the left and the earthquake warning of your hooves behind me, I might just have taken you on to the top up there; might have still, but that I’m just a knackered old git, while you, you great hunk of meat and no potatoes, you’re not interested anyway. And so what, old friend – only Time wins at the last.

Meanwhile, our leader of men is telling us that If there’s no warning sign, he’s not dangerous; and if he is dangerous, he shouldn’t be in the field anyway. Nice theory, I think; and we all follow him over the gate and then into the nearest adjacent field – not too casually.

.
by Bamboo Shoot

Salisbury, Wiltshire, England
first published in Blithe Spirit 17:4, 2007

Jeffrey Harpeng: WHAT IT IS

.

for Lochlan 29/1/08 - 6/4/08

How early it is to be so tired.
A machine reminds him when to breathe.
It whispers life is brief as a sigh.

Today his mother bathed him
and sis tickled and teased with what they’d do
when he grows up.

One eye heavily winks
as if he knows a wicked joke.
He'll tell you later.

The way his hand wraps
around dad's finger, loosely as if:
what more is there to know about love.

night fishing

ripples from the line

scatter the stars

.by Jeffrey Harpeng

Macgregor, Qld., Australia

Tish Davis: NIGHT PADDLING

.

I show my son how to tie up the food pack. “It keeps the bears away.” He carries me through the darkness to the lake’s edge where my husband is waiting with the canoe. The last time I was in the Boundary Waters I was the teenager. Now I must ride in the center of the boat. My doctor advised against this trip and told me not to expect remission from the disease that is consuming my body.

The rhythm of oars pulls the boat forward. The silhouettes of the pines succumb to the stars. Under the aurora, even the moon releases its brightness to the lake’s embrace.

I take a metal cup out of the pouch and dip it into the water.

.

planetarium
an operator freezes
the sky

by Tish Davis

Dublin, Ohio

Owen Bullock: SUMMER CAMPS

.

Whilst teaching summer school, I stay at a camping ground in Rotorua, at the heart of the geothermal area.

in the scrub
beside the mud lake
a broken gate

I move onto the Auckland Folk Festival. Skies are clear and the sun beats down most of the weekend. No mains power is provided on site this year and the kitchen is closed, so I make black coffee with a Trangia when taking a break from the music.

the gold filling
in the middle of
the blues singer’s song

The organisors have an active recycling policy, but, because contractors won’t handle such small amounts of waste, they ask festival-goers to take any recycling home with them.

leaves
pressed into my skin
after reading so long

by Owen Bullock

New Plymouth, New Zealand

Patricia Prime: LIVE FROM DOWNUNDER

Getting the Words Out:
The Collaborative Poetry of Catherine Mair and Patricia Prime

Correspondent: Patricia Prime
.

My friend, Catherine Mair, and I began writing and publishing traditional poetry at about the same time. Catherine was a dairy-farmer’s wife, bringing up four children in the rural town of Katikati in the Bay of Plenty, whilst I, widowed early, was bringing up four children and working as a teacher in Auckland.

Both Catherine’s and my poems were first published in the New Zealand magazine Spin. The editor of Spin, David Drummond, who has since died, encouraged his new writers to try various forms of poetry from mainstream poems to the Japanese short forms of poetry. A subscription to Spin also included membership to an orbit. Orbits contained poems written by members and passed around a group of four or more poets for criticism and feedback. Catherine and I were in the same orbit. When it failed to appear at one time I wrote to members asking what had happened to it and the only answer I received was from Catherine. I suggested that we correspond with one another and criticise each other’s work. We decided shortly afterwards to meet and a friendship was formed that has continued for twenty years.

Catherine went on to write haiku, tanka and haibun and later instigated, as part of the millennium project in her town, the Katikati Haiku Pathway. She also became involved in short short story writing, wrote the text for two books for school children with disabilities, judged poetry and haiku contests and has had her work published worldwide.

My writing career took a different path: I write poetry, the Japanese short forms of haiku, tanka and haibun, articles and reviews, and am now focussing on publishing interviews with poets and editors. I have also published a collection of poetry, Accepting Summer and edited an anthology of New Zealand verse, Something Between Breaths. I am the co-editor of the New Zealand haiku magazine Kokako, and reviews editor of the New Zealand journal Takahe and the online magazine Stylus. I began writing haiku at the time of the publication of the first New Zealand Haiku Anthology and have written tanka and haibun for the past seven years.

Our collaboration with each other began with the self-publication of a collection of our poetry in the place where . . ., the shortcut home, and other small publications. We have also published a collection of our haiku called Every Drop Stone Pebble with an Indian poet.

We began writing linked verse in collaboration with each other several years ago, and have since published several collections, including sweet penguin, last rays of the sun, East Cape and Morning Glory. Our linked poems contain lines which are “moments in time” captured in a haiku-like form. The links may be subtle, created by writing in the same place at the same time. For this informal type of linked verse to work there needs to be balance and empathy between the writers. In much the same way that renga evolved in Japan, as enjoyable entertainment and communication, so our collaborative verse began. We don’t see our linked verse as haiku or renku, but rather as “stream-of-consciousness” lines written when we are in close proximity: walking, talking, or visiting places of interest.

For those readers who haven’t seen our writing, I would suggest that our links follow certain themes of time, place, feeling and “togetherness,” rather than following the Japanese idea of the mind “leaping” from one image to something totally different. This, we have been told, is part of the “rebellious” nature of our work, and is what makes it different from the formal style of renga. It is what makes it popular, gives it a certain charm, and makes it more accessible to many readers. An example of one of our linked verses from first rays of the sun is the following poem that was composed on a visit to The Mount in the Bay of Plenty, an extremely popular place for visitors to walk around and enjoy panoramic views of the ocean:
.

