Carpe Diem Tan Renga Challenge Month 2017 #15 ancient road (Adjei Agyei Baah)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode in our Carpe Diem TRC month 2017. Yesterday we had a classical haiku poet, Kikaku, and today we have a modern haiku poet to inspire us. Today I have chosen for a "hokku" written by Adjei Agyei Baah, a very talented haiku poet from Ghana. Adjei invented the "Afriku", the haiku from Africa and is the initiator of several haiku events in Ghana and other parts of Africa. Last year his first haiku compilation "Afriku, haiku and senryu from Ghana" was published by Red Moon Press. "Afriku" is a wonderful compilation of beautiful haiku and senryu and for sure worth to read and re-read.

Today's haiku is not from this "Afriku" compilation, but one of his haiku responses on a prompt by CDHK.

ancient road…
the trails of the masters
absorbed in fallen leaves

© Adjei Agyei-Baah

Ancient Road ...

The task is to create a Tan Renga through association on the scenes in the "hokku" and add two lines of approximately 7-7 syllables towards it.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until May 28th at noon (CET). Have fun!

Carpe Diem My favorite haiku by ... #3 Adjei Agyei Baah "peak of Kilimanjaro"

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

"My favorite haiku by ..." is a wonderful feature here at CDHK and I am glad to present to you an all new episode of this feature.
Recently we had Adjei Agyei Baah, a haiku poet from Ghana, as our featured haiku poet  and I am still in contact with him. Not so long ago he emailed me a series of new haiku and I love to share a few of them here with you ... and I will tell you a little bit more about my favorite haiku written by Adjei.

one nature’s beauty
observed in a single look
peak of Kilimanjaro 

© Adjei Agyei Baah

Credits: Mount Kilimanjaro

Adjei has already shared beautiful haiku, or as he calls them, afriku, with us all at CDHK. I think that Adjei is a very talented haiku poet and I just had to bring him in here again.
Why is this one of my favorite haiku by Adjei? Well ... it's a magnificent scene as you look at the image of Kilimanjaro. This mountain is really beautiful with its peak covered with eternal snow rising above the green-yellow land of Africa. Adjei has caught that beauty in a great way ... it feels like a holy moment, here you can feel the greatness of the Creator.

Kilimanjaro, the name itself is a mystery wreathed in clouds. It might mean Mountain of Light, Mountain of Greatness or Mountain of Caravans. Or it might not. The local people, the Wachagga, don't even have a name for the whole massif, only Kipoo (now known as Kibo) for the familiar snowy peak that stands imperious, overseer of the continent, the summit of Africa.
Kilimanjaro, by any name, is a metaphor for the compelling beauty of East Africa. When you see it, you understand why. Not only is this the highest peak on the African continent; it is also the tallest free-standing mountain in the world, rising in breathtaking isolation from the surrounding coastal scrubland – elevation around 900 meters – to an imperious 5,895 meters (19,336 feet).

Credits: Mount Kilimanjaro (Mountain of Light)

How to catch the beauty of Kilimanjaro (or any other mountain) in a haiku? I really don't know. I have never seen it in real, but as I look at the images I am overwhelmed with emotions. Look at its beauty, its greatness ... it really is a Mountain of Light or as other sources call it Mountain of Greatness.

Adjei's haiku catches that beauty, that overwhelming greatness in a wonderful way ... it makes me speechless and humble. I am imagining standing at the foot of Kilimanjaro ... nailed to the ground, because of its mighty features ... I just have to make it to the peak to adore the beauty of Africa ...

overwhelmed
tears rolling down my cheeks
Africa seen from the sky

© Chèvrefeuille

Awesome ... I can almost sense that moment ... standing on the peak of Kilimanjaro, it feels so real and I have never been there. Thanks to Adjei I can feel Africa, I can feel how magnificent the view is from the top of Kilimanjaro. It feels like Heaven ...

!! More haiku by Adjei Agyei Baah you can find at his weblog Afrikuland !!

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until next Thursday September 3rd at noon (CET).

Carpe Diem Tan Renga Challenge #95 "lilies of the valley" by Adjei Agyei Baah

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I have a nice Tan Renga Challenge for you. I had a last haiku by Adjei Agyei Baah, our featured haiku poet in July 2015 which I hadn't used yet. Adjei wrote this haiku in response on Suzuran or Lilies of the Valley

The goal is to write a second stanza towards it. Here is his "hokku" :

lilies-of-the-valley

stuck to the mountainside

like ribbons

(c) Adjei Agyei Baah

Well ... a short episode, but I hope it will inspire you to complete this Tan Renga. Have fun!

This Tan Renga Challenge is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will be open until next Friday August 7th at noon (CET).

