HAIKU DIALOGUE – Ekphrasti-ku…Tree of Hope, Remain Strong

Ekphrasti-ku with Guest Editor Pippa Phillips

Once upon a time, under the dubious influence of Nietzsche, I grew despairing of the undeniable fact that I wasn’t a cool Dionysian at all, but a nerdy and visually fixated Apollinian. Once I got over myself, I leaned into it. There’s nothing I like more than taking a sketchbook to a museum on one of its free days. This time, I’d like to take you with me, to visit some of my favorite paintings, and the stories behind them, on a kind of digital ginko walk. These paintings are rich with detail and all are open to metatextual rumination. I look forward to seeing how they inspire you.

next week’s theme: “Nunavut, Our Land”

The link to “Nunavut, Our Land,” from Resilience Project, (Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art), which houses Kenojuak Ashevak’s lithograph is here.

Kenojuak Ashevak is probably the most well-known Inuit artist. She worked in Kinngait, formerly known as Cape Dorset, Nunavut, which is the epicenter of Inuit art, before her death in 2013.

Nunavut was created in 1999, carved out of the Eastern part of the Northwest Territories, to be the first Canadian territory effectively governed by its indigenous population. Prior to this was the creation of a homeland for the Inuit of the Eastern Arctic, per the 1993 Tungavik Federation of Nunavut Settlement Agreement.

Ashevak’s piece, “Nunavut, Our Land,” is a lithograph commemorating this initial step. It is a portrait of Nunavut as seen through the eyes of the artist. Mountains border the edge – ‘Kinngait’ means “where the hills are” in Inuktitut. In the landscape you can see native fish, mammals, and birds (the artist famously loved owls), dogsleds, and iglu – the depiction is of traditional life, before snowmobiles and permanent settlements, before the malign effects of colonization. Within this work of art is a cornucopia of potential kigo words specific to Nunavut. Let your inspiration take you North this week, where winter rules the seasons.

Kinngait is full of artists who use traditional techniques in sculpting stone, etching, and printmaking. If you are interested in exploring more Inuit art or purchasing it from the artists, you can visit here.

The deadline is midnight Central Time, Saturday February 5, 2022.

Please use the Haiku Dialogue submission form below to enter one or two original unpublished haiku inspired by the week’s theme, and then press Submit to send your entry. (The Submit button will not be available until the Name, Email, and Place of Residence fields are filled in.) With your poem, please include any special formatting requirements & your name as you would like it to appear in the column. A few haiku will be selected for commentary each week. Please note that by submitting, you agree that your work may appear in the column – neither acknowledgment nor acceptance emails will be sent. All communication about the poems that are posted in the column will be added as blog comments.

below is Pippa’s commentary for Tree of Hope, Remain Strong:

dolor
del
colores
los
trepo
—

pain
of
colors
the
climb
I

rs
Middletown, DE

This is a poem you need to climb up to understand – much like the experience of living with chronic pain. The structure of this poem contributes a lot to its meaning, forcing the reader into an uncomfortable situation so that they share the poet’s perspective. The monoku works on a figurative level – a strong burst of pain can distort your vision, making things brighter – but it also refers to the universal pain assessment tool, which color-codes one’s pain – the poet faces no relief, the poem suggests.

cracks
in her body
covered with snow

Chittaluri Satyanarayana
Hyderabad, India

Even if I didn’t know this poem was written in response to a painting, the cracks the poet refers to conjure up an aged painting immediately – as well as the fissures and wrinkles that come with age, or the cracked lips that occur in winter. Relief comes here not in the form of blooming flowers or images of spring, but winter snow, an unusual but resonant choice. Rest must come before restoration – after the snow cools the fever, it’s time to hibernate.

enduring pain(t)

Barrie Levine
Massachusetts, United States

This two-word monoku folds a number of meanings into its brevity – first we contrast enduring pain with enduring paint, the former negative, the latter positive. The fact that the ‘t’ of paint is hidden in parenthesis suggests that the artist is attempting to assuage their pain through art, but failing – but when one returns to the question of what endures longest, pain or paint, there is relief in recognizing that the beauty the artist transmits to the canvas will last longer than their suffering.

rift valley –
how painting shifts

her pain

Dorothy Burrows
United Kingdom

Another concrete poem whose composition underscores and informs its meaning, Burrows describes the effect of using art to address pain – it doesn’t get rid of it, but it tends to move the pain to a more manageable location. Despite the subject, the tone of the haiku is light, allowing the fragment to be ambiguous between a reading in which it is the subject of the artist’s painting or serves as a counterpoint to her observation.

winter equinox
finding the axis
of my shadow

Hifsa Ashraf
Rawalpindi, Pakistan

There is no such thing as a winter equinox, and setting up this seasonal impossibility creates an immediate tension in this poem that will not be remedied. If seasons exist due to the tilt in the global axis, then the poet looks inward, to the seasons that compose herself, her contradictions and impossibilities – her shadow self.

