Carpe Diem Sneak Preview November and December 2019 ... never change a winning team

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Our festive 7th birtday month October 2019 is running towards its end, so time to give you a sneak preview for November and December.

As you can read in the "subtitle" of this Sneak Preview it's all about "never change a winning team", but what do I mean with that subtitle? Let me tell you the reason why I have chosen it. In the next two months I love to challenge you with haiku and tanka created by renown haiku (and tanka) poets. First of all, I will bring to you haiku (and tanka) written by the so called "big five", Basho, Buson, Chiyo-Ni, Issa and Shiki, to inspire you, but I will also give you haiku (and tanka) by renown modern haiku poets like Jane Reichhold.

Ofcourse you can think of episodes in which I will challenge you to "revise" or "photo-shop" haiku. I will also challenge you to create Troiku and Renga With ... And I hope to bring you an all new way of haiku-ing based on Shiki's "shasei" way of writing haiku. And (maybe) I will challenge you to create haiku (or tanka) according to several Haiku Writing Techniques.

If you have been a "long time" family-member here at CDHK than you certainly will recognise this image I used for our new CDHK month November 2019, because it was the cover of our first CDHK-magazine.

between cherry petals
Koi carps seeking their way
to fullfilment

© Chèvrefeuille

Well ... I hope to see you all in November too.

Namasté,

Chèvrefeuille, your host

Carpe Diem Sneak Preview September 13th 2019 CDHK's 7th birthday

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I love to bring you all a sneak preview for our upcoming anniversary month, October 2019. This year we will celebrate our 7th birthday. Seven years ago I started with Carpe Diem Haiku Kai (CDHK) with the intention to create a Kai (group) for poets that love to create and share Japanese poetry. As I started back in 2012 I hadn't a slight idea how this would be ... I thought "I try this for three months and than I will evaluate this daily prompt Kai about Japanese poetry. I really hadn't thought to be still alive and kicking after seven years, but (notwithstanding several chamges) CDHK is still here and I am glad that I decided to go on with this daily weblog.

the gentle breeze
refreshes my troubled mind -
finally peace within
my head completely empty
through the spring breeze

© Chèvrefeuille

We have had a lot of different prompts and we have all improved our haiku writing skills I think, not only through the daily prompts, but also through the series on Haiku Writing Skills. We have learned to appreciate the beauty of Japanese poetry through several months of classical seasonwords. Next to that we all have "walked" several pilgrimages and we have untertaken several trips around the world.

arigato (thank you)

As I look back ... I am a lucky guy who once had a goal ... "bringing Japanese poetry to the world" and I did it, together with you, my dear Haijin, my dear Haiku family members. Ofcourse we have had our differences and those differences fluctuated during our existence, but we all stayed together and I am grateful for that.

a new day rises
be grateful for what is given -
the meadow blossoms

© Chèvrefeuille

Next month we will celebrate our 7th anniversary with a wonderful theme I think. We will explore the Macro World of Nature, all those small creatures like flies and bugs. There are a lot of haiku written about those small creatures, so I think we can do that again in our modern times. During this month we will have no special guests like we have had in earlier years during our celebration month, bu I think we all can make this month a wonderful month together ... celebrating the love of Japanese poetry and friendship.

Ants

an evening shower:
the ants are running down
the bamboos

as the day ends in the west
the last sunbeams disappear

the cool summer night -
I have restless dreams next to you
the one I love

nightmares torturing me
attacked by mosquitos

the first sunbeams
cherishing my naked body
blankets have fallen

awakened by rustling bamboo
a new day rises for the ants

(In renga this closing verse is called ägeku")

© Chèvrefeuille (2014)

I am looking forward to this festive month in which we will celebrate our 7th birthday and I hope you all will celebrate it with me.

Namasté,

Chèvrefeuille, your host.

Carpe Diem Extra March 21st 2019 ... sneak preview 2nd quarter 2019

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I love to give you a sneak preview for our 2nd quarter of 2019, but first I have a question for you all. This month we are on the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage, but it seems like you all have not enough inspiration for this month. So I love to hear from you what is the matter? CDHK was a blossoming group of poets that share their love for Japanese poetry, but ... I don't know what is happening but it looks like CDHK has no future anymore.

