Where does your inspiration come from?

[AlanSummers]

I'm all for a rich imagination, in fact I'm relying on it for my children's novel which is part social realism and part fantasy (or magic realism). ;-)

A long time I also did research on lucid dreaming for a book plot but dropped it after it got too dangerous. 

Imagination is fine as we need it, and sure we can couple it to the haiku train, because we'll avoid drab straight reporting, and add a little magic.

My only concern is that I'm not so sure imagination is actual experience in a concrete sense.  People have imagined flying when in actual fact they've stepped off a tall building.  Sorry about the two sentences both having sand and cement in common. ;-)

When I've been going back on my haiku, while collating them, I can remember each day I wrote those haiku, even the ones back when I started in 1994.

I'm honestly not sure I could do that if I made them up from imagination.  I suppose because everything else is  written from imagination, even non-fiction, and newspaper accounts, and not just gossip features, that I kinda like my own haiku to have direct physical experience inserted into them.

That's not to say I don't mind adding a little imagination, if it's clear on that, and I'll read other's that are only imagination.

Going back to the lucid dreaming, this didn't just happen at night and early morning, but started to invade my perception during the afternoons.  I could tell it wouldn't be long before it took over completely.  That's the danger of researching into, and writing, a novel. And not the first time I got into trouble researching, and writing a novel. ;-)

Alan

[Don Baird]

In the end, I believe it's incredibly important that we protect the integrity of haiku - it's genre as a whole. It's commensurate in importance that we discover our haiku voices, our haiku selves, and write from intention and integrity combined.  Haiku is an experiential genre.  First, the hajin experiences something:  secondly, he/she composes a haiku to share that experience in a haiku way. 

I couldn't agree more with your thoughts of concrete memories and what they mean to you later on down the road of life.  They're real:  they're yours!  It's as you mention, concrete! 

Regarding:  "Where does your inspiration come from"?  My thoughts:  from rocks, to birds, to the sea, to children at play, kites, snails, frogs, neighbors with snow on their hats, ants and on and on.  We live in an Eden of sorts and inspiration is everywhere.  I think it's harder to find the realm of "non-inspiration" than to find the realm of inspiration.  It's right under our feet ... and just over our heads.  It's in a bathtub or a shower ... or under the moon.  Inspiration is everywhere:  we just have to keep our antennas clear and our egos at peace to tap into it.

Don

[G.R. LeBlanc]

My only concern is that I'm not so sure imagination is actual experience in a concrete sense.  People have imagined flying when in actual fact they've stepped off a tall building.  Sorry about the two sentences both having sand and cement in common. ;-)

Yes, I know what you mean. I guess I wouldn't say that it is actual concrete experience so much as an amalgamation of things seen, heard, and experienced? Our subconscious combines all these things together and then we perceive it as imagination, when in reality all things stem from something we experienced at some point in our life.

Even the thought of flying isn't totally fabricated. We've all seen birds fly. It exists.

I think this is where most fiction stories come from even though the writer is probably not aware of it.

I've done this myself, taken as step back and analyzed all my fiction novels and realized that I had one major theme running in almost every one. Most of my stories at the core are basically the same, and they stem from the experiences I've had during my life.

Even dreams are not totally fabricated. They come from our subconscious and are all mired in some form of reality. But here, I think the lines between thought and imagination overlap somewhat.

Also, from a quantum mechanics perception it might be more accurate to say that all concrete experience stems from thought/imagination? Thoughts do vibrate and are real; this has been scientifically proven. They affect our reality. Global consciousness affects our reality.

People imagined of going to the moon, and it became a reality, so who's to say that all those thoughts aren't "real"? Who's to say that the thoughts aren't more real than reality as we know it?

This comes to mind:

I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man? ~~Chuang Tzu

I think everything is intertwined...and I am going off topic. lol. Sorry. I love talking about this kind of stuff. :)

But yes, I know what you mean about wanting your haiku to come from direct physical experience. I do as well--I'm just saying I'm not against letting thought/imagination step in at times. :)

Oh, and on the lucid dreaming, I know someone who dabbled in that before and had a very bad experience as well. Same thing happened to him and it came to a point that he couldn't turn it off and felt like he was caught in a nightmare. It really, REALLY freaked him out.  :o

[AlanSummers]

Hi Gisele,

All good points, and yes everything is interconnected, and everything we experience is maya anyway. ;-)  Although it's hard to have root canal work and still think everything is illusion, thankfully mine two hours root canal work was so relaxing I dozed off at times, and just stopped myself snoring.  A very successful operation and I got to catch up on lost sleep (only local anaesthetic was used, no sleep induced stuff). ;-)

I wanted to be quite firm about the concrete experience side of things because there was that famous or infamous attempt by someone to get a haiku published where he was in a cage with a lion in one submission, and with a black panther (animal) in another haiku submission.  Now that's desk-ku! ;-)  It was just plain silly, and there was no attempt at writing well, or using it as metaphor, or in a gendai manner.  It was just sensationalising his life and expecting everyone to be equally excited.

Writers do keep dream journals and they are very useful by the way. 

re lucid dreaming, it's a shame he didn't get out faster.  There was a very chilling documentary on British TV that coincided with my attempting my first draft, it helped to make my mind up to let it go. ;-)

Alan

[G.R. LeBlanc]

I wanted to be quite firm about the concrete experience side of things because there was that famous or infamous attempt by someone to get a haiku published where he was in a cage with a lion in one submission, and with a black panther (animal) in another haiku submission.  Now that's desk-ku! ;-)  It was just plain silly, and there was no attempt at writing well, or using it as metaphor, or in a gendai manner.  It was just sensationalising his life and expecting everyone to be equally excited.

