The Haiku Foundation Forums

Hi Adelaide,

They are not edited, or selected by an editor, but they are visible to unregistered viewers. Some magazine editors may not choose to accept them as they can be seen by people.

There are editors who don't have issues with haiku that can be seen by people before publication.

Alan

Quote from: Adelaide on July 25, 2012, 05:19:05 PM
I have a question regarding haiku posted on this train.  Are they considered published?

Adelaide

This looks good Joseph.  A great cause.

Alan

Quote from: the555C on July 25, 2012, 10:39:24 AM
The 555 Collective, an org that uses the arts to support survivors of trauma, announces its first major event - TATTOO-HAIKU - a haiku contest that awards a diamond ring, as well as "dermal publishing" on our editor's forearm. Proceeds benefit the plight of homeless veterans suffering from trauma issues.

http://blogs.westword.com/showandtell/2012/07/haiku-tattoo-fundraiser-denver.php

www.tattoo-haiku.com

www.555c.org

There's been a lot of interest in this event, both in the U.K. and from overseas.

I have put up two images of the Stripe Studio as they are not easily found on the official university website:
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/university-of-winchester-and-notes-from.html

The university is interested in a literary record of this weekend, so I do encourage all U.K. residents who are able timewise, and financially, to come along for one or both days, to consider that opportunity.

Also it will form part of a special feature in the Notes from the Gean magazine.

Alan

These events are free to everyone.  The event is in the South of England twixt SW England and SE England, but also close to Bristol International Airport! :-)

Haiku/Renga Weekend
There is going to be a haiku/renga weekend at the University of Winchester on Sat 4th and Sun 5th of August, sponsored by the University and hosted by Mark Rutter and the poets of Notes From the Gean on the Road: Alan Summers, Alison Williams, Colin Stewart Jones, and Andy Pomphrey.

There will be haiga (haiku and image) and linked verse workshops and a ginko (haiku walk) in the Winchester watermeadows, where Keats wrote 'To Autumn.'  All events except the ginko will be held in Stripe Studio 2, in the Stripe Building, University of Winchester.


    Saturday August 4th: 10am: We will meet in Stripe Studio 2, followed by a ginko in the Winchester water meadows (bring camera as well as writing pad, pen, etc).
    Sunday August 5th: Stripe Studio 2: morning: haiga workshop; afternoon: renga workshop.


Come and meet the British-based Notes from the Gean editors Colin Stewart Jones, Alison Williams, Andy Pomphrey, and Alan Summers.

FFi:
University of Winchester weblink:
http://www.winchester.ac.uk/ACADEMICDEPARTMENTS/ENGLISHCREATIVEWRITINGANDAMERICANSTUDIES/NEWSANDEVENTS/Pages/NewsandEvents.aspx


The Winchester Watermeadows haiku walk will be a stunning opportunity to walk where Keats wrote 'To Autumn' and also take part in a traditional Japanese custom in haiku poetry.

Saturday August 4th: 10am: We first meet in Stripe Studio 2, followed by a ginko in the Winchester water meadows (bring camera as well as writing pad, pen, etc).

Come and join us.

From Roadrunner:

". . . English haiku must have its own unique path. While Japanese haiku can provide hints in regard to rhythm and nature, this path cannot be an imitation but must be grounded in the particular language that is English. If that is not the case, there is no meaning in making haiku in English."

    Hasegawa Kai / Simply Haiku 6.3 (2008)
http://www.simplyhaiku.com/SHv6n3/features/Kai.html


Any thoughts?

Alan

Thanks Vida for introducing kata to the equation. 

Here's another one to ponder: li

Inner form is a way of looking at compositions; it is also a process that informs communication from one person to another about the real world {i}t is not geometry...

What is "li"?

Guideline, Coherence, Pattern, Perforations, the Way Things Fit Together, the Sense Made by Things, the How and Why of Things. "Principle" is the most common translation of this term, but that word sometimes has misleading metaphysical connotations in English that are best avoided. In its earliest usages, the term was a verb meaning "to divide something up in a way that made it valuable or useful," for example, carving a raw piece of jade into a ritual pendant or dividing a field for agricultural purposes.

Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings, trans. Brook Ziporyn, (Hackett) 215.


So, what is form?  Is it an injunction?  Surely not.

Gabi Greve had asked:
Do you make a distinction between haiku and free verse or free-style poetry or short-form poetry (or whatever names have come up for poems which are not haiku but short ) ?

It would be great to bring out a book that showed off the genres and forms of all short verses, perhaps one has been done?  Simon Armitage's book 101 Very Short Poems is amusing, especially the one where the title is so long there was no need for a poem. :-)

I feel Gabi's question is worthy of a separate topic, although John McManus neatly responded.