As you all know I love to create CDHK, but if enthousiasm starts to become smaller than I don't know if I will go on with CDHK. Ofcourse there will be all kinds of reasons why the responses are not that much anymore. Maybe it's the theme for this month or maybe it takes to much of your time. So please let me know what I can change to bring back your enthousiasm. Maybe you have ideas for new themes, new features or maybe another way of making CDHK.

Okay ... let me tell you my ideas for the 2nd quarter of 2019.

April 2019:

I have ran through our rich history and I found a few months in which there was an awesome response. Those months were all about classical and non-classical kigo (seasonwords). So in April all our prompts will be classical and non-classical kigo for Spring.

such a sad event
young cherry blossoms frozen
in a cold spring night

© Chèvrefeuille (2016)

May 2019:

Another theme on which your responses were wonderful were the Tan Renga Challenge months. That wonderful kind of chained verse that brings poets together. In May I will create a month full of Tan Renga Challenges with ofcourse also several hineri (with a twist) episodes.
Tan Renga is a chained verse of two stanza, the first stanza has three lines and the second stanza has two lines. The second stanza is created through association on the scenes in the first stanza. Tan Renga looks similar with Tanka, but is written by two poets (as in a renga).

morning sun
the twinkle of stars
still in the dew                                                      (Jane Reichhold)

her bright shining eyes
she unpacks her new doll                                     (your host)

June 2019:

In June I will challenge you (again) because in that month I hope to bring a month full of Troiku, that creative new way of haiku-ing that I invented back in 2012. In June I hope to challenge you to create a Troiku Hineri every week.

morning dew
vanished in a second as the sun rises -
life is short


morning dew
makes the spiderweb crystaline
nature's treasure

vanished in a second as the sun rises
the fragile hoarfrost on the branches -
ice skating

life is short
I see the thin grey hair of my parents
I become grey too

© Chèvrefeuille

I am looking forward to this 2nd quarter and I hope you will too.

Namasté,

Chèvrefeuille, your host

Carpe Diem Sneak Preview first quarter 2018

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I know it's weekend and I know that I cherish these free weekends, but I just had to share my thoughts for the first quarter of 2018. I am already busy with preparing the prompt-list for January 2018 and I think that will be a fairytale like month (smiles), something like Arabian Nights ...

January 2018:

We will discover the beauty of that wonderful series of fairytales as known as "Thousand And One Nights" or "Arabian Nights". That month will be awesome I think. I love fairytales and I remember that we have done a whole month about fairytales, legends and myths and I even created a myth my own in that month.

With the fairytales of Arabian Nights we will have a great kick-off of a whole new year of Carpe Diem Haiku Kai.

Here at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai we have a nice history of journeys and I love to do another month in which we will go on a journey. I even think that I have mentioned this journey somewhere in our rich history.

February 2018:

"I can smell the pepper, the cinnamon and other spices already". This month we will go on a journey along the so called "Silk Road". The Silk Road was a network of trade routes, formally established during the Han Dynasty of China, which linked the regions of the ancient world in commerce. As the Silk Road was not a single thoroughfare from east to west, the term 'Silk Routes’ has become increasingly favored by historians, though 'Silk Road’ is the more common and recognized name. The network was used regularly from 130 BCE, when the Han officially opened trade with the west, to 1453 CE, when the Ottoman Empire boycotted trade with the west and closed the routes.

During this journey we will again read a novel which one ... I haven't yet decided.

somewhere along the silk road

After this journey it is time to find peace again. I have an idea about that, but I don't know if I have the courage to do what I am thinking about. In this time it's somewhat controversial to do a whole month about the Quran, because of all things that happen around the globe. But ... the Quran is a really wonderful book to read. It's full of ancient wisdom and in the Quran love and peace are leading themes ...

