Carpe Diem Haiku Kai is the place to be if you like to write and share Japanese poetry forms like haiku and tanka. It’s a warmhearted family of haiku poets created by Chèvrefeuille, a Dutch haiku poet. Japanese poetry is the poetry of nature and it gives an impression of a moment as short as the sound of a pebble thrown into water. ++ ALL WORKS PUBLISHED ARE COPYRIGHTED AND THE RIGHTS BELONG TO THE AUTHORS ++ !!! Anonymous comments will be seen as SPAM !!!
!! Open for your submissions next Sunday September 1st at 7:00 PM (CEST) !!
Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,
Welcome at the first weekend meditation of Autumn 2019. As you all know next Sunday starts the meteorological autumn, so time for a new logo for this special feature. On the above image you can see the holy mountain "Fuji no Yama" in an autumn setting.
This weekend I love to challenge you to create a Troiku with your "fusion-haiku" created from two given haiku themed "Indian Summer".
Here are the two haiku to use for your "fusion-ku" and the Troiku created with it:
after a warm day a thin layer of fresh fallen snow covers the garden Indian Summer inbetween seasons roses bloom again
A nice weekend meditation I think. I wish you all a wonderful weekend and I am looking forward to all your wonderful submissions.
This weekend meditation is open for your submissions next Sunday September 1st at 7:00 PM (CEST) and will remain open until September 8th at noon (CEST). Have a great weekend!
Share your Troiku created with your fusion haiku with us all here at our wonderful Kai.
Welcome at the last (regular) episode of this month in which we were creating a "bouquet of wildflowers" under the title "field of flowers". I have chosen another nice wildflower ... Corncockle or Agrostemma githago. A beautiful field flower with a wonderful color, magenta.
Let me tell you a little bit more about this beautiful field flower:
'Cuckole hath a longe small lefe, and wyl beare fyve or vi floures of purple colour, as brode as a grote' - Fitzherbert "The Boke of husbandrie" (1523)
A slender pink flower of European wheat fields, the Corncockle was regarded as very common in the 19th century.
Its seeds were harvested and re-sown for the following season, until it began to decrease rapidly, beginning most noticeably in 1952. The plant was seen as a pest by farmers for hundreds of years but is now rarely seen due to the improved seed cleaning techniques and herbicides of modern farming putting it at risk. These days it is only seen occasionally for instance when old pastureland is ploughed, or when it has been sown deliberately in wildflower gardens such as Earlham churchyard in Norwich.
Corncockle is 1 metre tall and covered with fine hairs. It has few branches and they are each tipped with a single deep pink to purple scentless flowers. They are 25 mm to 50 mm across and each petal bears 2 or 3 discontinuous black lines. The leaves are pale green and are 45 mm to 145 mm long. It has been described by Richard Mabey as 'one of the most attractive of cornfield annuals'.
By the way the Corncockle is a poisonous flower, so be aware, it also is an endangerous species, so maybe your haiku, tanka or other Japanese poetry form can be a tribute to the beauty of the Corncockle.
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until September 5th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new weekend meditation, the first of autumn, because September 1st is the meteorological start of autumn.
Share your tribute poem with us all here at our wonderful Haiku Kai.
Welcome at a new episode of our wonderful Haiku Kai. This month we are creating a "bouquet of wild flowers" and today I have chosen for a Renga With ... episode. Today I will give you six haiku crafted by Jane Reichhold. Your task is to create a Renga with those haiku by adding the two-lined stanza to it. You can choose your own "line-up", but the first haiku I will give has to be the opening verse or "hokku".
Here are the six haiku by Jane Reichhold to work with:
Chinese lantern the brightness within a bee barbed wire the best berry bushes double-thorned in foggy moonlight blackberries float in cream her nails are blue
flowers by the door nameless except for the color of these blue days late summer grasses above their roots the seeds nearly touching sheaves of grass water that does not break flows in ripples
Welcome at this "double" episode, 1733 Sunflowers & 1734 Foxglove, I hadn't time yesterday to create our episode, so today I have chosen to give you two episodes in one. As you all know we are creating a "bouquet of wildflowers" and today I have chosen for "sunflowers" and "foxglove". I will give you for every episode only the theme and an mage of the wildflower.
a butterfly sleeping on a sunflower shall he have a dream?
For both episodes I have just one linking widget, so you can link your verses for both themes.
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open unitl September 3rd at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now .... have fun!
Share your inspired Japanese poetry with us all here at our Haiku Kai.