What I'd like to do is crack open the box of form regarding haiku, and go deeper, anyone have a crowbar?

Alan

Quote from: Vida on July 01, 2012, 12:34:44 PM
"For me, kata is the channel I use to go beyond surface appearances to arrive at the core, inner aspects of human nature." YASUDA
http://www.tokyofoundation.org/en/articles/2012/haiku-and-noh

:)
Vida

On Roadrunner:
http://roadrunnerhaikublog.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/heartbeat/

"Haiku is poetry, and rhythm (beats) is the life of poetry.

    [T]he 5 / 7 / 5 beats are the rhythm of Japanese haiku only, and thus the requirement does not apply to haiku written in other languages. To begin with, it is meaningless for haiku in other languages to adhere to the Japanese 5 / 7 / 5. What should one do then, when writing haiku in another language? It is best to determine the rhythm of the heartbeat of that particular language."

    Hasegawa Kai / 2009

Quoted from:  http://www.simplyhaiku.com/SHv7n1/features/Kai.html

Some useful links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_history#Description
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histoire_des_mentalit%C3%A9s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyponym

Good point Colin.

Alan

Quote from: colin stewart jones on July 01, 2012, 09:22:02 AM
Histoire des Mentalités - Colin Stewart Jones

mental collectif with or without the qualifying adjective
all needing sensitive support of thought.
schemata of perception and appreciation:
a reciprocal dependence that unites
materiaux d'idées formless and meaningless
Or meaning less if viewed as form?


first published New Writing from the North, issue 4.

Dear Gabi,

Perhaps if you make your question a separate topic post?  I'll be glad to attempt to answer it and see answers from others too.

If I answer your question in a separate topic post could you answer my questions outlined in brief above?  8)

Alan

Quote from: Gabi Greve on July 01, 2012, 04:21:20 AM
Thanks for your answer, Alan!
I guess it does not answer my question, but nerver mind.
Gabi

Do you make a distinction between haiku and
free verse or free-style poetry or short-form poetry
(or whatever names have come up for poems which are not haiku but short ) ?

Dear Gabi,

I guess the nub of my post is these posts:

Quote from: Alan Summers on June 30, 2012, 06:51:14 AM
I think we have two main questions here, and lots of sub-questions.

There are many people who propagate what the form of haiku is for various reasons, often selfish ones, but not always.  There is the entrenched idea of what haiku is, and that's a joke comment in 17 syllables, regardless of nature or poetry in fact.

Who is to blame?  Well, we get back to agendas unfortunately.  Does any other form/genre have this problem?  e.g.  pantoum, ghazel, sonnet, villanelle etc...

SNIP

But what do the haiku writers who strive or succeed in writing haiku of literary worth, consider to a form in haiku?

There has been no definitive laying down of haiku in either Japan or the rest of the world.

In Japan, yes, it can be said it's 5-7-5-on, three types of sections, with kire/kireji and kigo, but we know that Basho onwards stepped in and out of that prescribed form for their hokku and haikai verses standalone or otherwise.  We know people were tortured to death in the early mid-20th Century in Japan for introducing social elements that were contemporary in subject matter, but that New Rising Movement has morphed into new styles including gendai haiku.

Should Japanese haiku be nothing more than mere nature verses, should they be proscribed from experimenting? 

SNIP

So non-Japanese haiku?  There are camps who say traditional haiku in English can only be 5-7-5 of course and that language differences are irrevalent, but that is often contradicted when they may have to accept dead poets like Santoka and Ozaki, and not be able to translate int 575 English-language syllables, or make a crass translations that destroys the poety and all its allusions, part of the driving force of Japanese haiku at one time, if not still.

So does anyone want to prescribe form for non-Japanese haiku, and even Japanese haiku, that both non-Japanese and Japanese must follow?

SNIP

Alan

Quote from: Alan Summers on June 30, 2012, 06:01:11 AM

SNIP

We've all seen beginners be perplexed that the form is a readily available recipe of 575 etc...

Is haiku really imagistic, post-modern etc...? Should it be?

If haiku is to be clamped down onto a table, what would you like the haiku form to be personally?

Alan

Quote from: Alan Summers on June 29, 2012, 05:00:13 PM

SNIP

John Olson also said/start with:
"Form is a pharmacy of theory. Nothing is tangible. Meaning that void itself has palpable form. Or that nothing at all has palpable form. And really, what difference does it make?

The marriage of form and content is a chimera. Horses glow in the jaw and occur as tangible living entities in the imagination of the poet whose brain is a boiling cauldron of form seeking form."