The White Shell Path

from the historic stone jetty he casts his line
two boys – their bright yellow lifejackets
a backpack filled with mussels for bait
empty in the shade – carved bench seats
climbing the stile, I hold open the wire gate
standing at Stoney Point Reef, the warmth on our backs
from the cliff walk my shadow moves along the sand
sound of children’s footsteps behind us on the shell path
naked the bronze warrior crouches in spring sunshine
one white boulder among all the black ones
on a rock his suitcase full of video gear

Catherine Mair & Patricia Prime

.

In 2002, about the time that we thought of publishing a second collection of our linked verse, we began writing linked haiku, linked tanka and linked haibun.

Werner Reichold, editor of the online magazine Lynx, who has been particularly supportive of our work, published the first of our linked tanka. A poem of which I’m particularly fond for its memories and images is “The Perfumed Air,” which was written on the occasion of a visit to the Lavender Gardens in Katikati, during which we were looking for a small gift to send to Janice Bostok in Australia, who is both a friend and mentor, and is herself a world recognised haijin.
.

lavender fields
choosing a card to send her
from the display
I break a sprig of flowers
to carry home

a thin jet of water
from the lion’s mouth
into perfumed air
afterwards you caution me
parked on the bank’s brink

dusk approaches
you work-out at table tennis
in the garage
my first short story
takes shape on the computer

cooler now
wide flung windows
closed against mosquitoes
the photographers have gone
taking their talk & laughter

Patricia Prime & Catherine Mair
.

The idea of writing collaborative haibun came later. The idea was planted and wouldn’t go away. The narrative sometimes presents itself as a problem – a challenge; and the solution was for one person to begin with a paragraph (with or without the addition of a haiku), followed by a linking narrative paragraph, which would open out the haibun. We were thinking all these things out, and at the same time telling ourselves this was not something everyone could do. One has to have the right temperament to work with another poet, but the energy created by the input of ideas was astonishing. Our imaginations were set in motion and we couldn’t leave the idea alone.

We began by writing narrative, in a short story like way, but we felt that the pieces lacked something we wanted them to have. And once the poems (haiku, tanka or a short poem) were included, we felt that what had been missing had been supplied. There are some ideas that are purely instinctive in writing and one must follow what they tell you to do. In our case, it was a particularly strong feeling. One reason is that a narrative doesn’t want to deny anything that’s beyond the prosaic, the real, the factual, the mundane. It wants to acknowledge something “higher” – an element of the ideal if you like. Therefore, writing the prose and presenting the poems, which are not simply a repetition of ideas in the narrative but something more, seem to give the prose a lift and imbue it with a special resonance. For us, the arts – music and poetry in particular, but the arts in general – are, in our lives, what cooking, gardening, and so on, represent in other peoples’ lives.

It seems to me that we are pulling together two of the strands which define us as creative writers – our work in short stories, articles and reviews and our work as poets – and intertwining them. It was only when we began to write collaborative haibun that we realised for the first time we’d found a way of being both fiction writers and poets in a single work. We simply write down what we experience in our everyday lives as inspiration for the prose part of the haibun, then add the haiku to create a new dimension, to change or alter the scene, voice or time, in a similar way as the two parts of a tanka are related.

In 2003, Catherine and I were asked to be guest poets at a haiku reading, where many of the audience knew nothing about haiku, and the first collaborative haibun we wrote came from that gathering. It was published in the New Zealand magazine Takahe.
.

The Clapped-out Microphone

Several of the audience dressed as “poets” – flowers and ribbons in the women’s hair, a man with a goatee and beret.

Fred, the compere, not able to place Sarah (one of the guest poets), calls her by the wrong name again. For the first bracket of the evening the microphone remains obstinate: voices whisper around the room.
.

collapsing on the floor
the blackboard
listing readers
.

From the back of the group a little old lady comes forward to fill her five-minute slot and reads, with panache, one haiku. A bowl of hot chocolate splashes across a folder. In the corner some of the children are writing haiku at a table.

Shaking like a leaf, but not wanting to explain her Parkinson’s again, Sheila comes to the mike, nearly tripping over the leads on the floor.
.

a baby’s
highchair
for a lectern

.

Many of the audience have come to have their first experience of haiku. A chuckle is heard when a poet reads
.

bus terminal
a skateboarder
bounces off seats

Halfway through the evening they sort out the microphone and Moira says, “Our group nearly bought the temperamental thing!” Fred declares he’s having a bad hair day. “When things start to go wrong at the beginning, it’s hard to get them back on track!”

Pausing for effect, but merely losing the place in her notebook, Judy shows off her Library of Congress t-shirt. Exotic Tamsin (a nutritionist) reads her poem “The Sugar Demon”, whilst nearly swallowing the microphone.

Near the end Fred salvages his credibility by quoting one of the guest poet’s haiku without missing a beat.
.

dahlia
tucked into the microphone
falls to the floor

Patricia Prime & Catherine Mair

.

As you can see from reading some of our collaborative haibun, we mine the quotidian. Detailing the typical emotional routines of life today – the dullness of work ameliorated by holidays and weekend excursions, the little longings and frustrations of family relations, the intersections and intrusions of the issues of the day, and the occasional time for thoughts about ill-health, mortality and the whole reason why we are here in the first place. Our introspective moments are triggered by stones, rocks, sky, ocean, flowers, birds, emblems usually for the desire to escape the drabness of daily life. Our style, not surprisingly, is lean, often employing prose/haiku, but sometimes we intersperse tanka or a short poem, a technique that makes poems contemporary in an accessible way.

