!! Open for your submissions next Sunday August 6th at 7:00 PM (CET) !!
Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,
Welcome at a new edition of our " weekend-meditation", this week a new episode of Carpe Diem's Writing and Enjoying Haiku as a tribute to Jane Reichhold (1937-2016). Jane was a renown haiku and tanka poet and she wrote a lot of books and articles about our wonderful Japanese poetry. She was not only my mentor, but also my friend, my co-host and my source of inspiration. This special feature is based on her book "Writing and Enjoying Haiku", in which she describes haiku as a kind of spiritual meditation that can give you a free mind and a peaceful mind. In her book she really promotes the beauty of haiku (and other Japanese poetry forms).
In the first three episodes of this special feature I followed her book almost by the word, but this week I love to bring an episode based on my own knowledge and feeling towards haiku.
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| empty sheet of paper |
tears fall
on an empty sheet of paper
a new day rises
© Chèvrefeuille
The above haiku I wrote after an episode of our special feature "Ask Jane ...?", that episode was about the so called Kanshicho-style of writing haiku or in other words "as the Chinese poetry". In that Kanshicho-style you don't follow the rules of haiku, so you can also say "free-style" haiku-ing. I like the "name" Kanshicho-style and I love using it, it sounds better than "free-style" in my opinion, but that's just my feeling.
As I discovered haiku back in the eighties I was immediately caught by the simple beauty of haiku, but also the depth in haiku. Haiku looks like just a small verse, a "doodle", but it is more, far more than that. Haiku is painting with words and it's not only the writer of the haiku, but also the reader who makes the haiku. I have said that earlier this week, but it is true. As I write a haiku than I have seen something beautiful and than I try to catch that in a haiku, but the scene I saw will not be the shame scene as seen by the reader of the haiku.
Let's go back to the above haiku:
tears fall
on an empty sheet of paper
a new day rises
© Chèvrefeuille
In this haiku you can see more than one scenes. There is that empty sheet of paper on which tears are falling. What can it mean? Well I remember that I wrote that haiku on a day that someone close to me died and I was really broken by that and I tried to catch my feelings, my emotions, in a haiku, but it didn't come, say "my muse wasn't available". It took me a whole night to order my thoughts, my feelings. I tried several versions, but none of them gave room to my emotions on that moment. Finally ... as the sun was rising, dew was sparkling on a spiderweb ... I came up with this haiku. I did re-write it several times before it was the ultimate haiku to share my feelings in ... Finally I could cope with the loss of that close friend ... and tears broke through ... tears that sought there way to the empty sheet of paper ... and than the haiku was there ... spot on.
Do you enjoy haiku? Well .... I do for sure. As I started writing haiku I wrote a lot of haiku-like poems, but at first they never could wear the name haiku in my opinion. It wasn't an easy path that I took to create haiku. And for sure at first I didn't enjoy creating haiku, because they all were not good enough in my opinion, but than ... in 2005 I published my first English haiku
a lonely flower
my companion
for one night
© Chèvrefeuille
With that haiku I became a renown haiku poet. Thank god for the Internet I would say. Maybe you can remember this haiku. In one of the episodes of "Ask Jane" ... Jane re-wrote this haiku after a question I had for her.
Her idea was to leave "lonely" away, because the flower cannot be lonely, that's a human feeling, so Jane gave me the following idea:
a single flower
my companion
for one night
or
a single tulip
my companion
for one night
© Chèvrefeuille (re-done by Jane Reichhold)
I was really happy with this "change", because as I published the original haiku there were several respondents who said it feels like a "one-night-stand", and maybe that is true, but in the original there is nothing that brings that idea in my opinion, but in the second re-done version by Jane Reichhold, that's obvious, because tulips have a sensual meaning. As Jane said: "that second haiku has more connotations. . . even some sexual with single / unmarried and tulip / two lipped!"
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| roses |
Haiku is a really short poem, but as we have seen in this episode (and in all other episodes here at CDHK) it's the "biggest" poem, because we can say so much with less words. And it is a symbiosis between the poet and the reader ... isn't that what we all would like to see in the world? All and everything enjoying each other with respect to everyone's own ideas. Those differences are making us who we are
kissing
tongues melt together
as one
© Chèvrefeuille
Well .... that was my interpretation of "writing and enjoying haiku", what is your interpretation? Do you have fun while creating haiku? That's the goal for this "weekend-meditation" ... step back and look at your haiku (or tanka) what do you see? Change your look and look at it like you were the reader and not the poet. What do you see ... what scenes are coming in mind?
Have a great weekend!
This episode is open for your submissions next Sunday August 6th at 7:00 PM (CET) and will remain open until August 11th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode, abstract autumn, around the same time as the start of the submitting period. For now .... have fun, write and enjoy haiku ...
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