!!! Open for your submissions next Sunday August 20th at 7:00 PM (CET) !!!
Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,
Welcome at a new episode of our "weekend-meditation", our weekly challenge. This week I have chosen for a new episode of our "Writing and Enjoying Haiku feature" as inspired on the book by Jane Reichhold with the same title (as you can see in the logo of this feature).
For this episode I choose the title "creating beauty", because in my opinion every haiku (or tanka) is a small piece of beauty. I think every haiku poet gives his / her own feeling in his / her haiku and because of that every haiku (or tanka) is a beautiful gem. That's one of the reasons I created Chèvrefeuille's Publications, because I think every haiku poet deserves to be published without exception.
 |
| Woodblock Print "Snow Rose" |
What is the creative beauty of haiku? (or tanka)?
I think the beauty of haiku (and tanka) is mostly in the smallness, both are short verses, and in those short verses there is need to tell a lot and that's not always easy, but every haiku poet succeeds in it ... so that's the beauty, the creative beauty of haiku (and tanka). Is that the only thing that makes haiku creative beauty? No certainly not .... it's the theme of it nature, shortness of life, spirituality, the strong form, the relaxing sound of the 5-7-5 syllables (those sound like the waves) or the 5-7-5-7-7 form of tanka. But it is also the beauty of the poet, or the beauty of the reader. Haiku is a symbiosis between the creator and the reader ... you can (maybe) say haiku is the Creator and we the haiku poets and the haiku readers are only the instruments for the Creator ...
Haiku, it's a short verse, but you can only create them from the heart, from the soul not from the mind ... haiku you have to sense, feel, touch, smell and so on ... haiku it's a symbiosis of all senses, the poet and the reader ... haiku is TOTAL ART ...
In several posts here at CDHK I have said it already I think ... haiku is ART ... and it's a beautiful Art. Maybe we can play with the lay-out:
waves
run to and fro
to the beach
back and forth
grass waves on the wind
green ocean
Just two examples, not good haiku maybe, but as an example for playing with the layout of the haiku. Both haiku show "in a way" the movement of the waves and the grass.
Of course you know the one-line haiku, let's take a look at one of the above haiku-examples, but now written on one line:
back and forth grass waves on the wind green ocean
Or maybe we have to try it in the classical way vertically written, as you can see on the image below:
 |
| Basho's "Old Pond" vertical |
There are so much possibilities with our beloved haiku ... be creative .... play with your haiku or tanka, change the lay-out or create a haiga ...
Haiku (or any other Japanese poetry form) is creating beauty ... So your task for this "weekend-meditation" is to create beauty, play with the haiku, play with the tanka ... enjoy writing haiku.
This "weekend-meditation" is open for your submissions next Sunday August 20th at 7:00 PM (CET) and will be open until August 27th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our next episode around that same time. For now .... have a great weekend and enjoy the creative beauty of haiku (or tanka).
It's not often that I prefer the one-line version of a haiku, but here I like the way the images run into each other - "waves on the wind", "wind green ocean" :)
ReplyDelete