Carpe Diem #1789 The Winter Trees (Crossroads)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at the penultimate episode of November. In this month our theme was / is "Never Change A Winning Team" and that means that it all was about haiku, my first love. For this episode I have chosen a nice set of haiku.

Yosa Buson (source: wiki-art)

The task is to create a "fusion-ku" from the two given haiku and create a Troiku with it, so this episode is a "Crossroads" episode. Here are the two haiku to work with:

cutting into with the ax,
I was surprised at the scent.
the winter trees.

unfolding at the
hand of the glass polisher:
a camellia!

© Yosa Buson

Two wonderful haiku by one of the "big five" haiku poets.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until December 6th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our weekend meditation later on. For now ... have fun!

Carpe Diem #1788 In The Moonlit Night (Revise That Haiku)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode of our wonderful Haiku Kai were we are "honoring" haiku, the most beautiful poem on Earth.

Today I love to challenge you to "revise" a haiku by one of the classical masters, Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902). Shiki was the haiku-master that gave haiku its name and he was the one that brought haiku into the 20th century.

Here is the haiku to "revise":

the wild geese take flight
low along the railroad tracks
in the moonlit night

© Masaoka Shiki

First Steam Train (Woodblock print)

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until December 2nd at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... have fun!

Carpe Diem #1785 Hoarfrost (kigo for winter)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I know you all like to create haiku with a given kigo (seasonword) as we have seen here often at CDHK. So today, in our month with "Never Change A Winning Team", I have a nice kigo for you to work with. Today I love to challenge you with the following kigo: Hoarfrost.

What is "hoarfrost"? Hoarfrost is a grayish-white crystalline deposit of frozen water vapor formed in clear still weather on vegetation, fences, etc.. Here in The Netherlands we have seen that already this month. Just recently we had still weather and it was a bit misty ... and it was cold ... so the world looked awesome as described in the definition of "hoarfrost" above.

Hoarfrost

Today your task is to create a classical haiku, following the classical rules as you can read in our Carpe Diem Lecture 1 above in the menu.

Here is one about "hoarfrost" chosen from my archives, it's not a classical haiku, but ... well I hope you will forgive me for that.

fragile beauty
cranberries covered with sugar
first hoarfrost

© Chèvrefeuille

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 28th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new weekend meditation later on. For now ... be inspired!

Carpe Diem #1784 soaking wet (Crossroads)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

This month our theme is "Never Change A Winning Team" and it's all about haiku, my first love. In the seven years of CDHK I have always tried to stay with my first love, haiku, but that changed during the years.

From the haiku I invented a few new poetry forms, like the Troiku and the "fusion-ku". Today I love to bring both forms together. I have chosen two haiku by one of the renown classical masters and your task is to create a "fusion-ku" and to create a Troiku with that "fusion-ku".

Pampas Grass

Here are the two haiku to work with:

soaking wet
I can’t read the letters
on the signpost

walking through
the bush clover, the pampas grass,
walking on through them

© Santoka Taneda

Two nice haiku by Santoka Taneda I would say, maybe you can remember them, because I used them earlier here at our wonderful Kai.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 27th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... enjoy the challenge.

Carpe Diem #1783 a bell resounds ... Shiki's "shasei"

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new (somewhat delayed) episode of our wonderful Haiku Kai, the place to be if you like to write and share haiku (or other Japanese poetry form) with the world.
This month it's mostly about haiku, as the theme says "Never Change A Winning Team", because haiku was my first goal as I started with Carpe Diem Haiku Kai back in 2012. So today I have a few haiku to inspire you to create new haiku.

For today's episode I have chosen a few haiku by Masaoka Shiki, one of the "big-five" haiku poets. The given haiku are for your inspiration and I hope you will be inspired to create new haiku.

Eggplant

sketching from life —
eggplants are harder to do
than pumpkins

i bite into a persimmon
and a bell resounds —
Hōryūji

© Masaoka Shiki

* Both haiku are examples of Shiki's "shasei" ("sketch from life")

Horyu-ji (Buddhistic Temple)

Let the given haiku inspire you to create new haiku and share it with us all here at our Haiku Kai. If you want to read more about "shasei"? Than click HERE.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 25th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now .... have fun!