Overlooking the typo of haikus [sic] he couldn't better describe why haiku (plural/genre) can never be pinned down, even by a heat-seeking missile, or smartbomb, because the form isn't the form.

SNIP

Alan, With Words
SNIP

What is form, and what is the form of haiku?

We've had form breakers from Basho through to Ozaki and Santoka and more recent, on the Japanese side, and we've both intentional and unintentional form breakers on the non-Japanese side.

But what is form?  Is it merely a template, the same Barbara Cartland the pink romance novelist had, where she could churn out thousands of novels all pretty much identical, and all sold well?

Who are the real form-breakers, and who are the real pioneers who assume the form?

As this is haiku we should really ask for answers on the back of a postcard, or more in keeping, answers on the back of a postage stamp.  Of course we already have a few million postage stamps with waka on the back, perhaps there's an answer there?

Perhaps there's no answer, only the sound of one hand slapping the pine tree.

Alan

Gabi Greve asked/said:

Quote from: Gabi Greve on July 01, 2012, 02:03:05 AM
"So we may have a plethora of form statements, but would one definition do any good either?
Alan"

Do you make a distinction between haiku and free verse or free-style poetry or short-form poetry (or whatever names have come up for poems which are not haiku but short ) ?

Greetings from a rainy afternoon in Japan.
Gabi

Is haiku even poetry?  Some have said not over the years.  Is haiku even literary poetry?  Some have said this also.

Haiku appear to be fixed on the internet by hundreds of thousands, if not millions upon millions of people as 17 syllable doggerel, at least outside Japan, although I've seen an awful lot of translated verse from Japanese that isn't great poetry.

It's certainly a challenge.

Alan

I think we have two main questions here, and lots of sub-questions.

There are many people who propagate what the form of haiku is for various reasons, often selfish ones, but not always.  There is the entrenched idea of what haiku is, and that's a joke comment in 17 syllables, regardless of nature or poetry in fact.

Who is to blame?  Well, we get back to agendas unfortunately.  Does any other form/genre have this problem?  e.g.  pantoum, ghazel, sonnet, villanelle etc...

I do think the core of a person wants poetry in their life, or rather perfection, and we all, almost to a fault, strive for this perfection in the craziest of ways.  So for someone who thinks they are average will jump on the fact they can write a haiku if it's 17 syllables containing any kind of subject matter or doggerel.

But what do the haiku writers who strive or succeed in writing haiku of literary worth, consider to a form in haiku?

There has been no definitive laying down of haiku in either Japan or the rest of the world.

In Japan, yes, it can be said it's 5-7-5-on, three types of sections, with kire/kireji and kigo, but we know that Basho onwards stepped in and out of that prescribed form for their hokku and haikai verses standalone or otherwise.  We know people were tortured to death in the early mid-20th Century in Japan for introducing social elements that were contemporary in subject matter, but that New Rising Movement has morphed into new styles including gendai haiku.

Should Japanese haiku be nothing more than mere nature verses, should they be proscribed from experimenting? 

Hardly anyone wants to read poetry of living people, and so the vast majority read only Basho through to Shiki alas, with a few who might read Kyoshi, and Santoka.  But they have to be dead, and fairly long dead before someone will read them.  That's part of the problem too.

So non-Japanese haiku?  There are camps who say traditional haiku in English can only be 5-7-5 of course and that language differences are irrevalent, but that is often contradicted when they may have to accept dead poets like Santoka and Ozaki, and not be able to translate int 575 English-language syllables, or make a crass translations that destroys the poety and all its allusions, part of the driving force of Japanese haiku at one time, if not still.

So does anyone want to prescribe form for non-Japanese haiku, and even Japanese haiku, that both non-Japanese and Japanese must follow?

Personally I would find that distasteful and against the freedoms of serious poets, but they have been brought out.

So we may have a plethora of form statements, but would one definition do any good either?

Alan

Quote from: John McManus on June 30, 2012, 06:30:25 AM
Here's to hoping Alan!

Of course the people who are supposed to represent the common man are smug, how else would they be able to ignore the damage they do or justify the damage when they are brought to book on it?

I realise I am probably paraphrasing from Bill Hicks here, but I honestly think that if all the money which is pumped into warfare every single year was used to clothe, feed and educate then we would wipe out poverty and ignorance before the turn of the next century.

I also realise that it will never happen, whilst resources for energy, materials and food are finite, but one can always dream ;)

Getting back to poetry, I think that there's a core appreciation to poetry that runs through all human beings.