March 2018 (with a proviso):

"No human speech can match". This month we will try to explore the beauty of the Quran. The Quran, literally meaning "the recitation" is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims believe to be a revelation from God (Allah). It is widely regarded as the finest work in classical Arabic literature. The Quran is divided into chapters (surah in Arabic), which are then divided into verses (ayah).

Open Quran

Well ... I am excited about the first quarter of 2018 and I hope you all will be excited too. Please share your thoughts about the first quarter of 2018 with me through the comment field.

Have a great weekend,

Chèvrefeuille, your host

Carpe Diem Sneak Preview #4, A few changes which I love to share with you all and a few new ideas.

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I love to give you all a Sneak Preview for the nearby future of Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. First I have an announcement to make. As I said earlier in Sneak Preview #3 I would love to visit Japanese Festivals in April, but after thinking it over and over again I have decided to 're-place' the Japanese Festivals to our second anniversary month upcoming October. So in October, as we have our second anniversary, I will take you all on a tour along several Japanese Festivals. So that month will be one big celebration. I hope you all don't mind this change.

One of Japan's Summer festivals

What is coming up?

Right now we are on a pilgrimage along the 88 temples on the Island of Shikoku to discover the roots of Buddhism and the influence of it on our beloved haiku. Our pilgrimage will last to end of March, because it's to much for one month and ofcourse we have our Spanish pilgrimage along The Way of St. James or the road to Santiago De Compostela.
In March we will have our second part of both pilgrimages and I am looking forward to it. I hope that you all like this pilgrimages.
In April I will go back to 'the beginning' of Carpe Diem Haiku Kai and will use just words for prompt. In May I hope to make a month full of Legends, Myths and Saga from all over the world, but to make that Carpe Diem Haiku Kai month I need your help, my dear Haijin, visitors and travelers. Please share your suggestions for this 'Legend, Myth and Saga'-month. For that cause I have made a new page titled 'Legend, Myth and Saga'. You can find that page on the bar above.

The Legend of Atlantis

In June we will have another month of inspirational music as we have had earlier last year. This month I will use music composed by a young Portugese composer BrunuhVille. That will really be a joy. he has composed wonderful music very similar to the music of Adrrian von Ziegler (last december). I love to share already a piece of music composed by BrunuhVille hereafter.

I think this is wonderful music and I hope you will like it too.

In the second half of the year we will have another month of Tan Renga Challenges and I am busy with getting permission to use the music of a wellknown worldwide composer of New Age music, but until now I can't say anything about him giving me permission.

As you all maybe can remember last year we had several months in which I used Classical Japanese Kigo (seasonwords) and in September I hope to prepare another month with Kigo, this time not classical Kigo, but Modern Kigo gathered by Jane Reichhold, one of the most wellknown haiku poetesses of modern times.

To enclose this CD Sneak Preview:

After our pilgrimage-months I will start again with our weekly Tan Renga Challenge and the CD Specials with a featured haiku-poet. So after our pilgrimges we will go back to normal.
Than the following: I have plans to create an Anthology of haiku, senryu, tanka, kyoka and haibun about our first two years as a haiku-family and I hope you all will help me to create that Anthology. I have created a new email-adress to which you can email your haiku, senryu, tanka, kyoka or haibun which you would like to contribute to this Anthology. The email-adress to use for your contribution to the First Carpe Diem Anthology is the following:

anthologycarpediem2014@yahoo.ca

Feel free to email your haiku, senryu, tanka, kyoka or haibun which you have published on Carpe Diem Haiku Kai to this email-adress. .

Last but not least: I have made a new weblog (still under construction at the moment) titled: Carpe Diem Haiku Kai Dojo. I will migrate our lectures to that new weblog and I hope to tell you more about how to write haiku and other Japanese poetry-forms on that new weblog.
And I will point you to our second weblog: Carpe Diem Haiku Kai Special another time. All the Special features will be published there except our Specials with the featured haiku-poet and the weekly Tan renga Challenge.