We like to believe that we create an unusually nice effect in not suggesting to the reader any real notion of what is to come. We allow the reader to drift with us from thought to thought and insight to insight. The thoughts offered are sometimes sensitive and deep, sometimes emotional, often something to which the reader can relate. And we do not just hand them to you, but make a place for you beside us. Our poems are a challenge to see the world as a place of connections and connectedness; poems by two distinct writers.

by Patricia Prime

Auckland, New Zealand

first published, in an earlier form, in Simply Haiku, 2004

Catherine Mair & Patricia Prime: FRIGHTENED SPARROWS

.

Something rustles in the flax beside the river while magpies quardle ardle doodle in the gum trees above.

This still autumn morning, a bevy of dogs in the park. Zak, the maltese terrier, gambols around our legs yapping for his mistress to throw his rubber quoit.

Voices have a hollow drifting quality - dogs meet on the bridge, their tails as frantic as hands clapping at a rock concert.

You wouldn't imagine looking at the river's tranquil surface that days ago flood waters rushed down from the Kamai ranges towards the sea, flattening grass along the banks.

.
a solitary heron
wades into
its reflection

.
Developers have left a grassy track that skirts the old pond. It leads back to the house without going down to the road. We make our way through weeds and wildflowers, take a short cut around a neighbour's property and climb a bank towards the homestead. In the reeds, mallards call to each other.

.
losing my footing
I grip a fern frond
frightened sparrows
.

.
by Catherine Mair and Patricia Prime
Katikati, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand
and Auckland, New Zealand

Catherine Mair & Patricia Prime: SUE & KIT'S ANGELS

.

You can never tell what's at the end of a road until you reach it. Sue's place is a revelation. The dishevelled angel on top of a totem pole is one of many surprises.

Sue and her husband are working on a book about cemetery angels; taking photographs, tracing inscriptions, tracking down sculptors, discovering the provenance of the statues.

childlike angel
face buried in a hand -
her matted stone hair

So many angels. Their mute stories are of drowning and death. Particularly poignant are the children.

silhouette
against sunset
an angel points to the sky

Kit plays a DVD of angel photographs they have gathered from cemeteries throughout New Zealand . Many of the cemeteries have been neglected and Sue is part of a conservationist group which aims to restore them to their former state.

two little boys
drowned in the same accident -
one statue pristine
the other allowed
to gather golden lichen

An arm stretches up and fingers curl over the cross's horizontal member. Another statue is even more beautiful festooned in cobwebs. But it's the soles of two feet, black with age, beneath a draped hem which convey most.

still perfect
an angel's wing, a dimpled arm
and a rainbow

by Catherine Mair and Patricia Prime

Katikati, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand

and Auckland, New Zealand

Jeffrey Woodward: EVENING IN THE PLAZA

.
Cobblestone of which former century, red again with the last rays of the sun; elongated shadow of a sign illegible in silhouette or that of an attenuated and hushed passerby; a mind intent, in the face of horror vacui, upon leaving no nook unfilled while racing vainly to make several discrete phenomena cohere. A tremor of baleful leaves, perhaps, or a tardy pigeon come to roost….
.

the water comes back
to itself with a sound ─
a plaza’s fountain

by Jeffrey Woodward

Detroit, Michigan

first published in bottle rockets 18, Feb. 2008

Patricia Prime: LA FENÊTRE OUVERTE (MATISSE)

.

as I emerge with you
from darkness across
the ivy-garlanded sill
I enter a world
more inferred than real

can't you see
I share your lucidity
as I pass through
the open window into
a harbour of pink & red boats?

despite the dark
interior you capture
the quick-sleeved
transparency of light
dividing two worlds

Beautiful clear weather, sunny and warm by day, crisp and clear at night. The days spent with the usual lovely round of reading, the morning walk beside the river, through wildflowers, willows and mountain flax, watching for the blue herons, listening to the songs of fernbirds, thrushes and nightingale. Into town for coffee, then home again for lunch, siesta and writing. Finally, the evening meal by the fireside when the house is curtained and shuttered for the night, the cat has been let out, and the air begins to cool.

.

by Patricia Prime

Auckland, New Zealand

Bob Lucky: SCENE THROUGH A WINDOW

.
spring planting
the scarecrow skeleton’s
thin shadow
.

on the bullet train to Shanghai
in every field we pass
on the bullet train to Shanghai
in every field we pass
on the bullet train to Shanghai
on the bullet train to Shanghai
in every field we pass
on the train in every field
on the train in every field
on the train in every field
on the in the on the in the
train field train field
frain tield frain tield
ftrield ftrield
ftrield ftrield
ftl
ftl
ftl
.

spring planting
the train’s shadow ripples
in the paddies

.
by Bob Lucky

Hangzhou, China

Jack Ross: THE PERFECT STORM

.
We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship
– Elizabeth Bishop

.
Fire

.
Mainly chicks smoking:
· Office-clad in Elliott Street, dragging on it like an aqualung.
· 14-yr-old (?) walking beside her boyfriend, cigarette in hand.
· Two women at the table opposite in the Albion at lunchtime. Lisa les déteste.
· Now, in Freyberg Square, a knot of four nestles in one corner, one tailor-made between them.

Right outside the heart attack
he told her – waddling to town
Give up your seat
..................................to ladies
“Sit on my lap”
Blonde, bluejeans, scarf

Queensland, June 25th: ‘We are still trying to come to terms with what happened. We never will – and although every one of us wants to forget – we never will. We owe it to the Palace fifteen that they are never forgotten, ever,’ a British backpacker said. Others spoke of love found and lost, and of working alongside each other picking fruit in the Childers district.

The girl in maroon leather pants isn’t eating; her friend with the knitted jumper is – stuffing her face with a muffin.

The Storm

.
Monday, July 3rd: Rain and flooding in Auckland – an anticyclone over the South Island keeps the weather stalled in the North. Coromandel takes the brunt. The creek’s up. Your shoes are sodden, socks soaked through, raincoat ineffective. But you’ve done your walk.

