The Haiku Foundation Forums

There is no news despite the U.K. being the most watched country under surveillance.

A good site to register with is:
http://www.missingpeople.org.uk/help-us-find/martin-lucas

Alan

Quote from: Seaview on April 12, 2014, 12:40:04 PM
Any news, Alan?

Dark Pens will be back around Halloween, and is in the process of having a new site built, where issue two will be posted.  There are plans for issue one to be made into an eBook.

.



Video plea from Peter Lucas, and update on how Martin went missing:
http://www.lep.co.uk/news/martin-lucas-missing-from-home-1-6535682






.

.


The police released this a short while ago:
http://www.lancashire.police.uk/about-us/news/missing-mans-brother-appeals-for-help



.

.


Just 3 seats remain!

National Poetry Month Discount available:

Join us online for four weekly lessons and prompts
March 31-April 27, 2014

Regular Price: $275
National Poetry Month Promotion: $250

Contact Rooster Moans for NPD discount available internationally (not just USA) participants:
http://www.poetrycoop.com/contact


.

.



A few false leads so there's no real update, which is worrying.

Here's this morning's announcement:
http://www.lep.co.uk/news/fears-grow-for-man-missing-from-home-1-6521977

Alan





.

.


The police update makes me even more concerned:
http://www.lancashire.police.uk/about-us/news/concerns-grow-for-missing-preston-man



.

.

The British Haiku Society has been asked to help.  Can you do your bit?   Use social media, emails, there may be a British friend or colleague who knows someone in or close to Preston.  It may make all the difference if a friend knows a friend to put this closer to their heart, rather than yet another newspaper article about a missing person.

Even American and other non-British members can help via Facebook and Twitter, or email British friends, family, penpals, someone might know someone who lives near Preston.  Put a human face on this tragedy. 

Martin has been missing since 10 pm Friday night.  He is alone and highly vulnerable.  He is not tough like some of us.

From the British Haiku Society:

Martin Lucas, former BHS president and current editor of Presence haiku magazine, has been reported missing. His family have asked us to help in appealing for information. If you have any information, please ring the police on 101. We can also pass information on to Martin's family if you have anything you think might be useful to them in their search. Please share this post to help. Visit the link below for further information: http://www.lancashire.police.uk/about-us/news/appeal-for-missing-preston-man

Thank you, every little bit of help may help.

This is Martin:
http://www.newnetworksfornature.org.uk/images/presenters/2013/martin_lucas.jpg

More pictures, including images at British haiku events I was involved in or ran:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=martin+lucas+haiku&client=firefox-a&hs=tcs&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=os0xU4afItPN7Aaj0oA4&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1154&bih=593#q=%22martin+lucas%22+haiku&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&tbm=isch

thank you,

Alan Summers


.

.


Online event/course:

Land of the Rising Haibun: Setting Japanese Poetry Forms in Prose
with Alan Summers, Japan Times Award-winning poet
http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=bb3dc7ead7e8fcce474c593af&id=be21868c01

We already have a great group of participants lined up, including haiku writers, as well as short fiction writers.   There's still room for a few more.

I'll be approaching haibun, as well as tanka prose, from both traditional directions, as well as innovative methods.   

One of the aims is to be able to produce a body of haibun for each participant that they can submit to magazines: As well as producing the core of a whole collection for each individual.

warmest regards,

Alan


.

Thank you to the authors who have messaged or emailed me.

Here's a useful quote:

"There is always the verbal equivalent of negative space in good haiku..."  Violette Rose-Jones

Haiku using negative space needn't be just typographical, or indented, concrete etc...

It's what is left out that is important too, just like any type of writing or art.

Look forward to more submissions, as always.  :)

warmest regards,

Alan

Dear Haiku Poets,

I'm looking for good examples of negative space aka whitespace etc... for both an article in progress, and for my book
Writing Poetry: the haiku way.

I would love to receive examples that show this aspect clearly and cleanly, utilising juxtaposition and/or disjunctive techniques.

The article in progress has as its working title:

Travelling the thin white expanse #2:
The kindly elephant: Those other words in haiku in-between written text

Which will cover the leap in haiku, juxtaposition and negative space.

So it's not so much the elephant in the room...

Some examples can be found at: http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/negative-space-in-haiku-writing-poetry.html

kind regards,

Alan, With Words

On two side notes but I hope prove useful:

Roberta Beary's award-winning collection was edited to be as close as possible to a verse novel as possible.  This further brought the collection closer together than even a well thought out collection, and would engage readers, and judges alike, in my opinion.