Hi Alan,

Oh, yes, that is definitely desk-ku! LOL! And I totally agree with the point you were trying to make. Not all haiku are created equally. ;)

And ouch on the root canal! Glad you got through it okay. The dentist office is probably my least favorite place to be.  :-\

And yes, on the lucid dreaming, or it might have been astral projection--I think they are quite similar and one can probably be confused with the other? I think a lucid dream can result in an out of body experience? Anyhow, it's freaky stuff. I've always had an interest in it but I'm too chicken to try.

Gisele

[G.R. LeBlanc]

In the end, I believe it's incredibaly important that we protect the integrity of haiku - it's genre as a whole. It's commensurate in importance that we discover our haiku voices, our haiku selves, and write from intention and integrity combined.  Haiku is an experiential genre.  First, the hajin experiences something:  secondly, he/she composes a haiku to share that experience in a haiku way.

Don, very well said! Although I have to add that I consider imagining something vividly as an "experience". ;)  I also love what you said about where you get your inspiration. I think I need to observe the world around me more because some days I just can't seem to find any haiku-worthy moments. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of them because I know that they are everywhere.

Gisele :)

[AlanSummers]

Hi Gisele,

Actually the root canal work was incredibly relaxing throughout.  I think the mouth grip was pretty cool, and I did have a great rest for those hours. ;-)

Whether astral projection has anything to do with lucid dreaming, I don't know, but it wasn't practical to carry on with it as I had a responsible demanding job to do. ;-)

re protecting the haiku integrity, I don't know, I feel the 'establishment' could take it away and own it if they wanted.  I remember David Cobb saying something that the Poetry establishment do that very easily.

We just do what we do, and we'll enjoy it far more than any controlling parties. ;-)

Alan

[David Caruso]

I keep my eyes and ears open like a retired detective who still looks for clues to the one unsolved case that haunts him.  Sometimes they way a person walks down the street inspires me.  Sometimes it's the sudden call of a bird.  An overheard conversation.  I'm inspired by reading as well.  I often come across a word that begs to be used. 

David Caruso 

[Mary Stevens]

Don wrote:

Regarding:  "Where does your inspiration come from"? (. . . .) We live in an Eden of sorts and inspiration is everywhere.  I think it's harder to find the realm of "non-inspiration" than to find the realm of inspiration. (. . . .) Inspiration is everywhere:  we just have to keep our antennas clear and our egos at peace to tap into it.

Thank you, thank you, Don. Your words inspire me. My greatest aspiration is to get out of my own way when writing haiku. Thanks for the reminder that the number of inspiring events and beings are greater than me, if I just change the channel.

David wrote:

I often come across a word that begs to be used.

Fascinating!

Mary

[Mary Stevens]

Someone mentioned dreams as inspiration for haiku. Do you all ever write haiku based on dreams?

I generally don't because my dreams are so often surrealistic, and I find it hard to relate to the few surrealistic haiku I've read. No one would understand them but me. On my birthday recently, I dreamed I was being fitted for a kimono! While I believe kimono are generally one-size-fits-all (except for sumo wrestlers), I was happy all day. A pretty, new outfit! There was also a healing component to the dream, which I interpreted as auspicious. I wrote a haiku to honor the dream.

Mary

[Adelaide]

I write a haiku every day and have been doing so for years.  Some come quickly, inspired by something seen, heard, tasted, felt, touched or remembered.  Others have required a quiet moment (make that several moments) of letting my mind wander and remember events of the day and the experiences of the day.  Not all my daily haiku are good haiku, but I keep them in a notebook to be revised later. If I waited for that illusive "haiku moment" I doubt if I would have written as many haiku as I have.

Adelaide

[chibi575]

all poetry: bemusement

all poetry: be-MUSE-ment

ciao...

[Snow Leopard]

Hi,

I've just realized that this topic and another about username (which I found quite engaging and pertinent to writing) are old posts. I hope it's okay to reply to these old posts.

In answer to the question : Where does your inspiration come from? I would have to say people. On the road, at work, in the market/shops, everywhere. Observing people helps me to tune into and appreciate the unexpected turns and links that nature provides almost as a parallel but different experience. Most of my so-called 'moment' in haiku come from this people/nature interplay. Often nature seems to mirror, contrast with, even contradict and put into context human experiences  with our prejudice, ignorance, insecurities and also aspirations of beauty and contentment.


Snow leopard

[whitedove]

I find your choice of topic very interesting, and I have enjoyed reading the comments of those who have responded to it.  Without actually intending to do so, I find myself living the way of haiku in a way.  As I go through my day, I'm relaxed yet alert to special moments that seems to have an expanded sense of time, something that arrests my attention or sometimes something that transports me to another place or time.  These everyday experiences are one source of inspiration for me, but there are several others.  I keep haiku journals.  In them, I record haiku available to me on the internet, comments from essays about haiku and my own responses to work I'm encountering.  I also collect haiku philosophies when I find the work of poets who express what they believe to be the heart or the essence of haiku.  I love reading haiku.  Often, I draw inspiration from my favorite haiku poets and their poems.  This week, I am reading the international saijiki by the late William Higginson, Haiku World.  As I read his season words and phases for summer, I'm combining my own experiences with his seasonal references to make new poems.  Sometimes I find EL haiku can become flat or formulaic.  When I need to recharge my creative batteries, I turn to Japanese translations for energy and creative spirit. I recently encountered work by the Gendai poets, and I've been experimenting with using fantastic images in some of my haiku.  I've been reading haiku for quite sometime, but writing for only the last few years.  When it comes to looking for inspiration, I'm still on a journey.  The latest leg of my journey has lead me here.  Thanks for sharing your valuable experiences and insights. Rebecca Drouilhet