This month is running towards it's end. We have only five regular episodes to go. This month we have created a wonderful bouquet of wildflowers of summer and today I have another beauty for you to work with.
I hope you all have had a wonderful weekend full of inspiration. I had a busy weekend, but I enjoyed it very much. We had one of our grandchildren visiting so we ahd our hand full. The vacation is over and today Monday our grandchildren have to go to school again, so back to normal life.
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until September 1st at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now .... have fun!
Share your inspired Japanese poetry with us all here at our Haiku Kai. Have fun!
!!! Open for your submissions next Sunday August 25th at 7:00 PM (CEST) !!!
Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,
Welcome at a new episode of our weekend meditation feature. This weekend I love to challnege you to create a Troiku with a haiku distilled from two given haiku ... so this is a Crossroads episode. I have chosen two haiku by Jane Reichhold (1937-2016) from her online saijiki "A Dictionary of Haiku", Summer section, subsection Plants.
The task is to create a fusion haiku from the given two haiku and create a Troiku with it (more on Troiku you can find above in the menu). Here are the two haiku to work with, both by Jane Reichhold:
buttercups peeping through fog opening to the sun sunshine lights on hibiscus leaves before their own dark
Two beautiful haiku by Jane, who is still missed dearly. Create your Troiku starting with the "fusion haiku" from the two given haiku in honor of Jane Reichhold, Queen of Haiku and Tanka.
This weekend meditation is open for your submissions next Sunday August 25th at 7:00 PM (CEST) and will remain open until September 1st at noon (CEST). Have a wonderful weekend.
Share your inspired Japanese poetry, your fusion-haiku and your Troiku, with us all here at our Haiku Kai.
Welcome at a new episode in our wonderful month of creating a bouquet of wildflowers. Today I have a wonderful field flower for you to work with. I have to say I had never heard of this beautiful wildflower, Cahaba Lily, This wildflower looks so fragile and beautiful ... and for sure it would be an awesome part of our bouquet of wildflowers.
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until August 29th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new weekend meditation later on. For now ... have fun and enjoy the beauty of the Cahaba Lily.
Share your inspired Japanese poetry with us all in praise of the beauty of the Cahaba Lily.
What a wonderful month this is. We are creating a bouquet of wildflowers and we have seen already a lot of beautiful wildflowers. Today I will give you the freedom to create a haiku, tanka or other Japanese poetry form inspired on our month theme "Field Of Flowers". It's a so called "free-style" episode ... no need to follow the rules, the o nly thing you have to do is use our month theme in anyway you want.
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until August 28th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... have fun!
Share your Japanese poetry inspired on this theme with us all here at our Haiku Kai.
First my apologies for being late with publishing, but I hadn't time to publish it on time. Today I have a nice quote by the Persian poet Rumi. I think you can remember that we had a month full of Persian poetry last year, so I thought I will use a quote for today's episode. I think it's a wonderful quote to work with:
[...] “There are as many ways of loving as there are people, and that wildflower variety is the great beauty of this dimension of existence.” [...] (Rumi)
Ofcourse there is a small task to work with today. I love to read a lovepoem in which you use love and wildflowers. You can create a haiku, tanka or another beautiful form of Japanese poetry, like Sedoka or Choka.
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until August 27th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... have fun!!
Share your inspired Japanese poetry with us all here at our wonderful Haiku Kai.
Welcome at a new episode in our wonderful month about "field of flowers" ... we are creating a bouquet of wild flowers (or flowers from the field). We have had already wonderful wild flowers this month and today another beauty will be shown ... Columbine (or Aquilegia).
Not a very strong haiku, but I like the "personality" that is given to the Columbine.
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until August 26th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... be inspired and have fun!
Share your haiku, tanka or other Japanese poetry form inspired on this beautiful wild flower with us all here at our Haiku Kai.
A new week is ahead of us ... another wonderful week in which we will create a bouquet of wildflowers ... today I have a very nice wild flower for you to work with, but first I have something else.
Next October we will celebrate our 7th anniversary and as you all know I am always trying to make that month a real celebration and I hope to do that this year too, but I need your help with it. Do you have ideas for our anniversary month? Than please share them with us trhough the comments field of this episode. I am looking forward to all of your wonderful ideas.