Verse novels can be popular like the haiku titled The Monkey's Mask which was also made into a movie.

Narrative seems to be a strong feature in poetry which is why it so successfully translocated to HipHop and Rap for instance with Eminem, The Streets, Tupac, and slam poet/rapper Polar Bear.  A public can identify themselves with these narratives, and perhaps where haiku is often seen as 'extreme brevity' and anti-narrative within each poem and in some collections, it struggles beyond being recognised as bodies of work.

Regarding fairly new The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry it has broken away from the predictable and sometimes stuffy other poetry awards.   This year the shortlist includes well-known Hannah Silva (performance poet etc... who studied at the same university as myself):  http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/competitions/tedhughes/
http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/competitions/tedhughes/tedhughesshortlist#silva

A weakness I've observed is that unlike other page poets, haiku writers are often not engaged with performance poetry skills, which are more and more vital nowadays to communicate and connect with an audience.

American Poets Laureate often come over to the City of Bath, England, next door to my town, and know how to perform their poetry and engage in a narrative around their work, and include humor, and capitivate a very discerning audience often made up of published poets, and editors of small presses, and even larger presses.

Hannah Silva has worked long and hard at her craft, and though some may consider her young she is an award winning writer and theatre maker, described by The Times (British newspaper) as 'one of the most ambitious and entertaining poets in the country'.

Many poets are expected to have at least some performance skills, perhaps written a play or two, a novel, a collection of short stories.  It's becoming rarer that a poet just writes poetry 'off stage'.

Quote from: Philip Rowland on March 02, 2014, 08:05:07 PM

Revisiting Silliman's comments on The Unworn Necklace... the following paragraph sums it up:
"If slam poets & visual poets go around thinking that nobody takes their genres seriously as literature, haiku poetry has been off the map altogether – a genuinely popular literary art form that receives no attention whatsoever from what Charles Bernstein would call Official Verse Culture unless it is for a new translation of one of the classics, or work by a poet, such as Anselm Hollo, already widely known and respected for writing in other forms."

Slam poets, of which I've been a judge on a few occasions, have moved on and attract big audiences for their work.   And often cut their teeth or maintain those teeth in challenging festivals as the world-wide famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival.  I think some British haiku poets attempted the Fringe, a couple of years back, perhaps it's time for an international group?

warm regards,

Alan

Hi Tristan,

Thanks for posting.

I think I've seen this years ago but had forgotten.

Two links;
http://bensonofjohn.co.uk/poetry/formssearch.php?searchbox=Alouette
http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/alouette.html

It's perhaps taken from tanka, but extended into a 12-line two stanza poem itself extended to 30 lines for the Spring Eternal poem.

It's more flowery so not so close to haiku, but perhaps to earlier tanka?  Certainly influenced by a perceived view of waka.

I'd say the found haiku is a bit wordy and too poetic for haiku.   As we wouldn't usually do 'words as in 'round it feels like a 585er to me.

But an interesting exercise that might be used for contemporary poetry outside haiku/tanka/waka perhaps.

Thanks for posting. :-)

warm regards,

Alan

Quote from: Tristan B on February 28, 2014, 09:22:19 AM
I was reading an aloutte by Jan Turner titled 'spring eternal' and saw a lot of haiku in that poem, sample below;

blown against the walls...
pleated pinwheels turning 'round
In the springtime breeze

I googled hi name and found nothing, searched his name in this forum and also found nothing. I find the structure of aloutte is very similar to tanka. other poets must be laughing but this is something new to me. I was just wondering whether it's accidental, or he was really writing haiku.

Congratulations Sergio!

warmest regards,

Alan

.

I'm excited to hear the full official announcements and events around this, but in the meantime I received this message this morning:


Dear Alan,

Thank you again for your submissions. The project  has ended up attracting an extremely strong response, 352 poems from 42 poets, which will enable us to meet our aim of featuring a range of subjects, voices and regions. Striking a balance between these different elements has been difficult but we have now made our decisions about which 20 haiku we want to feature and would like to include your haiku from Castle Beach, Falmouth:


beachcombing...
a periwinkle rotates
deeper into itself


Castle Beach, Falmouth, England, U.K.
http://www.falmouth.co.uk/see-and-do/beaches/castle-beach


.