& here are the rest of the selections:

mothering tree
growing hope
from a stump

Laurie Greer
Washington, DC

 

botched phlebotomy touching a thorn of the rose

Kat Lehmann
Connecticut, USA

 

hospice
all the waiting
magnolia buds

Maurice Nevile
Australia

 

day into night into day her buzz in the venus trap a song

Eric Lohman
USA

 

groom’s home . . .
she takes the shape
of her childhood doll

Milan Rajkumar
Imphal, India

 

buckling, this body
of water where my fingers
touch my fingers

Ash Evan Lippert
South Carolina, USA

 

me mantengo derecho
aun sin ayuda tuya
espinazo

i hold myself upright
even without your help
backbone

Peggy Hale Bilbro
Alabama

 

end-stage
Mother’s faint smile
at my lullaby

Ingrid Baluchi
North Macedonia

 

cold snap…
again the shadow
on his lungs

Deborah Karl-Brandt
Bonn, Germany

 

under covers
shrinking
into another

Paul Millar
United Kingdom

 

she hides her scars
in a song
ascending lark

Eva Limbach
Deutschland

 

in a gloomy sky
the sun and the moon…
the blue painted blue

Rosa Maria Di Salvatore
Catania (Italy)

 

healing…
I create a new
Avatar

Ana Drobot
Romania

 

my wounded self
……my free self
………two skies

Hannah Mahoney
Cambridge, MA, USA

 

Gut knifed- eye to fin,
devices: spine- tree
mother, rip them out

Sarah Davies
Bedford, UK

 

cracked earth
the moon softens
my shadow

Alex Fyffe
Texas, USA

 

burning the anodyne inscape of faith

simonj
UK

 

playing with the wind
on the tree branches
thousand wishes

Bakhtiyar Amini
Germany

 

the sun
the moon
our DNA

Roberta Beach Jacobson
Indianola, Iowa, USA

 

wolf moon
the white light over
my gurney

James Gaskin
Fukushima, Japan

 

cracked earth….
clouds festoon
the full moon

Geetha Ravichandran
India

 

haiku –
the here and now
of a scar

Maria Teresa Piras
Italia

 

heavenly beings
i exchange bodies
day and night

Baisali Chatterjee Dutt
Kolkata, India

 

Tree of Hope…
my diary of
self-analysis

Ana Drobot
Romania

 

creating my own rhythm five stressed with One unstressed a big score

Melanie Vance
USA

 

on edge crack pain her shadow

Marcie Wessels
San Diego, CA, USA

 

Fissure borne and bound—
she stares glassy eyed
at sunbeams

Sonika Jaiganesh
United Kingdom

 

chilly dawn finally i sat on the colder bed

Devoshruti Mandal
India

 

no more than a step
from moon to sun
old self to new

Amanda White
Morvah, Cornwall, UK

 

red velvet curtains
closed
her hidden scars

Maxianne Berger
Outremont, Quebec

 

listening to the song echo from a hospice ceiling

Dan Campbell
Virginia

 

granite wings of the ash bird

Mircea Moldovan
România

 

walking a familiar path
his muddy shoes
at the doorstep

Deborah Beachboard
Adna WA

 

what I named it
what she named it
aborted child

Bryan Rickert
Belleville, Illinois USA

 

i cross
oceans of tears…
I sing

Neena Singh
India

 

full moon . . .
the ghost of me then me
sings esperanza

Alfred Booth
Colombes, France

 

finding peace
not finding peace
enduring

Margaret Mahony
Australia

 

bedridden
the play of sun and shadow
on the coast range

Cynthia Anderson
Yucca Valley, California

 

blurred boundaries the constancy of pain

Bona M. Santos
Los Angeles, CA

 

duality . . .
this world of darkness
and light

Bill Waters
Pennington, New Jersey, U.S.A.

 

lighting the dark —
the ancient chants
of my ancestors

Madhuri Pillai
Australia

 

holding firmly
what’s left of me
in these hands

menggenggam erat
apa yang tersisa dariku
di kedua tangan ini

Christopher Calvin
Kota Mojokerto, Indonesia

 

the lilies
bruised pink –
hard rains

Kaushal Suvarna
India

 

how bright
the colour of this dawn
bleeding sutures

Arvinder Kaur
Chandigarh, India

 

red silk skirt
my little sister dances
with prosthetics

Padma Rajeswari
Mumbai, India

 

something unknown
keeps you
going and going

Bittor Duce Zubillaga
Basque Country

 

recovery center
unable to hide
the cracks in my façade

Sari Grandstaff
Saugerties, NY

 

darkening sky
a blackbird flies under
a rose bush

Sue Courtney
Orewa, New Zealand

 

lonely night just the cry of a cicada

Mona Bedi
Delhi, India

 