Okay back to our episode. Today I have chosen for "milkweed".Butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa)grows 1-3 feet tall and has flat-topped clusters of orange flowers. Unlike many other flowers that have two whorls, milkweeds have three whorled flowers. The inner whorl is known as the corolla, above that is the corona, and the outermost whorl of sepals is the calyx. The leaves of the butterfly milkweed are stiff and lance-shaped. They differ from all other milkweeds in that they are alternate and do not produce milky white sap. Butterfly milkweedis a perennial herb and flowers throughout June and August. The flowers are followed by green spindle-shaped pods that open and release silky tufted seeds that are wind dispersed.
A beautiful wild flower I think to work with.
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until August 25th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... have fun!
Share your inspired Japanese poetry with us all here at our Haiku Kai.
!! Open for your submissions tomorrow Sunday 18th at 7:00 PM (CEST) !!
Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,
Welcome at this delayed weekend meditation. My apologies (again) for being late I hadn't time enough to publish this weekend meditation earlier.
This weekend I love to challenge you to create a Japanese long poem, or Choka. Let me tell you a little bit more about the Choka.
The choka can be of almost any length, because its form depends on alternating phrases (or lines) containing either seven of five sound units (onji). The end of the poem is signaled by two lines of seven sounds. So the form is five/seven, five/seven, five seven, .... , seven/seven.
This was the most popular form of poetry in the 9th century as indicated by the large number of works in the celebrated anthology Man'yoshu (The Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves). This anthology of anthologies contained 260 choka and 4200 tanka.
Kakinomoto no Hitomaru
The poet Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, who composed most of his work in the last decade of the 7th century, took the choka to its highest lyrical point with his finesse in the use of ritual language.
The connection to tanka is evidenced by the envoy or hanka - a tanka-like poem attached at the end of the choka. Occasionally more than one envoy will close the choka. There have been a few efforts to revivie the form over the intervening centuries, but the form has failed to gain any popularity in Japan, and even less has been accomplished in English. (Based on Jane Reichhold's "Writing and Enjoying Haiku")
Here is an example of a choka from the Man'yoshu (no. 802):
The briefest chōka documented is Man'yōshū no. 802, which is of a pattern 5-7 5-7 5-7 5-7-7. It was composed in the Nara period and goes:
When I eat melons My children come to my mind; When I eat chestnuts The longing is even worse. Where do they come from, Flickering before my eyes. Making me helpless Endlessly night after night. Not letting me sleep in peace?
(envoy or hanka)
What are they to me, Silver, or gold, or jewels? How could they ever Equal the greater treasure That is a child? They cannot.
I once wrote a choka (and published it on my personal weblog), but it isn't really my "cup of tea", but I love to share it here with you all:
the cooing of pigeons resonates through the gray streets – ah! that summer rain refreshes the dried out earth filling its scars the perfume of earth tickles my nostrils after the hot summer days I dance in the rain naked on the top of the hills I feel free at last nature around me comes to life field flowers bloom I see their beautiful colors the perfume of Honeysuckle ah! that summer rain the perfume of the moist soil tickles my senses I lay down, naked in her arms surrounded by Honeysuckle
It's a very nice form of Japanese poetry, but as I said above not "my cup of tea", but maybe it'is your "cup of tea".
PS. You can choose your own theme.
This weekend meditation is open for your submissions next Sunday August 18th at 7:00 PM (CEST) and will remain open until August 25th at noon (CEST). Have a wonderful weekend ... or maybe I have to say "have a wonderful Sunday".
Share your Choka with us all here at our Haiku Kai. Feel free to participate and use your own theme, any theme you want is okay.
Our bouquet of wild flowers grows every day, but today I don't have chosen a real wild flower, but more suitable for your garden, but it can be used in bouquets, so I think today's summer flower fits really good in our bouquet of wild flowers.
Today I have chosen for the Peony, a wonderful flower that comes in a lot of varieties. The challenge for today is to create a haiku themed Peony and create a Troiku with it. (More on Troiku you can find above in the menu).
Well ... I think no need to say more. I am looking forward to your wonderful inspired Troiku. This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until August 22nd at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new weekend meditation later on today.
Share your inspired Japanese poetry with us all here at our Haiku Kai.
What a joyful month this is ... all those gorgeous wild flowers we have seen already this month. We are creating a wonderful bouquet of wild flowers ...
Today I have another wonderful wild flower for you to work with. This time I have chosen for the "Scarlet Pimpernel". The first thing I thought of was that character "Scarlet Pimpernel", maybe you have heard about him, but that's for another time.
We are continuing or creation of our summer wild flower bouquet with an other wonderful wild flower. I like this wild flower for it's wonderful color and I hope you will enjoy this episode.
