HAIKU DIALOGUE – Surrealism II – “Creation of the Birds” – long list

Surrealism II with Guest Editor Lafcadio

For the next few weeks I would like to be your docent again in The Haiku Foundation Art museum. We will continue our tour of the Surrealist gallery. I know we were there last year, but now I’d like to show you a few of the works of the female Surrealist painters. First, let’s have a quick review about surrealism to make sure we are all on the same page, or in the same room. Surrealism is an artistic movement that began in the early 20th century. Surrealistic painters created dreamlike and often inexplicable images. One of the major characteristics of this kind of painting is the comparison of unrelated entities and components. This creates a surprise for the viewer and hopefully carries them into a world of fantasy and symbolism. This technique of painting not only challenged traditional painting, but was also a representation of the social and political upheavals of society after the trauma and disillusionment of World War I. Still, surrealistic paintings are used today to transcend the boundaries of the ordinary and deliver us in the realm of the extraordinary.

In 1924 Andre Breton, known as the father of Surrealism, wrote his first Surrealist Manifesto. He stated that 19 painters had created art that was absolute Surrealism. None of these painters were female. These painters felt women were useful to them as muses and inspiration but not as artists in their own right. However, by 1985 it was determined that no other art movement had such a large number of women participants. As Surrealist art grew into a larger and more diverse group of men, women became interested in expressing themselves through this art movement. Most of the first women who entered the Surrealistic movement were lovers of male Surrealists.

As with the previous male painters we have viewed, there is so much abstraction and symbolism in the drawings and paintings that you will be able to create surrealistic haiku and senryu that reflect the emotions in these works of art. Let’s begin…

Below is Lafcadio’s selection of poems on the topic of “Creation of the Birds”:

summer plums
sucked into an eyeball…
and there was light

Adam Graham
North Carolina, USA

 

first syllable
a swan drags stars
through the puddle

Sandip Chauhan
Virginia, USA

 

echoes of her name
again and again…
new magnifying glass

Margaret Anderson
Vancouver, BC

 

carnival sideshow
the last of the Owl Women
of Shangri-La

Valentina Ranaldi-Adams
Fairlawn, Ohio USA

 

touching up
a swallow’s tail feathers
Capistrano waits

Maxianne Berger
Outremont, Quebec

 

alchemy moon
the secret science
of night dwellers

Bryan Rickert
Belleville, Illinois USA

 

a lone crow
cawing at high noon –
this non-stop fever

Milan Rajkumar
Imphal, India

 

reborn
this erratic path
in pinned-on wings

Anne Fox
Broomes Island, MD USA

 

all bound by unseen threads since the dawn of time

Mirela Brailean
Iasi, Romania

 

ice, mist, drops …
different ways to choose
water

Deborah Karl-Brandt
Germany

 

mating squirrels
she stares into my eyes
knowing I know

Kathabela Wilson
USA

 

from birth
to the afterlife
the conflict

Barbara Anna Gaiardoni
Verona, Italy

 

double yolk egg-
she makes a wish
for twin daughters

R. Suresh Babu
India

 

scratching
god’s itch 創 the crow quill
void of ink

simonj
UK

 

stormy night
the sheltering wings
turn into teflon

Subir Ningthouja
Imphal, India

 

Ornamental dust
having travelled the cosmos
it becomes you

Eclo
Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK

 

on heartstrings
the sparrow cocks her head
a perfect clockwork

Rachel Greve
Wisconsin, USA

 

pure alchemy
God’s gift
of a feather

Tracy Davidson
Warwickshire, UK

 

being an owl herself
bird after bird
art is born

Boryana Boteva
Sofia, Bulgaria

 

close to the heart
violin strings
of the nightingale

Ann Rawson
Scotland, U.K.

 

split opening light
to liberate the starling
from strings of the heart

Sarang Bhand
Navi Mumbai, India

 

mystical painting…
rethinking
an old riddle

Andrew Pineo
Exeter, NH USA

 

pinning the tail
on the woolly mammoth
eating marzipan fruit

Pamela Garry
Connecticut USA

 

cosmic flower
the minstrel’s quill
ruffles the sky

Daya Bhat
India

 

inside the room
the room inside myself
wanting out

Stephen A. Peters
Bellingham, WA

 

crows fly past
dangling their birth eggshells
sunset collapses

Pris Campbell
US

 

The feathered goddess
siphons liquid starlight to
sprout her ripening birds

Lorraine Schein
Sunnyside, Queens, NY

 

dangling from strings
tied to a murmuration
wee marionettes

Clysta Seney
North Calif.

 

egg shells —
a constellation takes flight
from a blackbirds nest

Michael Pappafava
Belgium

 

she transcribes
the female heart –
a pair of swallows

Anne Curran
Hamilton, New Zealand

 

alchemy garden …
her voice dissolves
into stardust

Samo Kreutz
Ljubljana, Slovenia

 

Made of star stuff –
within each tiny bird
the cosmos

Caroline Ridley-Duff
UK

 

first date—
alice eagerly
awaiting abner

Curt Linderman
Seattle

 

carvers’ village
the sharp chisel of
the woodpecker

Anthony Rabang
Philippines

 

the sounds of their grief in my prayers white lilies bloom

Lakshmi Iyer
India

 

moonlight flit
the hummingbirds escape
paying rent

Jahnavi Gogoi
Ajax, Ontario, Canada

 

daybreak–
flight of painted wings
on canvas sky

Jagajit Salam
Imphal, India

 

cosmos powering
a brain and heart –
wings flutter

Radhika De Silva
Sri Lanka

 

to perfect her art
night after night
the sorceress secrecy

Luciana Moretto
Treviso, Italy

 

lab of wisdom
a female tawny owl
without a mate

Ivan Georgiev
Germany

 

cobwebs
everything comes alive
in the land of memories

Tsanka Shishkova
Sofia, Bulgaria

 

a good night sky
above the water
separated birds

(To add context to this haiku I would like to say that in true surrealist style, I took the first chapters of ‘Genesis’ from the bible and distilled it down to 17 random words, which I then used to write the haiku.)

