Carpe Diem #1786 & #1787 (double episode)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Today I have a double episode for you, because during circumstances I couldn't publish yesterday. So this episode I will give you two themes to work with, both episodes have their own linking widget.

(#1786) Renga with Chèvrefeuille.

For this first part of this double episode I have chosen for "Renga With Chèvrefeuille", I will give you six haiku written by myself and extracted from my personal website "Chèvrefeuille's Haikublog". The goal is to add your own two lined stanza to make the Renga (Junicho = a 12 stanza renga) complete. You may choose your own "line-up".

reaching for the sun
lotus flowers blooms from the mud
old pond changes

deep silence
even deeper as the nightingale starts to sing
beautiful life

snow falls gently
covers up the autumn fields
faraway sounds

Reflections

reflections

scattered by autumn leaves

the old pond

a last leaf

swirls on the wind towards the east -

first snow falls gently

farewell verse

as I depart from the train station

forget me not

© Chèvrefeuille

NOW OPEN for your submissions until December 2nd at noon (CET).

(#1787) Modern kigo

For the second part of this episode I have chosen a modern kigo taken from Jane Reichhold's "A Dictionary of Haiku". It's an autumn kigo. As you all know Jane was once my co-host here at CDHK and she is still missed. So create your haiku in honor of her.

Here is the theme: Autumn Equinox

And here are a few examples of haiku with this modern kigo created by Jane Reichhold (1937-2016):

autumn equinox
cool wind comes scented
sun-hot pine needles

autumn equinox
putting porch furniture away
getting it out again

© Jane Reichhold

Autumn Equinox

Two beauties by Jane ... and now it is up to you to create haiku with this modern kigo. This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until December 2nd at noon (CET). Have fun!

Carpe Diem #1547 Renga With ... the big five haiku poets

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I hope you all will have a wonderful weekend in which you could relax, meditate and contemplate. I had a nice weekend myself and the weather was great. I ran into a gorgeous tree in all its autumn beauty ... and I love toshare that image here with you:

Amber Tree (© Chèvrefeuille)

Look at that beauty ... it's a feast for my eyes and I had never seen it. All those different colors on the same tree wow!

Okay back to today's episode. Today I love to challenge you (again) to create a renga together with the "big five", Basho, Chiyo-Ni, Issa, Buson and Shiki. Here are the haiku to use in a line-up of your own choice. You have to add your two lined stanza (approx. 7-7 syllables) to make the renga a story about autumn.

it is seen
in the papier-maché cat
the morning of autumn

© Basho

along this road
goes no one
this autumn eve

© Basho

when I go out of the gate
I also am a traveller
in the autumn evening

© Buson

autumn's bright moon
however far I walked, still afar off
in an unknown sky

© Chiyo-Ni

two houses!
two houses making rice-cakes:
autumn rain

© Issa

Small Wooden Drum (source unknown)

with the autumn tempest
the small drum
falls from its shelf

© Shiki

A nice series of haiku I would say. Enjoy this challenge and the opportunity to create a renga with the five renown haiku poets.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 25th at noon (CET). Have fun!

Carpe Diem #1532 Richard Wright's "A Red Sinking Autumn Sun"

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Well ... this 6th anniversary month is almost over, so the end is near of our celebrations. Next month I have chosen the theme "Autumn". I think that theme says enough. Next month we are celebrating Autumn, in my opinion the most beautiful season, but that's for later this week.

For this episode I looked back into our rich history and I ran into an episode about Richard Wright in our Ghost Writer feature back in 2014. And than I thought ... maybe I can bring him back for one day here at our Haiku Kai.

Richard Wright (1908-1960)

Richard Wright (1908-1960), one of the early forceful and eloquent spokesmen for black Americans, author of "Native Son," and "Black Boy", was also, it turns out, a major poet. During the last eighteen months of his life, he discovered and became enamored of haiku, the strict seventeen-syllable Japanese form. Wright became so excited about the discovery that he began writing his own haiku, in which he attempted to capture, through his sensibility as an African American, the same Zen discipline and beauty in depicting man's relationship, not to his fellow man as he had in his fiction, but to nature and the natural world.

Cover: Haiku: This Other World by Richard Wright

In all, he wrote over 4,000 haiku, from which he chose, before he died, the 817 he preferred. Rather than a deviation from his self-appointed role as spokesman for black Americans of his time, Richard Wright's haiku, disciplined and steeped in beauty, are a culmination: not only do they give added scope to his work but they bring to it a universality that transcends both race and color without ever denying them.

Wright wrote his haiku obsessively--in bed, in cafes, in restaurants, in both Paris and the French countryside. His daughter Julia believes, quite rightly, that her father's haiku were "self-developed antidotes against illness, and that breaking down words into syllables matched the shortness of his breath." They also offered the novelist and essayist a new form of expression and a new vision: with the threat of death constantly before him, he found inspiration, beauty, and insights in and through the haiku form. The discovery and writing of haiku also helped him come to terms with nature and the earth, which in his early years he had viewed as hostile and equated with suffering and physical hunger. Fighting illness and frequently bedridden, deeply upset by the recent loss of his mother, Ella, Wright continued, as his daughter notes, "to spin these poems of light out of the gathering darkness."

For this episode I love to challenge you to create a Renga With Richard Wright. That means: I will give you six haiku. You may choose your own line-up and add your two-lined stanzas. Here are the six haiku to work with:

I am nobody:
A red sinking autumn sun
Took my name away.

Keep straight down this block,
Then turn right where you will find
A peach tree blooming.

Make up you mind, Snail!
You are half inside your house,
And halfway out!

You moths must leave now;
I am turning out the light
And going to sleep.

One Magnolia

All right, You Sparrows;
The sun has set and you can now
Stop your chattering!

One magnolia
Landed upon another
In the dew-wet grass.

© Richard Wright

I hope you did like this episode about Richard Wright and I am looking forward to your Renga With Richard Wright. Have fun!

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 5th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on, but I have a very busy day tomorrow.