Carpe Diem Special #158 Adjei Agyei Baah's 5th special "Afrikuland"

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

First ... my dad is doing well Next Monday he will be released from the hospital ... I am grateful that he survived his major heart attack. Thank you all for your thoughts, warm words and prayers.

Today we have our last CD Special of July. It was really a joy to introduce Adjei Agyei Baah here at CDHK and I am grateful that he would be our featured haiku poet this month. Thank you Adjei. I am glad that we had the opportunity to meet eachother trhough haiku. It feels great to have an African haiku poet here at CDHK.

Adjei has recently launched his own weblog Afrikuland it looks great and I have complimented him with his weblog. His weblog is certainly worth a visit.

The following haiku he emailed me before the launch of his weblog, I know for sure that he also will publish them at his own weblog, but of course I have to "fill" this CD Special.

amenbou (water strider)

slowly unseating the pond skater
from his water throne
harmattan winds

in his world alone
a water strider resting
on his shadow bed

Origami frog (Utabukuro)

origami frog
plead the kids to find your voice
when the night come

origami frog
frozen in its trail
no jump over the moon

On Strawberry

planting kisses
of strawberry breath
summer waves

filling her dimples
with strawberries
summer camp

two flavors
on our wild romance
vanilla & strawberry

Jasmine

Jasmine
P-l-e-e-e-e-a-s-e
just be mine

Midsummer

midsummer blues–
the wild memories of
a skirt-chaser

© Adjei Agyei-Baah, Ghana

Credits: Afrikuland

Adjei wrote a wonderful Soliloquy No Renga for our last Tokubetsudesu episode. I think he has done a great job on it and I am glad to share it here with you ...

Soliloquy No Renga Challenge

Hokku:

Ah! those cherry blossoms
their beauty amazes me again -
finally spring is here

visitors bask in fragrance
of white confetti showers

birds chirp in frenzy
as hearty chat fills benches
Cupid’s arrow flies by

busy hands penning hokku
as cameras seize the moment

the leaden skies add
background to the artist’s pen
no need for abstract

ah! cherry blossoming blast–
come take a white carpet walk!

© Adjei Agyei-Baah, Ghana

Blogging @ Afrikuland.blogspot.org

All wonderful poems as I may say so. Adjei is a very talented haiku poet and I hope to read a lot more of his work in the future ...

Lilies of the Valley

lilies of the valley
their sweet perfume makes me drowsy
hot summer night

hot summer night
between silken sheets her warmth
honeysuckle coolness

© Chèvrefeuille

I hope you did like this CD-Special and that it will inspire you to write an all new haiku or tanka. This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until July 28th at noon (CET). I will (try to) publish our new episode, tentoumushi or Lady bug, later on.

PS.: During lack of time I will not publish a new episode of our special feature "Utabukuro" and there will be also no "Time Glass" episode ... I hope to do them next week again. I hope you all will forgive me ...

Carpe Diem Special #157, Adjei Agyei Baah, our featured haiku poet, on Afriku (an article of the Poetry Foundation Ghana)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

First I love to thank Jen of Blog It Or Lose It for helping me out this weekend. I have enjoyed the spare time a lot and I am proud that Jen has created three wonderful posts this weekend ... Thank You Jen ... from the bottom of my heart ... for stepping in ...

It's my pleasure to bring a new CD Special by our featured haiku poet Adjei Aygei Baah from Ghana. He is co-founder of the Poetry Foundation Ghana and writes for their e-magazine "Kwaku Ananse". In this CD Special I love to share an article he wrote on "Afriku", haiku from Africa. Followed by a few haiku composed by him for our Haiku Kai.

The Making of African Haiku (Afriku)

It’s a new dawn…a new day as Africa provides a voice in haiku by introducing a new haiku art dubbed Afriku that comes with much freshness and delight.Call it a subtle revolution or an awakening which seeks to rally all African poets around the globe to give this Japanese art a formal attention as a new way of telling the African story.
What is Afriku? Afriku is a coinage, a merger of the two words “Africa” and “haiku” that captures the beautiful elements/moments in the African settings. This article is not meant to explain the aesthetics of haiku nor to revisit its crossroad of disagreement but rather meant to sensitize the world about Basho’s bug which has caught up with the continent. It is perhaps a high time to patent and popularize the new terminology “Afriku” before, as is always the case with our troubled continent, other nationalistic offshoots spring up and jostle for lexical recognition with Ghaiku/Ghaku/Ghanaku from Ghana, Keiku from Nairobi, Saiku from J'burg, Naiku from Nigeria etc. etc.
Being the first born of this marriage, Afriku shall hereby be the polygamous father, while Ghaikus, Saikus, Naikus and the rest, if they accept his dowry, shall be mothers of the African Haiku and shall extend to embrace all other ‘sibling’ terminologies. "In fact, Africa has been quite late coming to the world of haiku, and then mainly through Japanese (and other) diplomats rather than through its indigenous poets” Jim Kacian once said.
There might be myriad of factors to account for this, but in any case, it is heartwarming to see the haiku winds blowing over the face of our continent and hearing the voices of local poets emerging in with their own novel form and style.

