Carpe Diem Extra - March 1st 2018 Looking forward to the 2nd quarter.

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

We just started with our third month of 2018, but I love to give you all already a sneak preview for the 2nd quarter of 2018. Of course this is a real preview and it's possible that I change a theme, but I don't think I  will change my ideas.

April 2018:

April will be a month in which I will challenge you to create haibun in several forms. Of course I will challenge you to create a classical haibun as e.g. Basho's "Narrow Road", but I will also try a few new forms in this wonderful poetry form e.g kikobun or one-bun. But I also will try to introduce a new haibun form to you all.

One of the Logo's I used for our haibun features

May 2018:

In May I love to go on another journey. This time we will visit South America and we will travel by train through the Andean Mountains. It will be an adventure and we will visit the highest station on this railway ... Galera, on the Ferrocarril Centro Andino at 4781m above sea level. During this journey we will dive into the ancient history of this wonderful continent.

Galera Station, the highest train station in the world

June 2018:

In June we will have a laid-back month in which I love to introduce classical kigo (seasonwords) for summer and maybe a few modern kigo. A wonderful rule of haiku (in my opinion) is the use of seasonwords, but we all know that in modern haiku these kigo aren't really important, but I love to challenge you this month to "re-use" kigo ... maybe I will ask you this month to create classical haiku following the rules. I haven't decided that yet.

I think this 2nd quarter will be an awesome quarter. Of course there will be another Carpe Diem Retreat too which will start on April 15th and will run to May 15th, 30 days of creating haiku (or tanka) on a specific theme. At this moment I haven't chosen a theme, but I will keep you posted.

Well enough to look forward at ...

Namasté,

Chèvrefeuille, your host