In this episode I have chosen for the Cornflower ... I found an example of a haiku on cornflower in my archives:
beautiful and fragile cornflowers sway on the breeze inspiration flows
Welcome at a new episode in our wonderful month in which we are creating a bouquet of wild flowers and today I have chosen the flower from which I took my "nom de plume" ... the Honeysuckle.
As a haiku poet I use a "haigo" or "penname" and as you know my "haigo" is Chèvrefeuille (French for Honeysuckle). I am a Dutch haiku poet and I write almost all my haiku in English. I even find it very difficult to create haiku in my own language, Dutch. Sometimes I even think in English and that's sometimes, e.g. at work, a "pain in the a..", but I cannot help it.
For today's prompt I have chosen a haiku in which my "haigo" is used.
sweet perfume lingers in the warm summer night Honeysuckle blooms
* Honeysuckle, in her spiritual meaning is the path of wisdom to find your inner self.
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until August 19th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... have fun!
Share your inspired Japanese poetry with us all here at our wonderful Kai.
I hope you all have had a wonderful weekend, full of inspiration. I had a very busy weekend at work, so I will not share a very large episode today.
This month we are creating a bouquet of field flowers and today I have chosen (again) for a not so well known summer flower ... the Yarrow. The Yarrow (or Achillea millefolium), is a flowering plant in the family Asteraceae. It is native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere in Asia, Europe, and North America. It has been introduced as a feed for livestock in places like New Zealand and Australia, where it is a common herb of both wet and dry areas, such as roadsides, meadows, fields and coastal places.
In New Mexico and southern Colorado, it is called plumajillo (Spanish for 'little feather') from its leaf shape and texture. In antiquity, yarrow was known as herbal militaris, for its use in stanching the flow of blood from wounds.
A not so commonly way of creating haiku, but I tried to catch a few of the uses of this Yarrow in the haiku. I think I succeeded (how immodest).
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until August 18th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now .... have fun!
Share your inspired Japanese poetry with us all here at our Haiku Kai.
!! Open for your submissions next Sunday August 11th at 7:00 PM (CEST) !!
Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,
First my apologies for being late with publishing of this new weekend meditation, I hadn't time earlier, but now I have found some time to create it.
This weekend I love to challenge you with a Crossroads episode. A Crossroads episode challenges you to create a "fusion"-haiku from two given haiku and create a troiku with your fusion-haiku (more about Troiku above in the menu).
As you all know this month we are creating a bouquet of field flowers, so I have chosen two haiku in which field flowers are used. I have chosen two haiku by Jane Reichhold, taken from her "A Dictionary of Haiku", section: summer, subsection: plants. Here are the two haiku to work with:
windy weather calling the flowers by name each nods depth of a flower flying away with the bee some mystery
Two beauties by Jane, she is still missed. Enjoy this weekend meditation.
This weekend meditation is open for your submissions next Sunday August 11th at 7:00 PM (CEST) and will remain open until August 18th at noon (CEST). Have an awesome weekend full of inspiration.
Share your created fusion-haiku and your Troiku with us all here at our wonderful Haiku Kai. Enjoy your weekend!
Welcome at a new episode of our wonderful Haiku Kai, the place to be if you like to create Japanese poetry and share it with the world. This month we are creating a bouquet of field flowers and today I have another nice flower for you, which not always is seen in wild nature, but often in gardens, but it can be used in a bouquet. Today I have chosen "Canna Lily", and it is a gorgeous flower.
The cannas in your garden will keep you ensured of colour around you from spring right through to the end of summer. And the colour that semi-dwarf Canna 'Firebird' provides is one you will want to be there for a good long while. This plants tall spikes bear a clump of bright red blooms at the top which open in succession. Cutting old stems will ensure that the flowering continues as long as possible. Canna 'Firebird' has long upright blue green leaves which set off the flowers to perfection.
fireworks in my garden canna lillies blooming in bright colors I feel rich
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submisisons and will remain open until August 15th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new weekend meditation later on. For now ... have fun and enjoy the "fireworks" in your garden.
Share your inspired Japanese poetry with us all here at our wonderful Haiku Kai.
Welcome at a new episode in our wonderful "field of flowers" month here at our wonderful Haiku Kai, the place to be if you like to write and share Japanese poetry with the world. I am grateful that CDHK is still alive and kicking and I am so glad to see even new faces, new names appear here ... that makes me proud.