The Perfect Storm “hits” today – so do school holidays: the gang’s all here, clustered round the cardboard display for The Road to El Dorado – “It’s really funny when these three guys call those two gods,” explains a small(ish) boy.

Girl with steel comb
like fangs
adjusts her hair

Cheekfuls of popcorn
keep the boys’ mouths shut

Everybody’s got a radio, everybody’s mouth is open, screaming out instructions, commentary … It’s quite a storm.

Dem waves iz beeg
I hope we don’t git sunk
Git outta dere!

Fusion

.
Did that strident smock-clad girl accost you in Whitcoulls, wanting you to paint a still life? Same colours, or different? Did you choose different, and daub some grapes with manifest incompetence? Did she pounce, accordingly, on better prey? Was she promoting an artist’s manual?

More beautiful than death
than a boomerang in flight
the pain of that

stab a compass in your thigh
the sunflowers

At the Inaugural Massey Fashion Awards:

It’s basically just life in general,
& whatever you see ........................................450 copper studs
..........that’s what life means ..........................140 belts
....................to you ..............................................70 hours

Tanya: Cultural native look [palm fronds tied round her black frock]
Chris: Cultural all-round-the-world look [Old Glory wrapped around his bits]

Poetry Live

.
This is how it is / in this moment / we just want to feel good

Björk/Sinead clone ullulates in red behind the Alleluya microphone – now quietening down to decoy us in for orgasm: I cherish this.

Too much Kerouac in the air. Ramón has a dribble of red wine down his chin, as he buys a drink for some splashed habitué with his many, many cashcards – almost too drunk to stand. Silvana sits waiting to tape herself, looking monolithic. Vega scowls malignantly.

“She is a cock-sucking woman,” shouts Ramón, egged on by his entourage of bozos.

Tonight
walking past George Court’s
I saw the legend

Press # key to start
on a plastic box

I’m tired of being the outsider – from now on, The Insider (Russell Crowe). Driving home, I see tendrils of light connecting me to the road: like spider silk, or parachute strings.

by Jack Ross

Auckland, New Zealand

Angelika Wienert: PIAZZA TALE

.

As always: for my husband red wine, for me white wine.

"When I was young, strangers complimented me."

"What was your last sentence, honey?"

"Strangers made compliments in my youth."

"Often?"

"No, not often. I was shy and had to wear glasses."

"A lot of women have to wear glasses."

"I was too stupid to recognize that I was quite pretty then. Today photos tell me that..."

"Salmon or lamb chops? Or better the vegetarian dish?"

As always: no coffee after lunch.

We walk across the footbridge and reach the piazza.

Heat

the dog

opens one eye

by Angelika Wienert

Oberhausen, Germany

Mary Mageau: THE SENTINEL

.

I climb round and round close to the outside wall, to avoid the railing where the stair treads narrow about their central post. A semi-circular platform rests high above. Its glass windows provide a sweeping view. Counting the last few steps I finally reach the top of the Moreton Bay Lighthouse, where I gaze in awe at the ocean below.

the rising sun –
an endless pathway
of molten gold

.
Outside the lighthouse lamp is rotating. I disengage it as there is no need for its warning light. Now the bold red and white stripes of the lighthouse itself will become the beacon. I study the turbulence of the deep waters churning the rocky shore below. The subtle changes in the wind, waves and tides are entered in my log book – these brief markers of the ever transforming seascape that surrounds me.
.

ebb tide –
a foot print shelters
one tiny crab

.
by Mary Mageau
Samford, Qld., Australia

Jeffrey Winke: HUNCHBACK WITH THE TOY POODLE

.

Occasionally it happens. It’s almost as though it sneaks up from behind and lays a warm, firm palm on my back…and gently pushes. “Go on,” it cajoles, “nothing matters more than NOW.” I forget it’s Wednesday night and we had promised ourselves that this is to be an early dinner with a couple of friends, and then a couple of other friends walk in and join us and then the lady who lives down the hall, you know, the one with the quirky sense of humor, who I call over and ask her to tell everyone the funny story about the hunchback with the toy poodle, and then our waitress asks if this is the fourth or fifth bottle of wine and we conclude that it’s got to be the fifth bottle or even the sixth and then someone says Sherry? and then someone else says I think the waitress’ name is Jenny and we all laugh the way the Cracker Jack company thinks everyone laughs at the jokes in that miniature joke book prize you get stuck with in every fourth box because it is probably the cheapest of the cheap prizes you get at the bottom of the box assuming you’re stupid enough to open the box right side up.

workday commute

her black umbrella patterned

with yellow smiley faces

by Jeffrey Winke

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Lin Geary: FROM PINEHURST LAKE

.

Here I am where you are not, where you can no longer walk this path around the half-frozen lake. The clear sky behind bare white birch reminds me, I have no plans for the day. But here I am, this deep, this far, and buds about to happen. So I have picked up two spruce cones, one with seeds still hanging on. And here is a shapely brown oak leaf, not quite perfect, but beautiful in my hand. Further along, a milkweed pod curls down, then up, revealing silky white fluff, its seeds in tight array, quite untouched. Then some strange pod from an unknown tree, more like a half-pod, lies open with its row of black peas, tiny obsidian pearls. It has just turned April, so dusty and fragile.

.
the gander tidies
his tail-feathers first—
open water close to shore

.

.
by Lin Geary
Paris, Ontario, Canada

Catherine Mair & Patricia Prime: IN ADMIRATION OF YOUNG MEN

.

Will the poem be featured in the newspaper this afternoon?

Stepping on the heels of our shadows we pass beneath the crisp leaves of pin oaks. Cattle on the opposite river bank bawl their anxiety at not being given a fresh break of grass.