Dear reader, you are free to share your thoughts as a commentary, suggestions and criticisms or any other means possible. Basho the grandmaster himself might have foreseen the spread and modification of the haiku art when he once said: “Many of my followers can write hokku (another term for haiku) as well as I can. Where I show who I really am is in linking haikai verses.”

(Source: Kwaku Ananse)

As I was following a few of the links Adjei gave me when we came in contact with each other I ran into a wonderful haiga by him. I love to share that haiga here, just to "break" the long text of this episode. Adjei wrote the haiku and the drawing is by s'pray. (Source)

Credits: haiga "dry Savannah"

Adjei emailed me the following haiku for the prompts: weeping willow (Time Glass), shika no ko (fawn) and the "full circle challenge".

Weeping Willow (Time Glass):

no sign of tears
to prove your name
weeping willow

wearing us back
into the sands where we belong
hour glass

© Adjei Agyei Baah, Kumasi Ghana

Shika no ko (Fawn):

a walk for my soul
this fawn she carries stars
upon her back

© Adjei Agyei Baah

Adjei asked me to look at it with him, he had a few little changes and together we came to this
above "final" version. Adjei's "fawn"-haiku came from the following original:

a walk for my soul

this fawn the carries stars

upon its back

© Adjei Agyei Baah

He composed two other haiku on "fawn":

how needless
to cage the fawn, that wear
a skin of stars

in search for my star
the shimmering spots
of a fawn

© Adjei Agyei Baah

Adjei Agyei Baah, Kumasi Ghana

To close this Carpe Diem Special I have Adjei's response on our last Tokubetsudesu episode "full circle". He has given it his own interpretation. I love how he has created his "full circle" haiku series:

Heaven

in search

for heaven’s door-
a rainbow

an unseen
doorway to heaven-
rainbow


Cloud

swallowing

every star on its pathway
moving dragon cloud

Fountain

fountain side

the laughter of kids encircle
a peeing cupid

Desert

finding shade

in our camel’s hump
desert heat

Jazz café

jazz night

the thin line between
sax and sex

Duke Ellington

surrounded

by maidens of daises
duke on castle rock

 
Ancient Road

ancient road…

the trails of the masters
absorbed in fallen leaves

Hill

uphill rock

drawing the sun unto itself

the red head lizard

© Adjei Agyei-Baah, Ghana


Adjei is really a gifted haiku poet and I am honored that I could introduce him here at our Haiku Kai. He is one of the first haiku poets from Africa and he has already become famous around the globe, as you could have read in his second CD Special.

I hope this CD Special will inspire you to write "afriku" or an all new haiku or tanka in the same spirit as the poems by Adjei. 

I hadn't enough inspiration, so I reproduce an "oldie" inspired on "ancient road":

seeking the path
walking the 'Narrow Road'
in deep silence

© Chèvrefeuille

This CD Special is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until July 22nd at noon (CET). I hope to publish our next episode, seika (midsummer), later on. For now .. have fun, be inspired and share your haiku or tanka with us all here at our Haiku Kai.

Carpe Diem Special #156 Adjei's third "silvery curtain"

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

It's my pleasure to present the third CD Special by Adjei Agyei Baah. As in his second CD Special I will share his haiku inspired on our prompts, because of the fact that he hasn't yet his own weblog. This episode I also use to introduce him a little bit more to you. Here is his biography:

Adjei Agyei-Baah is from Ghana and is the co-founder of Poetry Foundation Ghana. He is a teacher of English language and also part-time lecturer at Institute of Continuing and Distance Education, University of Ghana, Kumasi Campus. He doubles as the co-editor of Poetry Ink Journal, a yearly poetry anthology in Ghana. He is widely anthologized, both home and abroad.

He is a devotee of the Japanese poetry form haiku, and presently championing a new haiku breed dubbed “Afriku” which focus on the African setting and draw on extensively on African images and symbols. He was motivated to explore haiku three years ago by the works of his fellow African poets like Nana Fredua-Agyemang (Ghana), and Prince K. Mensah (Ghana) and Emmanuel-Abdalmasih Samson (Nigeria) and after pursued works of the haiku masters like Basho, Buson, Shiki, Issa etc for enlightenment and direction. Adjei has one poetry (Embers of Fireflies) and two haiku collections awaiting publication.

He has written and published in international journals and e-zines such as Shamrock, Frogpong, World Haiku Review and The Heron’s Nest.