Well ... I hope you are all just as excited as I am with our near future.

a little verse
from a faraway country -
riding on the wind

(c) Chèvrefeuille

See you soon ...

Carpe Diem Sneak Preview #3, Some changes in the first quarter of 2014 and looking forward to the second quarter.

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

First I love to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. A New Year will start soon ... a whole new year ahead of us in which I hope that Carpe Diem Haiku Kai will evolve further and that our haiku-family will grow ... I hope you all will stay part of this haiku-family, because I can't miss you.

As I wrote earlier in a Sneak Preview I planned a two months pilgrimage to Shigoku. That will happen, but ... I will start that pilgrimage not in January, but in February. Why? Well ... I thought ''We are going on a pilgrimage in Japan on the Isle of Shikogu, but first we have to go there. How do we go there? With a plane, a car or boat? No, we will arrive there by train''. We will start our Shigoku Pilgrimage in January with taking the Trans Siberian Railway, the longest railway on our planet straight through the Soviet Union. We will visit a lot of wonderful places. And to lead us straight through the Soviet Union by train we will have the novel 'Aleph' by Paulo Coelho in our hand that will be the perfect preparation to start our Shikogu-pilgrimage in February. We will explore our deeper thoughts and 'catch' them in beautiful haiku.

After our Shigoku-pilgrimage we will stay another month in Japan to enjoy and discover the most wonderful festivals and celebrations of the country that gave us haiku.
And as I said in that earlier Sneak Preview we will have not in April, but in May a whole month of Carpe Diem Specials in which I will share haiku written by the ancient and classical haiku-poets for your inspiration. That will be a great month and I am enjoying already the compilation of haiku I love to share that month with you all. The most beautiful haiku will come along that month. Haiku written by wellknown haiku-poets, but also by less known haiku-poets (and poetesses).

Of course 2014 will bring months of wonderful prompts and inspirational music. I hope to have a new month full of inspirational music in June, I am already searching for a wonderful musician and I think that musician will be a joy to listen to ... I will keep you posted on this. And I hope to do another month of Tan Renga Challenges.

looking forward
to another wonderful year
full of haiku

It's a joy to make Carpe Diem for you all, my dear haiku-family-members, and I hope you all will enjoy Carpe Diem too.
More Sneak Previews will follow on an irregular base and I have a few nice new features for you this upcoming year. The first new feature I will introduce to you later on this week. It's called ''Sweet Memories'' and I hope that new feature will give you the same joy as I had as I was creating it.

For closure I love to share another idea with you all. I love to create a kind of Anthology of our first two years of Carpe Diem, but that idea is still young and has to grow further ... maybe later in the next year I can harvest that idea and share it with you all. Well ... I have brougth some light into the future of Carpe Diem Haiku Kai and I hope Carpe Diem will continuing to grow ...

Namaste

Carpe Diem Sneak Preview #2, the first quarter of 2014

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I love to give you all a Sneak Preview into the first quarter of our new year 2014 ... soon to come. Next December I will introduce to you a young talented musician which will provide us with his musical prompts (as we did earlier this year with the music by Karunesh). Adrian Von Ziegler is a great artist and I like his music a lot, but that's enough ... let us take a look at our prompt-list-ideas for the first quarter of 2014.

In the first two months we will undertake a pilgrimage, a once in a lifetime Buddhistic pilgrimage. We will visit the island Shikoku, where Buddhist monk Kukai, also known as Kobo Daishi, once lived.