The two boys we saw this morning riding their scooters along the haiku pathway now cut tracks on a muddy sandbar.

.
on a finger of sand
unruffled
gulls gather

.
In matching life jackets, a father and son in a 'wash services' ute roll backwards down the boat ramp and off-load their yellow dinghy. Plodding through the mud, they load fishing gear and outboard motor.

.
tentative dip
of the learner's oars

.
Kneeling on the platform's edge a group of little girls admire the skill of boys skipping stones. Turning their backs they race towards the carved sea-elephant and clamber up its smooth side.

Outside the backpackers' hostel two flags and two lines of flamboyant boxers flap in the sea breeze. While they wait for their washing to dry the youths toss a ball around. Demonstrating his dexterity one lad spins the ball on a fingertip.

We walk up the slope from the river and stop at the gas station to buy the local newspaper. Pausing on a high street bench we read our poem 'Admiration' …

.
in faded T-shirts
old shorts
and earth-caked boots
the young men
own the world

by Catherine Mair and Patricia Prime
Katikati, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand
and Auckland, New Zealand

Stanley Pelter: GLEN CATACOL

.
a mile ....... of hot summits ....... more hills roast

.
Long into the trail. It meanders; follows rises, drops with dips, turns with the sweeping bends of a swollen, sometimes flooding, rock-pitted river. Underfoot the path is less than a shoe width. Lower down, sandstone is wider, grittier. Shapes of summer heat form much of its length. Stagnant water claims some hollows. Streams from Madadh Lounie, from Creag na h-lolaire, zigzag down. Close-by, land is transformed into bog. Moths, grass snakes, frogs, remnants of wild flowers, camouflage in swathes of earth browns. Spurts of dragonflies crisscross the path. Course marram grass, heathers, head high ferns, thistles thrive. Sound of a ground cuckoo feed into the river. Where giant plates of layered granite spread, churning roars pull free of froth foam. Redirect. Other sections feed soft feet to a precipice edge.

sudden sharp pain ... subterranean swells rise ... as resolve collapses

To look down is to wobble each wet footstep. Adrenalin surges into addictive moves forward. Y split river becomes indecision.
.

water divide ....... stare at a parting ....... of ways

.
Tin colour, crag clad sky. Begin to cross. Turn back. Wearing sandals, with no map or compass, the path lost in a wilderness of ferns, this is a new scale, a new fear fix.

.
Dressed to contour this vast, irregular circle, an archetypal hiker approaches. From distance indeterminate, closer the appearance is hermaphroditic. Even closer, more ethereal, there is yet another seamless modification to that of an alter ego, Translucent, floating, her now supremely feminine shape, covered in white, rippling materials like she is one of Botticelli’s ‘Three Graces’, glides through me. Turning, I feel touches of the lightest of winds before, near to transparent, she fades into disappearance.

.
Unknown miles yet to travel over Gleann Easan Biorach before we are able to subside into the calm mantra safety net of a semi-Shangri-la Loch Ranza. Only then decide to catch the bus.

near a crest .... crossover point at which .... one becomes two

by Stanley Pelter

Claypole, Lincolnshire, England

first published in insideoutside (2008)

Patrick M. Pilarski: AN EXPLORATION OF THE AUDIO HAIBUN

.

"Subway" is an experimental haibun that fuses the idea of the descriptive travel journal [1] with a growing interest in depicting the cycles of urban life. One of the beautiful things about haibun is the way that it lends itself to the human voice, both in its use of silence, and its potential to influence perception thorough the cadence of words and phrases. "Subway" is an attempt to explore that potential.

In "Subway", both poetry and prose deliberately break from traditional forms, playing with the feeling of sound in the mouth and the way it rattles off the tongue like a jostling subway car. The poem is built around transit through the gritty underbelly of the city; it utilizes racing and fragmented prose to chart a physical and emotional journey to the line's lonely end. Along the way, vivid and highly saturated senryu snapshots punctuate the journey, individually presenting the momentary stillness at each of the subway stops.

There is always a great divide been idea and implementation. The performance of "Subway" at the Raving Poets reading series in Edmonton, Canada, and its subsequent release on the CD Raving Poets — Remixed (2007) was the product of a number of artistic collaborations. The poem's final audio form, however, was in a large part the offspring of chance and some very talented musicians.

Edmonton's Raving Poets reading series is unique in many ways. The most prominent is the fact that all readers are backed by the world-famous Raving Poets Band: Randy Edwards on guitar, Gordon McRae on drums, Thomas Trofimuk playing keyboard, and Mark Kozub on the bass guitar. The night is hosted by the inimitable Mike Gravel. What takes this experience beyond a democratic sampling of live verse and into the sublime is the fact that the music is never rehearsed, never pre-meditated—the musicians improvise all accompaniment live and on the spot. The band skillfully attunes their music to the delivery of each poet, while at the same time profoundly and subtly helping to shape the emotional impact of the piece. It is truly a two-way collaboration, with an incredible outcome—with few exceptions, the resulting performance is much more than the sum of its musical and literary parts.

"Subway" was no exception. Though designed with prose speed and tumbling phrases in mind, the flow of the words took its final shape around the track set down by the Raving Poets Band. After its live recording, Gordon McRae skillfully engineered and remixed the track for inclusion on Raving Poets — Remixed, adding to and accentuating the background beat to fully capture the pulsing and jagged feel of the racing underground.

While "Subway" may have some of our haibun fore-fathers rolling in their graves, it is a rare example of how poetry, music, and sound engineering can come together to present the haibun feeling in pure audio form. Hopefully this work will encourage further exploration into the many diverse aspects of creating and presenting contemporary haibun.