‘you have your songs too’
—shadows don’t lie

Sushama Kapur
Pune, India

 

autumn rain
shaping ideas
from oblivion

Florin C. Ciobica
Romania

 

pain pill
all the edges
blend into one

Lafcadio
USA

 

the long suns and moons
of recovery
cielitio valiente

Greer Woodward
Waimea, HI

 

flesh subdued
a shoot rising
off the cross

Mona Iordan
Romania

 

absorbing all
her attention
pine resin balm

Clysta Seney
California, USA

 

cracked earth –
the wound
uncovered

Pamela Jeanne
Yukon, Canada

 

after the earthquake a song of bees

Susan Rogers
Los Angeles

 

hat flowers
the growing wispiness
of my chemo hair

Deborah P Kolodji
Temple City, CA

 

shoganai –
from my wounds
I start painting a new me

Cristina Povero
Italy

 

a song drips
from its body
scalpel

Tim Cremin
Massachusetts

 

desert moon her backstory

P. H. Fischer
Vancouver, Canada

 

exorcising pain
with each stroke
of her brush

Sharon Martina
Illinois, US

 

halflight closing in her best dress

Keith Evetts
Thames Ditton UK

 

bridging each abyss my flower crown

Richa Sharma
India

 

birth room –
instead of anesthesia
wisteria perfume

Daniela Lăcrămioara Capotă
Romania

 

dressing in red
her permanent scar
cut by the moon

john hawkhead
Bradford on Avon, UK

 

emotional scars the bandage of your words

Jackie Chou
United States

 

from the teeth
to the eye of it
maybe a breath’s length

Alan Peat
Biddulph, United Kingdom

 

carry my bruises
to the silver heel
of mother moon

Kelli Lage
IA, USA

 

it keeps growing
behind the dark
there is light

Nani Mariani
Australia

 

tree scars songs I can’t sing

Anette Chaney
Harrison, Arkansas

 

dove’s coos…
constant from the window
of my cancer ward

Neera Kashyap
India

 

flicked farthing
caught in moonlight
bares a scar

Robert Kingston
Chelmsford, United Kingdom

 

dark sun
the orange core
of my pain

Suraja Roychowdhury
Lexington, MA, USA

 

i sing myself green songs

Subir Ningthouja
Imphal, India

 

chemo session-
a ladybug slowly moves
across the croton

Ram Chandran
India

 

vertical horizon
tilting the world
my way

Firdaus Parvez
India

 

holding the song
that rises from a scar
metal brace

Ravi Kiran
India

 

sickbed –
behind the curtains
a birdsong

letto di malattia –
dietro le tendine
un canto di uccelli

Daniela Misso
Italia

 

hemicrania
beside herself
with pain

Ann Smith
United Kingdom

 

graffitti mural –
a billy goat
licks the ivy green

R. Suresh babu
India

 

tree planting
my son’s tiny hands
trim the roots

Anna Yin
Ontario, Canada

 

Esperanto
learning the language
of hope

学习世界语
祈愿隔阂不复存
希望在人间

xue xi shi jie yu
qi yuan ge he bu fu cun
xi wang zai ren jian

Xiaoou Chen
Kunming, China

 

riverside—
softly singing Cohen’s
Suzanne

Helga Stania
Switzerland

 

tilled soil…
a lark spirals
upward

Randall Herman
Victoria, Texas

 

decoding metaphors
sometimes
there’s just pain

Vandana Parashar
India

 

fossilized wood
a black widow feeding
on its venom

Teji Sethi
India

 

La Campanella—
standing ovation
for the blind pianist

Keiko Izawa
Yokohama, Japan

 

starless sky…
I fill the blank canvas
with my heartbreaks

Kavya Janani. U
India

 

day and night
these pangs of hope
palomas mexicanas

Billie Dee
San Miguel, New Mexico

Guest Editor Pippa Phillips is a recovering academic who hails from Cape Cod. Her micropoetry has been published in a variety of publications, including Cold Moon Journal, Frogpond, Failed Haiku, Modern Haiku, and The Asahi Shimbun. She also writes long and short-form fiction. She is interested in the intersection of ethics and aesthetics and walking the line between the populist and the experimental. You can find her on Twitter @IpsaHerself and Instagram @pheaganesque.

Lori Zajkowski is the Post Manager for Haiku Dialogue. A novice haiku poet, she lives in New York City.

Managing Editor Katherine Munro lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and publishes under the name kjmunro. She is Membership Secretary for Haiku Canada, and her debut poetry collection is contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019). Find her at: kjmunro1560.wordpress.com.

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