Ahem! Ladies and Gentlemen! I now have copies of Four Tellings: A Trans-Tasman Haibun Sequence available for sale. It’s a nice basic little chapbook – 22 pg, saddle stapled, B&W cover.

The book is a sequence of linked haibun, written by Owen Bullock, Beverley George, Jeffrey Harpeng and Joanna Preston. It’s loosely based on a traditional Kasen Renga (and whoever thought I’d be sending people to WikiPedia for an explanation of haikai?!), but scaled back to a mere 20 links.

Copies can be purchased from me directly (say you’d like one in the comments, and I’ll contact you offblog to arrange it) or from the PostPressed website. NZ$6 within New Zealand, or NZ$7.00 with airmail postage internationally.

Actually it was a lot of fun to do. I’d been approached to take part in the first haibun-rengku, which became Quartet: a string of haibun in four voices. Jeffrey I know well, but I’d only met Beverley and Owen for the first time at Haiku Aotearoa 2008. Jeff organised the group, and we did the actual composing online – actually on a WordPress blog, as it happens! (It was a private blog, so no use going looking.) We didn’t try to match the composition speed of Quartet (just over three weeks), and I think it probably helped. I’m actually quite pleased with how it all came together. We all have quite distinct voices, but it actually jelled rather well. One of the criticisms I’d made of Quartet was the lack of differentiation between voices. It will be interesting to hear how well other people think we managed to do so!

The field of linked haibun is still very much in its infancy. But it opens up a lot of possibilities. I suspect that a greater amount of regimentation might actually lead to a greater freedom in some ways. I’m vaguely toying with a couple of ideas for a new sequence … watch this space! (Not to mention Buy this Book!)

I came across a lovely haibun in the latest issue of Contemporary Haibun Online. It’s by Lisa Timpf, and she’s given me permission to reproduce it here.

Farewell to an Old Friend 

I can still remember the moment I knew with certainty that the day was drawing near. 

I was walking the dogs in the shiver of a pre-dawn morning when I saw a meteor slowly, almost lazily, etching a silver trail across the sky. I knew from the meteor and the frost on the fallen leaves, the frost that matched the whiteness spreading across her muzzle and her face, that the time for farewells was approaching. 

Considering I had a year’s warning, I should have been ready. 

But of course I was not. 

*** 

It seems a shabby way to say goodbye to an old and most dear friend, tossing dirt over a sheet-wrapped husk that once was home to a loyal heart, and I wonder where she is now; whether she has crossed that bridge of many colours; whether she will chase the golden sun across the sky as if it were nothing more than a giant tennis ball tossed by the gods for her amusement; whether somewhere, somehow her soul is entering the body of a newborn border collie pup about to take its first gasping breaths. 

*** 

Later, I will take solace in the photos that show how gaunt she had become, how her eyes were misted with pain. But for now, there is only guilt and sadness for the quickness of the passing years, the unappreciated times that have flowed, irretrievably, down that river we can never step in quite the same way again, no matter how we might long to do so. 

Bare branches, grey sky 
And the honking 
Of a solitary goose.

There’s a poem I’ve been going to write for years now, but have never quite managed to get started. About Heidi – our family dog when I was growing up, who grew very old, very rickety. For a variety of reasons, she was the only one of our dogs who made it to old age. Actually I think she’s the only dog I know who made it to old age. So many are injured, or get sick, or die from some other cause before their time. As a species, dogs have done very well by teaming up with humans. But as individuals …

The photo above is of Heidi at age 17. She died not long after this photo was taken. The French have a lovely phrase for twilight – le tempts entre chien et loup; ”the hour between dog and wolf”. And this was very much Heidi’s twilight.

Lots of possibilities.

image by Margan Zajdowicz

The Long Road Home is signing off for 2008. Time to kick back, relax and enjoy some quality time with my family. (Or away from family; it all depends.)

See you next year, and thanks for reading!

I recently had a haibun submission rejected by a well known journal. The rejection itself wasn’t the problem – a bit of a surprise, because they were (in my opinion – still!) good pieces. But there are multiple reasons for rejection that have no relevance to its merit, so “No thanks” wasn’t what bothered me.

What did bother me was the implication that the poems were rejected because they weren’t actually haibun. It wasn’t stated directly, but it was definitely implied. Not least by the fact that the person in question included a link to the official HSA definitions of the genre.

I think it’s worth quoting, because I have a couple of major problems with their definition/s.

HAIBUN

Definition:  A haibun is a terse, relatively short prose poem in the haikai style, usually including both lightly humorous and more serious elements. A haibun usually ends with a haiku.

Notes: Most haibun range from well under 100 words to 200 or 300. Some longer haibun may contain a few haiku interspersed between sections of prose. In haibun the connections between the prose and any included haiku may not be immediately obvious, or the haiku may deepen the tone, or take the work in a new direction, recasting the meaning of the foregoing prose, much as a stanza in a linked-verse poem revises the meaning of the previous verse. Japanese haibun apparently developed from brief prefatory notes occasionally written to introduce individual haiku, but soon grew into a distinct genre. The word “haibun” is sometimes applied to longer works, such as the memoirs, diaries, or travel writings of haiku poets, though technically they are parts of the separate and much older genres of journal and travel literature (nikki and kikôbun).

Lets just consider the definition itself. Since when have haibun needed to end with the haiku? I can think of a number of superb haibun that do nothing of the sort. Basho often began with them. Or studded them in the middle. And where does that leave haibun which have more than one haiku?

And “usually including both lightly humorous and more serious elements”?! Sorry, no. Absolutely no. Otherwise you’d have to throw out most of Cyril Childs’ Beyond the Paper Lanterns. Yes, there are good haibun which include both humour and pathos. But “usually including both”?! I don’t thinks so. And I don’t want them to! That makes for bland, gentle, mildly wistful work. Which has its place, but … as the norm? That rules out passionate poems. The screams of outrage. The deep mourning. The passionate love-haibun. The hysterically funny laugh-out-loud haibun. Reduces this wonderfully flexible versatile form into beige puddle poetry. No way. No. Absolutely not.

I’m willing to accept the definition they propose up to the second comma, but no further.

Does anyone actually agree with them?

photo by Kristian Birchall

I originally posted this one on my other blog, back in March. I’ve been trying without much success to come up with a decent haiku to end it. The first attempt was

first light –

a dusting of ash

against frost

which I don’t think is too bad … just not really right. It has no power. No mystery.

I toyed with a couple of other variations – trying to link the frost with fire, sunrise and ash. It should be do-able. I just haven’t been able to find it.

The current variation:

which I feel moderately happy with. I like the conflation of the sunset with the embers. I’m just not sure if “glimmer” works as a noun … maybe gleam would be better?