[1] As eloquently described by Bruce Ross in How to Haiku: A Writer's Guide to Haiku and Related Forms (Tuttle 2002): "Travel journal haibun reduce [our] experiences to short, well-crafted accounts that emphasize our emotion and lead us to a realization."

by Patrick M. Pilarski

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

April 12, 2008

Patrick M. Pilarski: SUBWAY

.
for all you late-night riders of the urban underbelly.

Dirty coins ring hard on the boatman's eyes. This river is steel and fire, but it doesn't flow. Not here. Not in this place. Black and white make way for red and green. How is it that choices can yawn when they hang limp and dull, like flags from dead poles? Always pick green.

Churchill—
false innocence gleams, imp-like;
striped pants and braces

Slip quick down dark halls and wander through the nether-regions of the city. Feel the hum and rumble and the wake of cold stones / sleeping arches; linger in the black and white and blue light of articulation. A spark. A crackle. A roar.

Central—
bright light boots on the turnstile,
wide eyed / dancing

What dances like rats in the cracks? Momentum and sticky pools, lapping at the smooth burnished steel and asking why hands hold without feeling. Plastic butterflies promise happiness. Is this a trickle or a wash? Watching bright spots dance to reflected faces. Empty and full, waiting for fragments / fiery streaks of hot chrome.

Bay—
girl with a flower, smiling
hand to stem to heart

When petals fall, they fall on soggy boot laces. Propped up on seats, dripping with things left unsaid / unwanted / unused / unmarked. Does a glass chandelier make a burrow any less dirty? Hurtful thoughts break high-society with hurled beer bottles—stones cast down Urd's well.

Corona—
words pour loose from a head-phoned man,
urban prophecy

Words to no one find every one / silent participation. Contemplative accessory to thoughtless grit boiling up from the under-belly. Graffiti walls pulse free with ragged, well-rhymed edges. Shopping bags cling to a pant leg; needy plastic wrapping to the security of an ankle. Purses clutched tight—arms crossed / body closed / eyes skipping with reflections of home. What breeds fear?

Grandin—
ballcap staring down dark tunnels,
seat filled with blank skin

The earth opens to proudly unfold an I-beam tightrope. Cracks snaking up pillars / phantom fingers painting trees on the trellis. Concrete branches balance the dark-sky rush-hour as it pours over long tracks / steel grids. Light blinks up from the water and its murky agitations. The earth closes.

University—
pink scarf wound tight / a pale stare,
quick through darting glass

The river flows uphill, pours into a chain-link delta. Human projects tickle chaos on its sleeping belly and hope that it doesn't wake. How long does it take to climb to the light, when there is no moon in the sky?

Health Sciences—
late-night ghosts wander the streets,
feet pressed in concrete

Dew and dark grass stand like an ocean between rocky shores of light. A different kind of solitude.

by Patrick M. Pilarski

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

first published in Five Weeks (2007)

Diana Webb: HOLY WEEK

.

He tells me how a fellow patient used to call the walk to the room where they carried out electro-convulsive therapy, the Via Dolorosa. My friend is a pianist who moved out of the long stay hospital fifteen tears ago into this shared house in the community, also occupied at that time by an artist now deceased. On the wall opposite the piano one of that man's drawings. A mother and child hand in hand. Light plays on the tones of one of the many faces of a woman harrowed. Notes of a waltz.

.

asylum corridor –

a sudden window

blossom

by Diana Webb
London, England

Adelaide B. Shaw: MOVING

.

An old colonial house. Ours. Cleaned, painted, polished, scrubbed and repaired. An object on display, a star on stage, ready for the public. Ready to be someone else's home.

We wait, out of sight and out of hearing. What do they think, these lookers, these pokers and prodders? Will someone see its charm as we did 29 years ago? An old lady with a few idiosyncrasies. The sloping hallway, the creak in the dining room floor, the leak above the side door when there is a drenching rain? Will the new family be forgiving and adjust to the old lady's habits and manners? Another sweater when winds blow through loose windows, a pot under the leak. This old lady has so much else to offer.

From a bedroom window, rolling fairways and fastidious greens on the golf course. Lilacs and roses on warm breezes; the maple, a canopy of gold in autumn and the envy of Midas; the transformation of the land with fresh snow. Birds, squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, chipmunks, possums. Residents and visitors, including the occasional deer and wild turkey.

The walls will soon hear new stories and absorb new memories. Will they echo with happy celebrations, crowded with children, grandchildren and friends? And, when it is time for the owners to move on, will they look back, as I am, and wonder what has happened to the years?
.

this morning the sun
glowing in the east –
later… the west

by Adelaide B. Shaw

Millbrook, New York

Jeannine Hall Gailey: RESCUING SEIRYU, THE BLUE DRAGON

.

You met the dragon in the garden. Sometimes he flies in circles outside your window. This morning he appeared as a young boy. He shows you a vision of your parents, lying in a barn. With his face so close you smell hay.

He bleeds from the wounds of paper birds, from a swallowed curse. Can your healing rice cake keep him from death? You hold his head in your arms as he squirms red, you force his jaws open and touch his teeth. When you feed him he gags and chokes, changing from human to dragon and back, his eyes always blue.

The dragon is really the river of your childhood home. He hands you a pink tennis shoe you lost in the water when you were seven. That river was drained years ago for development.

.
Since then the dragon
has no home but you, no name
but your memory.

.by Jeannine Hall Gailey

Port Townsend, Washington

first published in The Eleventh Muse, 2007

Tad Wojnicki: ANGELS BY THE SEA

.