For goodness sake we introduce language to our young by singing lullabies and reciting nursery rhymes. I think that is proof enough of our natural predisposition towards poetry, but like most things that we grow accustomed to I think it is all too easy for people to take language for granted and become desensitised to it's power and possibilities.

On the question of form, I think that form arises from our need to compartmentalise things. I also think that form has nothing and everything to do with why haiku is seen as niche poetry.

I think on one hand if someone is told a haiku is a poem consisting of 17 syllables, three lines and  based solely on nature then it seems like a relatively straight forward and easy enterprise, and since the difficulty of a task goes a long way to establishing the value of the task then haiku is off to a very rocky start when people are given this tired and shallow definition.

This is nothing to do with the form of haiku in itself as anyone who does seriously study haiku will see it is not just 17 syllables spread over three lines concerned purely with nature.

The real question is how do we permanantly rid the world of these tired definitions that encourage people to think of haiku as a small, easy to write, nature based poem?

warmest,
John

I wonder if we can also discuss the mystery of form, and in particular haiku which often defeats even successful mainstream poets?

QuoteJohn Olson also said/start with:
"Form is a pharmacy of theory. Nothing is tangible. Meaning that void itself has palpable form. Or that nothing at all has palpable form. And really, what difference does it make?

The marriage of form and content is a chimera. Horses glow in the jaw and occur as tangible living entities in the imagination of the poet whose brain is a boiling cauldron of form seeking form."

Overlooking the typo of haikus [sic] he couldn't better describe why haiku (plural/genre) can never be pinned down, even by a heat-seeking missile, or smartbomb, because the form isn't the form.

I shall be quoting from Mr Olson for my courses I'm leading where students become perplexed, as to where the form in haiku went, while they weren't looking.

Alan, With Words

We've all seen beginners be perplexed that the form is a readily available recipe of 575 etc...

Is haiku really imagistic, post-modern etc...? Should it be?

If haiku is to be clamped down onto a table, what would you like the haiku form to be personally?

Alan

Hi John,

Thanks for responding.  It's been a long time since we've had discussions at THF, and I'm hoping people will step in and create more topics.

I'm still haunted by the fact that alledgely a Belgian company designed the Iraqi airforce bunker that could contain 40,000 personnel which had a feature for later where that smartbomb went down a certain vent and wiped out that number of people in seconds.

That's efficient.

So unfortunately I do feel we are smug, maybe not all of the people, but the representatives of a country who feel they control all of us, are smug for us.  I remember being proud the British invent the Harrier Jump jet which could dodge missiles, stop mid-air, and easily destroy other advanced miltary aircraft which didn't have that function.

Also a lot of people have watched war on telly, starting with Vietnam and continuing with the Gulf Wars etc...  Now sales of ultra-violent multiple murder computer games are popular and successful.  Go figure.

Surgical strikes are always hoped for, which is why the pilotless drones must have appealed to the authorities and the military, and are/were great PR because families would lose less sons and daughters in conflicts around the world.

Getting back to poets, yes, articulate people who search for the truth, not spin etc... would be frightening to people immersed in politics.  We go for concision not spin or waffle.

re education in working class areas, I would agree, although close to being moved to tears at the integrity of schools, headteachers, teachers, TAs and other staff in poor areas of Hull where I worked as renga poet-in-residence.

The governments of the day (and I include Whitehall civil servants as politicians, undemocratically unelected, and holding a lot of power) hold back the ease at which all people could be educated.

Everyone has hidden talents, and we ignore them at our peril.  For such a tiny island as Britain is we still have a disproportionate rate of industry skills etc...

I cannot tell you how frustrated I am by the education system, and how with artists and science leaders etc... there is no need to dumb things down, and great results could ensue if we were allowed to take a lead.

We have allowed ourselves to be dumbed down, and too see reading a book, unless it's trivial, as something unBritish, maybe unAmerican etc... for other countries.

Not everyone needs to read and write as they will have other skills, but those skills must be allowed to develop for those people.

I think there will be great changes which the recession(s) are uncovering, and why ultra-capitalism will fail just as ultra-communism failed.  But in whose generation?

Alan

Quote from: John McManus on June 29, 2012, 05:43:41 PM
Alan, thanks for this intriguing and lively post.

I would argue against the opening of Olson's statement. I don't personally believe any culture anywhere in the world prides itself on how efficiently it kills people, instead I would say all of us live in cultures that pride themselves on how efficiently they control people. Control is sometimes acheived through murdering people but there's a number of other ways too which are much more comon and harmful to art than murder is.

I'd wager that poets were banned from the Whitehouse because they were against the war on terror and had the ability to not only articulate their beliefs on this matter, but were also able to succesfully challenge the beliefs of the politicians with their words.