Carpe Diem #1782 freestyling haiku ... Devouring Apricots

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

First I have to apologize for not publishing a weekend meditation, I really hadn't time. I had a very busy weekend at work so I couldn't create a weekend meditation. Sorry for that.

This month it's all about "Never Change A Winning Team", but today I love to challenge you with a kind of "let the winning team go", why? Well ... maybe you know that we have had here at CDHK once a feature about "freestyling" haiku. In that feature I challenged you to create a so called "free-style haiku", a haiku that doesn't follow the classical rules and that has as less as words as is possible. Let me give you an example:

kissing
tongues melt together
as one

© Chèvrefeuille

No classical rules, a minimum of words, but still a wonderful haiku. This is what I call a "free style haiku". For this episode I will give you a few haiku by Jane Reichhold and your challenge is to "re-create" these given haiku into a "free style haiku".

Here are the haiku from Jane's online version of "A Dictionary of Haiku". I have chosen one from each season:

(spring)

light carried in my arms
apple blossoms from a neighbor
on my doorstep

(summer)

devouring apricots
the fine hairs of her mustache
moist and juicy

Apricots

(autumn)

broken by the storm
the asters' fragrance rises
out of damp earth

(winter)

rusty red the bracken
its shape lost as the cold
takes the bird's wing

© Jane Reichhold

Four beautiful haiku I think and you have to "re-create" them as a "free style haiku". A nice challenge I think.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 24th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... happy freestyling!

Carpe Diem #1781 The Quest For A New Masterpiece Continues ... colorful autumn

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode of our wonderful Kai. This month our theme is "Never Change A Winning Team", and it's all about (mostly) haiku. At the start of CDHK I focused on haiku alone and in my opinion that worked awesome, so this month I hope to challenge you to create haiku.

Maybe you can remember our special feature "Quest For A New Masterpiece" and today I love to challenge you to create your New Masterpiece, there is only one restriction ... you have to follow the classical rules (more you can find above in our Lecture 1).

The theme for your New Masterpiece is "Colorful Autumn", so your masterpiece has to do with autumn. Look around you ... see the beauty of autumn ... let your senses come in contact with autumn and let your muses inspire you.

autumn has come
leaves re-painted by Mother Earth -
she ... the moon ... lovely

© Chèvrefeuille

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 21st at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode, a new weekend meditation, later on. For now ... have fun!

Carpe Diem #1776 arranging the plum-flowers (Taigi)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

If you are a long time participant here, you will remember that special feature "Revise That Haiku", in which I challenged you to "revise" a given haiku by one of the classical haiku poets. Today I love to bring a "reprise" of one of the episodes of "Revise That Haiku".

For this episode I have chosen a haiku written by Taigi (1709-1771 ?), a contemporary and friend of Buson. I will first give the haiku (including the Japanese Romaji) and then I will give the description of the moment which led to the haiku.

Plum Blossom (Chinese painting)

umi ikete tsuki to mo wabin tomoshikage

arranging the plum-flowers,
I would enjoy them in the light of the lamp,
as if in the moonlight

© Taigi (1709-1771 ?)

The brevity of haiku is not something differnt from, but a part of the peotical life; it is not only a form of expression but a mode of living more immediately, more closely to life as may be illustrated in the above haiku by Taigi.

The original of the above haiku is even more difficult, literally: "arranging the plum, as if the moon, I would savour, lamp-light" (Wabiru translated 'enjoy', 'means' to live a life of poetry in poverty). The poet has arranged the flowers in a vase, and wishes to see them in the light of the moon, but there being no moon, he lights the lamp instead, and adds its light to the poetry and the beauty of the flowers.
The whole of the poet's life is shown in this action and the essence of the verse in wabin. This poverty, this asceticism of life and form in haiku, this absence of luxury and decoration finds its philosophical and transcendental expression in Emanuel Swedenborg's (a Swedish philosopher who lived from 1688 until 1772) "Heaven and Hell" (paragraph 178); after he has described the garments of the angels, some of which glow with flame, some of which shine with light, he adds:

"But the angels of the inmost heaven are not clothed".

Well ... with the desciption of the moment I think you can revise that haiku ... so ... "break a leg", have fun, be inspired and share your revised Taigi-haiku with us at Caroe Diem Haiku Kai.

Plum Blossom

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 13th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on.

Carpe Diem #1775 Morning Glory!