Living in Poland was hell. But come Christmas, heavens broke loose. Everybody sang, drank, vowing to right wrongs, forget old hurts, wishing all well. An empty chair waited for a stranger. Even a Jew, like myself. After all, the stranger might be an angel.
.

lotsa blinking bulbs
one flickering candle
– hanukkah

.
My first Christmas in Carmel, I hit the beach. I tread over "LOVE" scratched with toes. Cottages elbow the sand, Christmas trees in their windows. Peeking in, I look for an empty chair, but I get shy. Hiding in the dark, I see strangers. They are hiding, too. I watch them watching me watching them. Christmas trees stand by like much-decorated despots, guarding the happy against the unhappy.

.
holiday giving
waves wipe vows

written in sand

.
by Tad Wojnicki

Hsinchu, Taiwan
first published in Rainbow Curve 5, 2005

BRUCE ROSS ON HAIBUN

.

interview with Jeffrey Woodward
.

Bruce Ross, a past president of the Haiku Society of America, edited Haiku Moment: An Anthology of Contemporary North American Haiku (1993) and Journey to the Interior, American Versions of Haibun (1998). He is the author of the popular manual How to Haiku, A Writer's Guide to Haiku and Related Forms (2001) and has published four collections of original haiku: thousands of wet stones (1988), among floating duckweed (1994), Silence: Collected Haiku (1997) and summer drizzles: haiku and haibun (2005).

JW: Most writers of haibun come to the discipline from other creative writing backgrounds – free verse, short story, what have you. You are well-known for your haiku, of course, but did you practice other literary forms before adopting the way of haiku and haibun?

BR: My father, born on Cape Breton Island, recited Longfellow and other poets to me and gave me anthologies of world poetry and a volume of Whitman when I was in public school. Later in this period I spontaneously wrote nature lyrics. Usually I carried one or another volume of poetry with me, also. I was attracted to the Romantic poets and later the Beats and the poetry they were reading and writing, including haiku. Paul Reps’s poetry with drawing and the writings of Hakuin made strong early impressions. In high school I was placed in a college-level creative writing course where I submitted what I now understand as a haiga. I was criticized for including a drawing with my poem. More or less I have been writing poetry and drawing consistently from that early period.

JW: Tell me, if you will, what first led to your interest and involvement in haibun. And, on that score, do you recall your first effort in the genre and the circumstances surrounding the writing of it?

BR: I knew of haibun during my college years from Earl Miner’s Japanese Poetic Diaries but was attracted to the spirit of the form through travel fiction and films in that vein. My first published haibun (and perhaps my first serious attempt at haibun) was “Aglow,” published in Modern Haiku in 1994. I vaguely remember desiring to place haiku in a prose narrative to best describe the heightened experience I had had.

JW: Do you find certain settings or a specific time of day conducive to your writing of haibun? If you have a standard working method, might you be so kind as to share it with our readers?

BR: Not really. Again, I am especially attracted to travel, and many of my haibun result from such activity. I normally collect my haiku in journals. In certain circumstances I know my haiku will be part of a haibun. In fact I often earmark certain haiku as potential haibun and include notes and drawings composed during or soon after the given experience. I do find myself more and more over the last years forcing myself to sit down and compose the proposed haibun.

JW: What, in your view, is the ideal relation of prose to verse in haibun – closely or distantly related? Do you conceive of these two modes of composition as equal partners or do you view either mode, prose or verse, as more crucial to haibun’s success?

BR: It depends on the given haibun. There is no hard and fast rule. Haibun have different moods and the kind of aesthetic linking of prose and poetry is dependant on that mood, what I call “flow of sensibility.” Aside from that “flow” I value “privileging the link,” the subtlety of the link, in haibun. So the value of haibun for me is “flow of sensibility” and “privileging the link.” This would preclude one or the other from being more important, though from haibun to haibun one often takes precedence.

JW: Because mastery of this genre requires of a writer the skill to compose accomplished prose and verse, haibun raises the bar considerably for would-be practitioners. Many excellent haiku poets do not write acceptable prose and many excellent prose writers have little ability in the writing of haiku. Your practical experience over many years as an educator, editor and writer of haiku and haibun places you in a unique position to offer practical advice to the young writer who wishes to adopt the medium. How can the novice acquire proficiency in both modes and what is the most direct route, in your opinion, to learning how to delicately balance prose and verse?

BR: Read the best haiku and haibun, including the Japanese masters, would be first. Cultivate your sensibility would be next. Look to experiencing/writing haiku epiphanies and haibun narratives of epiphanies. Why not aim high! My How to Haiku might also help.

JW: Your book, Journey to the Interior (1998), remains to this day the most readily available anthology in the genre. That is a testimony to your editorial abilities, certainly, and yet so much has happened in haibun in the past ten years. One might almost say: everything has happened…. Were you to edit today a second and updated anthology, how do you imagine such a compilation might differ in form and emphasis from Journey?

BR: Probably I’d include more selections from fewer, but outstanding practitioners of the form.

JW: Haibun is an international phenomenon, though reportedly rarely, if ever, practiced in its native land. Do you have an insight into what has led to the form’s proliferation in so many languages and varied cultural settings? And can you fix upon a specific time or event that may have triggered its rapid growth outside of Japan?

BR: I think that there are few examples in world literature to link prose and poetry as haibun does. The example of Basho’s Journey to the Interior was an available classic of world literature. For many writers prose feeling and poetry feeling is an enticing combination. John Ashbery published the volume Haibun in 1990. Jack Kerouac’s Desolation Angels appeared in 1965. So an impulse from the Beats and later more avant-garde poetry had flirted with the form. In the early 2000’s I led an online haibun workshop and double kukai for the World Haiku Club. There were entries from around the world, including Japan. More than that, I’d attribute the increasing global interest in haibun to the internet and the incrementally increasing attraction, good or bad, to wordsmithing.

JW: The spread of haibun across the globe has also proven how elastic the genre is. In your essay, “Narratives of the Heart” (The World Haiku Review, 2002), you cited various examples of form that the genre has assumed, from diary to fiction, and you remarked, “Haibun is now obviously an open form.” Beyond our general recognition that haibun usually weds prose and verse, are there some minimum guidelines or parameters, in your view, that demarcate haibun from other literary genres?