Kobo Daishi (or Kukai), founder of the Shingon Sect of Buddhism

Kobo Daishi (774-835) is a Buddhist Monk.  His original name is Kukai and the name Kobo Daishi was given to him posthumously.  Monk Kukai is the founder of Shingon Sect (Shingan-Shu) of Buddhism and responsible building the sacred temple complex on Mt. Koya (Koyasan). Many Buddhist temples in Japan are dedicated to Kobo Daishi, including large temples like Kawasaki Daishi Temple in the Kanto region.
At an early age, instead following prevailing Buddhist teachings such as Taoism, Monk Kukai goes on a self awareness mission to China in 804.  During this trip to China, he studies Zhenyang doctrine under the direction of the monk Huiguo and became a master of esoterism in 806. After coming back to Japan, he started his own set of Buddhist teachings, which were later transformed into Shingon sect (Shingon-shu).  The teachings of Monk Kukai preach that each person will be released from secular illusions and have his "mind's eye" opened.  He then will be an awakened person to the actualities of life.  He will then become a Buddha with his present body.
He was given the permission by then Emperor of Japan, (Emperor Saga) to build a temple complex on Mt. Koya (Koyasan) in the Wakayama prefecture and part of the Kii Peninsula.  Under his leadership Koyasan has flourished as a grooming place for thousands of buddhist monks in the teachings of Shingon-shu.
Emperor Saga honored Monk Kukai with the directorship of Toji Temple in Kyoto city and gave it the official name Kyo-o-gokokuji, which means the temple that guards the capital (Kyoto city during the Heian period) and the land by virtue of Ninno-gokoku-kyo (the main teachings of the Shingon Buddhism).  Kukai made Toji the central seminary of Esoteric Buddhism and added various other buildings to it. 

Kobo Daishi, founder of Shingon Buddhism

Monk Kukai spent most of his later years in Mt. Koya (Koyasan) and he was later laid to rest in Koyasan.  Monk Kukai's mausoleum is now a major destination for Buddhists and non Buddhists alike on Koyasan.  Known as Oku-no-in, it is a must visit place for all followers of Buddhism.Monk Kukai, for his times, is considered as a renaissance man by Japanese people.  He was known to have invented and developed the Hiragana (Japanese script language) and the first dictionary of Japanese words.  He also devised the 88 temple pilgrimage of Shikoku (Shikoku Henro), which is considered as the fore father of all the temple pilgrimages in Japan.

Shikoku Pilgrims (Henro)

This Shikoku pilgrimage is the deliverer of our prompts in the first two months of the new year. The 88 temples will all be in the prompt-list and the first prompts of the new year I will use the 13 rules of Zen Buddihism to give you all a ''back-pack'' to fullfill the Shikoku Pilgrimage like real Henro (pilgrims). To give you all an idea I love to share a You Tube Video here:

The Shikoku Pilgrimage (四国遍路 Shikoku Henro?) or Shikoku Junrei (四国巡礼?) is a multi-site pilgrimage of 88 temples associated with the Buddhist monk Kūkai (Kōbō Daishi) on the island of Shikoku, Japan. A popular and distinctive feature of the island's cultural landscape, and with a long history, large numbers of pilgrims (known as henro (遍路?)) still undertake the journey for a variety of ascetic, pious, and tourism-related purposes.
In addition to the 88 "official" temples of the pilgrimage, there are over 200 bangai — temples not considered part of the official 88. To complete the pilgrimage, it is not necessary to visit the temples in order; in some cases it is even considered lucky to travel in reverse order. The pilgrimage is traditionally completed on foot, but modern pilgrims use cars, taxis, buses, bicycles, or motorcycles. The walking course is approximately 1,200 km long and can take anywhere from 30 to 60 days to complete. "Henro" (遍路?) is the Japanese word for pilgrim, and the inhabitants of Shikoku call the pilgrims o-henro-san (お遍路さん?), the o (お?) being an honorific and the san (さん?) a title similar to "Mr." or "Mrs.". They are often recognizable by their white clothing, sedge hats, and kongō-tsue or walking sticks. Alms or osettai are frequently given. Many pilgrims begin and complete the journey by visiting Mount Kōya in Wakayama Prefecture, which was settled by Kūkai and remains the headquarters of the Shingon sect of Buddhism. The 21 km walking trail up to Koya-san still exists, but most pilgrims use the train.

In April 2014 we will have a month full of Special haiku written by the classical haiku masters for your inspiration. 

I am looking forward to the first quarter of 2014, hope you all do so ....