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new (somewhat belated) episode of our wonderful Kai. This month we will focus mostly on haiku, because haiku was the first theme here at CDHK and the only theme. Its therefore that I have chosen the theme for this month "Never Change A Winning Team". I will challenge you with a great diversity of haiku created by classical and non-classical haiku poets and I hope to challenge you today with a new feature.

I have titled this new feature "Carpe Diem's Transformation" and the goal is to transform a given haiku into a tanka. You have to use the scenes and images in the given haiku to create a transformed haiku into a tanka.

The first haiku I would love to see you transform into a tanka is that renown haiku by Chiyo-Ni about the Morning Glory. Here is that haiku:

asano eikou yoku baketto entanguru watashiha mizuwo motomeru

morning glory!
the well bucket-entangled,
I ask for water

© Chiyo-Ni

And now ... it's up to you to transform this beautiful haiku by this renown female haiku master into a tanka. Have fun!

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 11th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode, later on. That will be a new Tan Renga Wednesday.

Carpe Diem #1774 Renga With Jane Reichhold ... apples for lunch

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at the 2nd regular episode of our new month at CDHK in which the theme is "Never Change A Winning Team", and that means that we will have a lot of haiku challenges, because that was once the only poem I created CDHK for.

During the years I introduced several other forms of Japanese poetry and one of them was the Renga, or Chained Verse. Haiku was once part of a Renga and was than called Hai-Kai, Shiki chnaged that to haiku and that's the name we still use.

As you all know Jane Reichhold (1937-2016) was a great modern Haiku poetess and co-host here at our Kai. I still miss her every day. She was a wonderful source for me to get answers on questions I had, she even had her own feature here "Ask Jane ..."

Jane Reichhold (1937-2016)

Today I love to challenge you to create a Renga With Jane ... I have six beautiful haiku created by her, all themed apples. I extracted these haiku from her online saijiki "A Dictionary of Haiku". The goal is to add your own two-lined stanza. You can choose your own "line-up", and your "ageku" (closing verse) must be connected to the "hokku" (opening verse).

dad on high
dropping from his trees
apples for lunch

southern sunset
filling the apple bin
a deeper red

applesauce
the cinnamon glow
of a kerosene lamp

Apples For Lunch

windfall apples
palaces for worms
American pie

straight falling rain
tiny lakes upon the tree
stem hollows of apples

baskets in a row
overflowing with apples
on one a sweater

© Jane Reichhold

A wonderful series of haiku to create a Renga with ... enjoy the challenge ...

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 10th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... have fun!

Carpe Diem #1773 Kick Off ... a new month full of beauty ... A Field Of Dried Grass (Basho)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at the first episode of our new CDHK month November. This month I have chosen the theme "Never Change A Winning Team". As you all know as I started CDHK the only Japanese poetry form that was used was the haiku, that beautiful small three-lined poem from that far away country ... Japan. But as you all know ... during the excistence of CDHK there were changes and somewhere in 2013 I decided to not only use haiku, but also Tanka and other forms of Japanese poetry. That change of a "winning team" was a great change and it brought more visitors and participants to our wonderful Haiku Kai. However ... I didn't change the name of our Kai ... it is still Carpe Diem Haiku Kai and it will stay that way, because through that name CDHK could evolve to what it has become. This month we will mostly write haiku, but ofcourse I will also create episodes with other kinds of Japanese poetry like Tanka and the Troiku.

This month I hope to inspire you through haiku created by renown and not so well known haiku poets. Starting today (as you maybe expected already) a haiku written by Matsuo Basho, the haiku master whom I see as my master, my sensei. All that I know about haiku I learned from him.

We will see renown haiku, but also haiku that aren't renown. Let's go ... have a wonderful month full of inspiration ... and joy ...!

A Field Of Dried Grass (photo © Aubrey Danielle)

Here is the first haiku for your inspiration, it's the haiku that is seen as Basho's deadpoem, his last poem or Jisei:

tabi ni yande yume wa kareno wo kake meguru

falling sick on a journey
my dream goes wandering
over a field of dried grass

© Basho (Tr. Chèvrefeuille)

A wonderful haiku for your inspiration I would say. Become one with the scene, become Basho as he wrote this haiku while laying on his grass mat ... surrounded by his most close followers ... try to imagine the scene ... and create your own haiku.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 7th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new weekend meditation later on. For now ... have fun!