A shameless plug – Four Tellings

 

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!)

Twilight Dog – poem seed

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.