Warm greetings,

Namaste,

Chèvrefeuille, your host

Carpe Diem Sneak Preview

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

As our first anniversary is coming closer I love to look back at our first year of Carpe Diem and I would like to give you all a sneak preview into our second year of Carpe Diem.

As I started with Carpe Diem a long cherrished wish came true. It started with the deep wish to create a place on the world wide web for haijin to write and share their haiku and I hoped to promote the haiku as an Art with a capital A.
First I tried it with a weekly haiku meme "Tackle It Tuesday" at Chèvrefeuille's haikublog, my base haikublog on blogspot (Google). It wasn't a big success, but it became clear that a daily haiku meme would be an opportunity to share and promote my beloved haiku. In September 2012, I was attending Haiku Heights daily haiku challenge, the website by Leo, the idea to have my own daily haiku meme became a major task

Our first logo

and a deep wish came true as I started Chèvrefeuille's Carpe Diem, a daily haiku meme on October 1st 2012 with the first prompt Waterfall which I posted already on September 21st 2012. This first prompt had six (6) contributors. Four of them are still loyal contributors to Carpe Diem almost a year later. I started to write Carpe Diem Previews to look back on the haiku which were published and I introduced the Carpe Diem Special episodes in which I elected a haiku written by another haiku-poet for inspiration. In October 2012 Basho, whom I see as my master and role-model, was the first featured haiku-master. The months following we had also the other three great haiku-masters and the greatest haiku-poetess, Issa, Buson, Shiki and Chiyo-Ni. They all were introduced and I shared their most beautiful haiku with you all for your inspiration.

With the coming of December, the winter month (at least in my part of the world), I introduced, the classical Japanese kigo (seasonwords) and used them for prompts. To me, and to the contributors, this was really a tough challenge, but it was a joy and a big success. So I decided to use kigo in the months in which the changing of seasons occurs. In January 2013 I introduced a new feature Carpe Diem's Imagination in which a photo, painting or other image was provided for inspiration. It was another success and on a certain regular base I published other episodes of Imagination.
I almost forgot the Carpe Diem Lectures, which I started in November 2012 to share a bit of my knowledge about haiku.
This year, 2013, Carpe Diem evolved and I started several special weeks as we had e.g. in April 2013, The Zodiac days.

In April I had my 25th anniversary as a haiku poet, so that month the Specials were all haiku written by myself. April was a very festive month not at least by becoming 50 yrs of age of your host, but also the month of haibun. I started Carpe Diem's Kamishibai an all new feature in which the goal was to write haibun.

Carpe Diem has evolved to a weblog worth visiting and worth to grow further. I started new features and they were all (and still are) very succesful as there are the Tan Renga Challenge; Freestyle; Little Ones and recently Distillation. And we had wonderful Special haiku by Jane Reichhold. It was really a honor to may use her haiku in July. And last but not least we had the wonderful music by Karunesh and Guy Sweens. Really Carpe Diem has started to become a worldwide respected weblog with honored guests. Of course I hope that Carpe Diem will become a bigger family, a bigger community of haiku poets, but that's all hidden in the future behind the veils of time.

Logo Carpe Diem September 2013

I will lift a little bit of the veil and share a bit of the future of Carpe Diem.
In our first anniversary month we will have all prompts which you all suggested and the Specials are by Garry Gay  a well known modern American haiku poet (and photographer) who created the Rengay, a kind of Renga. I will write a Carpe Diem Lecture soon about this Rengay and I am preparing a kind of new challenging feature around this Rengay.
In December I will prepare another month with Inspirational music as we had in August. I have already found the musician for that month, but I have to contact him for permission. Of course our Carpe Diem features e.g. Tan Renga Challenge and Distillation will be continued on a regular base and I hope to introduce a few new Carpe Diem features.
As we enter 2014 I will have a few special months which I can say nothing about at this moment, but I think that you all will like those special months.

Well ... our second Carpe Diem year looks great and I hope that you all will be part of that new Carpe Diem year.

Namaste

Chèvrefeuille, your host

PS.: If you have suggestions for our prompts ... then please share them in the Prompt Suggestion Section of our weblog.