Today I have chosen a nice prompt, "Zinnia". You’ll find zinnias in nearly any color you’re looking for—pink, orange, yellow, red, white, purple, and more, meaning there’s probably a beautiful option to fit the vision of nearly any gardener. As an annual, they will only last one season, but they put on quite the display while they’re around. Zinnias grow well and look great in a number of settings whether it’s in a garden, container, or window box. Because of their beautiful shape and vibrant colors, zinnias are also very popular as cut flowers. (Zinnias grow and bloom from March to October).
Look at the above image of "Zinnia" it's really a game of colors ... awesome don't you think so too? I have to say that I didn't know this flower, but I like it very much. So I have tried to create a haiku about it:
winter's twilight zone first colors in the backyard zinnias are blooming
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until August 14th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... enjoy a rainbow of zinnias.
Share your Japanese poetry inspired on this beautiful rainbow colored summer flower with us all here at our Haiku Kai.
We are busy with creating a bouquet of field flowers here at CDHK. Today I have another wonderful prompt for you and I think a nice challenge to work with. Today I have chosen "daisies" as our prompt and I love to challenge you to create a Troiku with a given haiku.
Here is the haiu to create your Troiku with, it's taken from my personal weblog on haiku and I wrote it back in 2012 for a weekly theme weblog titled "Haiku Heights":
around the mansion daisies standing strong together after the storm
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until August 13th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... enjoy the daisies in your neighborhood.
More about Troiku you can find above in the menu.
Share your Troiku with us all here at our Haiku Kai.
Welcome at a new episode in our wonderful CDHK-month "Field Of Flowers", only today I have chosen not a "real" field flower, but a flowering bush called "Bougainvillea". The Bougainvillea is often seen as wall decoration against white walls, mostly in the more southern countries, like for example Spain and Turkey.
Today I love to challenge you to create a Japanese poem inspired on a given image, so you can say this is a CDHK Imagination episode. Ofcourse you can use your own image, but it has to be an image of the Bougainvillea.
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until August 12th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... have fun!
Share your Japanese poetry inspired on this wonderful image with us all here at our Haiku Kai.
Welcome at a new episode of our "Field Of Flowers" month. Today I have chosen "sunflower" to work with. I have written several haiku about sunflowers, so I will give you a few examples:
bruised sunflower it bowed its head to deep - departure of summer in the light of dawn sunflowers reach to the blue sky praising their Creator
I love Sunflowers, they look like suns and they bring me a lot of joy, just like the sun. I hope you all are inspired to create haiku, tanka or other form of Japanese poetry about sunflowers.
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until August 11th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... have fun!
Share your haiku, tanka or other Japanese poetry form inspired on the theme "sunflowers" with us all here at our Haiku Kai.
!! Open for your submissions next Sunday August 4th at 7:00 PM (CEST) !!
Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,
Welcome at the first weekend meditation of August 2019. This month our theme is "Field Of Flowers", but that's not the theme for this weekend meditation. For this weekend meditation I have chosen to challenge you to create an other kind of Japanese poetry ... Sedoka. I will explain what Sedoka is.
For this "special feature "Little Ones" I have created a new logo and maybe I will use this special feature more often here at CDHK, not only in the weekends, but maybe also as an extra feature on weekdays.
For this logo I have used a renown Japanese woodblock by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) and it's titled: Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as The Great Wave.
Maybe you can remember that special feature "Little Ones" that I used often here at CDHK, maybe if you are a long time member you will surely know that special feature.
Sedoka:
A Sedoka is an unrhymed poem composed of two katauta. A katauta has three lines with the syllable pattern 5-7-7 and is complete in itself and able to stand alone. A Sedoka therefore has the syllable count: 5-7-7, 5-7-7.
In order to be correct, each katauta must be able to be read independently, but also create a cohesive singular work in the Sedoka. Often a Sedoka will address the same subject from different perspectives.
An example:
dark clouds cloak the night; chilly winds creak gnarled branches, grasping as bony fingers. disturbed raven squawks at frightened children - screaming, then laughing - they throw him treats
behind a veil of clouds she hides her bright face she ... the queen of night's sky in the mirror she looks at her once beautiful face mother of two boys and girls
I think it's a nice Japanese poetry form and next to haiku and tanka, I think Sedoka fits us all. Try it yourself.
This weekend meditation is open for your submissions next Sunday August 4th at 7:00 PM (CEST) and will remain open until August 11th at noon (CEST). Have a great weekend!
Share your Sedoka with us all here at our wonderful Haiku Kai. Have a great weekend!