In the words of Alan Summer, the editor of With Words Magazine, Adjei is:

“A rising star, strong contender and extremely relevant and important. A voice to watch, the name will become better known”.

As you have read Adjei is already well known for his work as an haiku poet. I really was surprised as I read this biography, because, before he contacted me through email, I never had heard of him. Therefore I am so glad to bring his haiku to your attention here at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai ... and I am proud that I can and may bring his haiku to the world, to our haiku family.

Here are his haiku submissions for last week's prompts:

Rainbow

rainbow:
the rain and his so-called bowl
little kids argued all day

Summer waves

caked lagoon
migratory waves
home again

Credits: The Boti Falls (Ghana) | © Sarah Benke

Waterfall

silvery curtain
on a mountain wall-
waterfall!

Straw hat

riverbank
in my hat's shadow
a fingerling

Fountain

first sail...
inside his paper boat
the weight of water

© Adjei Agyei Baah

A great series of haiku (or afriku) I think and I am glad that I have the opportunity to share them here with you.

I have chosen to respond on Adjei's haiku about "waterfall" with a haiku which I once wrote in the classical way several years ago, so this one is from my archives.

puzzle resolved
the sound of a waterfall
makes me happy

© Chèvrefeuille

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until July 16th at noon (CET). I will (try to) publish our next episode, a new Tokubetsudesu episode, later on. For now ... enjoy the read and be inspired.

 

Carpe Diem Special #155 Adjei's second haiku "summer sun"

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I present our second CD-Special of this month. Our featured haiku poet lives in Ghana, his name is Adjei Agyei Baah. Adjei has emailed me his submission haiku for several prompts, but he hasn't a personal website or weblog therefore I have decided to share his submitted haiku in this CD Special. By the way Adjei will soon have his personal website.

Here are his submitted haiku for the following prompts:

Summer morning (July 3rd); Butterflies ("Encore" July 3rd); Rainy season (July 5th) and Rainbow (July 6th).

Adjei lives in Kimasi Ghana and is co-founder of the Poetry Foundation Ghana. He is the inventor of the "afriku" a haiku especially with scenes and images from Africa. At the moment he is creating his own personal weblog. He has already published a lot on the divers websites for poetry in Africa.

Here are his haiku for your inspiration. The goal is to write/compose all new haiku in the same sense, tone and spirit as the ones I have given. You may use them all, but that isn't an obligation, you can also take one or two haiku for your inspiration.

Summer morning:

summer sun
all in her eyes
the ocean, sand and nudity!

(c) Adjei

Butterflies:

folding
and unfolding
the silent clap of a butterfly

(c) Adjei

Credits: Butterfly

Rainy season:

May rains drop
the bamboo fence
free from termites plaster

(c) Adjei

Rainbow:

the rain
and his so-called bowl
little kids argued all day

(c) Adjei

Four wonderfully composed haiku. I hope they will inspire you all. During lack of time I have chosen to use the butterfly haiku for my inspiration.

in the Buddleia
fluttering of fragile wings
waving on the wind

waving on the wind
butterflies resting in the sun
on the Buddleia

© Chèvrefeuille

Credits: butterfly on Buddleia

I hope this episode of our CD-Special featured haiku poet will inspire you all to write/compose an all new haiku or tanka. Have fun!

This episode will be open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until July 10th at noon (CET). I will (try to) publish our new episode, natsu no nami (summer waves), later on.

Carpe Diem Special #154 Afriku, haiku from Africa, an idea of Adjei Agyei Baah. "Stones"

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

We haven't yet a new winner of our "summertime" kukai, so I have another wonderful haiku poet from Ghana, Africa, for you this month as our featured haiku poet. His name is Adjei Agyei Baah and he is the co-founder of the Poetry Foundation Ghana. He has "invented" the (as he calls it) Afriku, the haiku from Africa.
Yesterday Adjei emailed me to ask me if I would publish his haiku (afriku) at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. Of course I was immediately enthusiastic and we had a little chat. It's a great honor that I may use his haiku for Carpe Diem Haiku Kai.

Here are his "stones"-haiku/afriku which he would like to share here at CDHK:

shoreline pebbles...
a reminder of how far
we have come

preparing
daddy's delicacy-
taking stones out of gizzard
 

stone temple
leftover boulders
add to reverence
 

© Adjei Agyei-Baah, Kumasi, Ghana

I think Adjei is a very gifted haiku poet. This month I will tell you all more about him in our CD-Specials.

To read more about his afriku please visit the website of the Poetry Foundation Ghana. (By clicking HERE you can read his article about afriku)

This CD-Special is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until July 4th at noon (CET). I am looking forward to your haiku inspired on the above haiku/afriku by Adjei.