What concerns me is that the level of education which is delivered to the vast majority of working class people in many industrially developed countries is shockingly low. It is a sad fact that a number of children and adults do not enjoy reading and writing.

The value of literature that challenges society and demands participation is non-existant in mainstream culture and there are no signs of a reversal in the offing.

Sorry to sound like a pessimist, but until we are somehow able to create education systems which encourage people to explore and enjoy literature then poetry in all it's guises will be viewed as irrelevant by the vast majority of people.

warmest,
John
     

Some weblinks to whet your appetite for this haiku / haiga / ginko / and renku couple of days sponsored by the University of Winchester in association with Notes from the Gean:

University of Winchester:
http://www.charadestyle.com/2011/10/friday-feature-university-of-winchester.html
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/78/University_of_Winchester_Main_Building.jpg
http://www.designengine.co.uk/uowarts
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e9/University_of_Winchester_Student_Centre2.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Winchester
http://www.winchester.ac.uk/Pages/home.aspx

Winchester Watermeadows virtual tour:
http://www.vrwinchester.co.uk/iview_quicktime/source/27_watermeadows_view2.html

Wildlife Trust:
Living Landscapes - Winchester Water Meadows:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef0EgHtvojM


Winchester Watermeadows National Trail:
http://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/southdowns/site.asp?PageId=26&SiteId=36&c=1


Why not send it to your smartphone and join us on the walk:
http://www.mapmywalk.com/s/routes/view/walk-map/winchester/1973426

images:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Winchester+Water+Meadows&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=UC2&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&channel=np&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=xfntT9aAHcul8gOsr-CEDQ&ved=0CFcQsAQ&biw=1236&bih=614

Roadrunner ran this marvellous quote:

"I live in a culture that prides itself on how efficiently it kills people. Poetry is despised. It is frowned on like a disease. It's easy to see why. Militancy involves rigor. Narrowness. Rigidity. Poetry is the opposite of that. It is a form of meandering. Of submergence and aberration. It feeds on anomaly. So that the forms it assumes vary wildly. So much so that the whole question of form becomes a problem bordering on hallucination. And is, ultimately, seditious. It usurps certainty. So that killing people with drones is a patent impossibility."

    John Olson / "Questions of Form"

To which I commented:

I partly agree with the lifted comment, except drones will continue to be used, but will never differentiate between civilians and miltiary targets, either buildings or individuals. Children continue to be killed by drones but denied blah de blah de blah.

A poet would make a better killer, as s/he would only pick out the worst elements, lines, delete redundent or dangerous adverbs, adjects, and select only the right nouns of a poem, while leaving the civilians alone who make the poetry come alive.

John Olson also said/start with:
"Form is a pharmacy of theory. Nothing is tangible. Meaning that void itself has palpable form. Or that nothing at all has palpable form. And really, what difference does it make?

The marriage of form and content is a chimera. Horses glow in the jaw and occur as tangible living entities in the imagination of the poet whose brain is a boiling cauldron of form seeking form."

Overlooking the typo of haikus [sic] he couldn't better describe why haiku (plural/genre) can never be pinned down, even by a heat-seeking missile, or smartbomb, because the form isn't the form.

I shall be quoting from Mr Olson for my courses I'm leading where students become perplexed, as to where the form in haiku went, while they weren't looking.

Alan, With Words

We had poets banned from the White House by the former First Lady, wife to George Bush Jnr, former President.  How are/were poets a threat to the invasion of Iraq exactly?

Blogs:
http://dialogic.blogspot.co.uk/2004/03/white-house-has-disinvited-poets-by.html
http://ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=376

It never ceases to amaze me about the Janus effect on poetry.  One outlook is poets and poetry are basically irrelevant as they don't bring in cash in the buckets, and so not to be taken seriously, the other outlook is they are a threat to war peace?

And all the while we engage with our own disciplines and demons, both personal and with the craft of poetry.

What is form, and what is the form of haiku?

We've had form breakers from Basho through to Ozaki and Santoka and more recent, on the Japanese side, and we've both intentional and unintentional form breakers on the non-Japanese side.

But what is form?  Is it merely a template, the same Barbara Cartland the pink romance novelist had, where she could churn out thousands of novels all pretty much identical, and all sold well?

Who are the real form-breakers, and who are the real pioneers who assume the form?

As this is haiku we should really ask for answers on the back of a postcard, or more in keeping, answers on the back of a postage stamp.  Of course we already have a few million postage stamps with waka on the back, perhaps there's an answer there?

Perhaps there's no answer, only the sound of one hand slapping the pine tree.

Alan