BR: At this point I haven’t thought beyond “flow of sensibility” and “privileging the link.” As a product of Japanese literature and, specifically, congealing in forms around haikai style, I think what goes for haiku sensibility, goes for haibun sensibility. On the highest rung, this entails a narrative of an epiphany. There is really no easy graft of other writing genres onto true (whatever that means) haibun. At least, this is the way I see it now.

JW: In How to Haiku (2002), you observed that “a short paragraph followed by one haiku is in fact the most common form of haibun written in English.” This can be readily verified by a cursory reading of the online and print journals that publish haibun in any given quarter. The one paragraph, one haiku format may be the closest thing we have to a consensual model for writing in the genre. This abbreviated form, too, is most welcome by haiku editors who often have to deal with severe space restrictions in their journals. Should we be concerned, perhaps, that “a short paragraph followed by one haiku” might eventually become enshrined as the normative model with the result that other more expansive forms are gradually suppressed?

BR: Never be concerned, it’s not healthy. But, editorial necessities aside, it would be unfortunate that the magnificent examples of Japanese prose diaries, like Basho’s Journey to the Interior, would not be available as legitimate literarily valid modes of proceeding to contemporary voices.

JW: Again, in How to Haiku, you wrote, “A haibun is a prose narrative that is autobiographical – that is, in haibun you are telling a story about something you did or saw.” I understand that in a how-to manual directed toward the novice, simplification has some heuristic value. Is it your view that haibun must be strictly autobiographical? Or do you admit alternative approaches, such as the expository or fictional prose account?

BR: We have both expository and fictional prose haibun in Japanese literature. It already exists. But in Japan the genre we would call haibun is classified as separate genre, such as “diary of the road.” Soseki provides the affect of haibun in fiction. As with haiku, though, I prefer, for haibun, the autobiographical experiential mode.

JW: In your introduction to Journey to the Interior, you offered the following definition: “…haibun is a narrative of an epiphany. Haiku, on the other hand, offers us an epiphany, a revelation.” While I understand that you are speaking of the best the genre might offer, “revelation” is a heady term and rare enough in our daily lives to lend to your formulation the character of hyperbole. Do you still conceive of haibun in these terms or has your view altered?

BR: My view has not altered. That is, my “sensibility” has not altered. It is a matter of perspective, really. I have studied, practiced, and taught internal energy states for many years. I still do. Degustabus non disputandum est (There is no disputing taste). A Zen saying: Before I studied enlightenment trees are trees and rivers are rivers. While studying enlightenment trees are no longer trees and rivers are no longer rivers. After achieving enlightenment trees are trees and rivers are rivers. It is a matter of perspective really. What matters about haiku and haibun is the insight of whatever valance you choose concerning our natures and the world’s nature. Art, poetry, human love, etc. can provide these experiences, to borrow from poor Shakespeare. Despite the postmodern processing of our lives, these connections are still available to us.

JW: One curse of being an influential anthologist and educator is that you must find yourself confronted often with impositions like this interview where questions focus on every subject but your own personal writing. You were a writer before you accepted the other titles, however, and so perhaps I will not be amiss in asking you some specifics about your own writing. In your collection, summer drizzles… (2005), your haibun “Winter Desert” holds a particular interest for me. I know the landscape that you describe therein well and I’m particularly impressed by the understated means that you employ to convey how that terrain gradually overpowers and possesses the person passing through. You speak there of one’s consciousness being absorbed and of the winter rain driving you deeper into your own person. Would you share with our readers the events that inspired this haibun, the story beneath the story as it were?

BR: No impositions. And no titles. I have a Taoist or is it Quaker disinclination for them. Glad you liked “Winter Desert.” My wife and I were visiting that part of Arizona around Tucson. We wanted to see Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and had to pass through the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation to do so. The haibun’s “flow of sensibility” is the resulting consciousness/connection to the landscape and its inhabitants. The haiku links are based on that consciousness/connection. Otherwise, the haibun speaks for itself.

JW: Another noteworthy and powerful haibun in summer drizzles… is “Gone in Sleep.” What I found of immediate interest, when I first read this piece a year or so ago, is the marked juxtaposition in the prose between the breezy travelogue-like opening sentences about modern Chicago and the intimate and warmer tone adopted in the concluding sentences about the beggar. The haibun will lend itself to various interpretations and I wouldn’t ask you to offer your own. I would be interested, however, in hearing you speak of how much of this material is strictly factual and where, if at all, you have claimed poetic license in order to arrive at a more satisfactory literary result.

BR: Like most, if not all of my writing, this haibun is experiential. Those “as ifs” were the affective result of my encounter with the beggar. Despite my reaction (or lack of action) I’m hoping some issue of compassion resonates here.

JW: I want to ask one final question, but let me, first, thank you for your patience and generosity in participating in this interview. Our readers will certainly be interested to know about your current or future publication plans. Do you have any new haiku or haibun books in progress? Or any planned anthologies or other work in the haikai field?

BR: You’re welcome and thank you for approaching me with this interview. Well, I have a planned volume of my haiku, possibly including haibun, haiga, and collaborative renku, for fall 2008. Also for fall 2008 Venturing upon Dizzy Heights: Lectures and Essays in Philosophy, Literature, and the Arts, which includes previously published articles on haiku, haibun, and tanka. Perhaps of additional interest is the lecture on the Japanese influence upon Van Gogh’s practice of still life painting. I have in mind another anthology in haiku but this is in a formative stage right now. Possibly, also, a small volume based on the haiku and haibun written while literally following a part of Basho’s Journey to the Interior.