Marc Brimble
Catarroja, Spain

 

locked in a dream
I ally
with my shadows

Eva Limbach
Deutschland

 

an owl blinks twice—
one eye for the past,
one for the yet-to-dry future

Dan Campbell
Virginia

 

earth and sky
in the palette
a masterpiece take flight

Ravi Kiran
India

 

the essence of bird song closer to flying

Nick T
Frome, Somerset, England

 

lunar light
an owl face creates a floating cosmic
avifauna

Guido De Pelsmaeker
Belgium (Holsbeek)

 

miscreate ̶
unto the swallow a piece
of roc DNA

Alan Harvey
Tacoma, WA

 

painting therapy —
old wounds turn into birds,
singing in moonlight

Goda Virginija Bendoraitienė
Lithuania

 

the flightless god of birds incubating

Alex Fyffe
Texas, USA

 

moonglow
the prism refraction
creating flight

Eavonka Ettinger
Long Beach, CA

 

a tiny papaya leaf
fractal echoes
of the universe

Padma Rajeswari
India

 

the creation star sees checkmate as irrelevant

Lee Hudspeth
United States

 

you reading
of our infinite endings.
Here begins

C.R. Harper
United States

 

switching heads
with the bird woman
experiment lab

Jackie Chou
Pico Rivera, California

 

vireos’ first flight my child reaches out in the plumage

Lakshman Bulusu
Princeton, NJ, USA

 

through wide open
doors of perception ––
the painted birds take flight

Sheila Sondik
Bellingham, WA

 

magic potion
one ingredient short
of a Big Bang

Shloka Shankar
India

 

the sea
wears a melting hat..
lunar oil spill

Carole Harrison
Australia

 

starlight
the artist shapes
a feathered sky

Mona Bedi
India

 

mother moon
the near and far
of connection

Kelly Sargent
Williston, VT

 

with every
brush stroke
the universe e x p a n d s

Melissa Dennison
UK

 

starlight
the lady bird
paints music

Margaret Mahony
Australia

 

voglia di volare…
il volto illuminato
dalla prima stella

desire to fly…
the face illuminated
by the first star

Angiola Inglese
Italia

 

In a trance
on strings of light
birds fly into transcendence

Sudha Devi Nayak
Bhubaneswar India

 

deeper skies —
Garuda shows me
my past lives

Rupa Anand
New Delhi, India

 

perfect potion…
a druid fferylit
proves our paradox

Sharon Ferrante
Florida, USA

 

scent of lime tree
owl’s hoot
turns golden

Florin C. Ciobica
Romania

 

shooting star
a singing bird leaves
the chest’s cage

Cezar Florescu
Romania

 

goodbye letter
the ink runs
into birds

Orense Nicod
Paris, France

 

baby bird hatching –
the sky makes sense
again

Dan C. Iulian
Romania

 

out of emptiness
a star hatches from an egg
searching for answers

W. G. Randles
Durban, South Africa

 

abracadabra…
the genesis
of birds in flight

Nancy Brady
Huron, Ohio

 

inside moonlight
we listen for the blood
of birds

Victor Ortiz
Bellingham, WA, USA

 

black void
the cosmic womb
birthing creation

Rita Melissano
Rock Island, IL USA

 

scrambled eggs
pepper and stardust
who gives a hoot?

Marjorie Pezzoli
San Diego, CA

 

sitting on the fence –
juggling imagination
with reality

Paul Callus
Malta

 

circuit breaker—
the robot imagines
a thing with feathers

Adele Evershed
Wilton, Connecticut

 

flapping symphony
hands feet ovaries
feathersynthesis

Bittor Duce Zubillaga
Basque Country

 

new stars
without anyone
to name them

C.X. Turner
UK

 

painted birds take flight
peck pixel seeds from flagstone—
spreading lies like weeds

Elizabeth Shack
Illinois, USA

 

not sure real incubating songs on the fly

Biswajit Mishra
Canada

 

feather boa
in my mother’s closet
life i never knew

Margie Gustafson
Lombard, IL USA

 

nocturnal artist
eggs with tentacles
squirting colours

Sumitra Kumar
India

 

strolling past
our table
a Rainbow Pigeon

Madeleine Kavanagh
United States

 

convinced to end
the loneliness of the sky
birds were sent to roar

Bill Crawford
United States

 

owl lady’s
last chance of escape
creation

Stephen J. DeGuire
Los Angeles, CA

 

birds on a wire
all the things they say
are true

C.K. Crawford
United States

Join us next week for Lafcadio’s commentary on additional poems…

Bios:

Guest (& Assistant) Editor Lafcadio, a former teacher, now works from home writing, editing and proofreading study guides for nursing textbooks. She lives in Tennessee. She has written poetry for a long time but a couple of years ago fell in love with Japanese micropoetry and hasn’t looked back. Lafcadio has been published in a number of journals and anthologies. She writes under the nom de plume of Lafcadio because nom de plume is so fun to say. You can read her poems on Twitter (X) @lafcadiopoetry or BlueSky @lafcadiobsky.

Assistant Editor Vandana Parashar is an associate editor of haikuKATHA and one of the editors of Poetry Pea and #FemkuMag. Her debut e-chapbook, I Am, was published by Title IX Press (now Moth Orchid Press) in 2019 and her second chapbook Alone, I Am Not, was published by Velvet Dusk Publishing in April 2022.

Lori Zajkowski is the Post Manager for Haiku Dialogue. She lives in New York City and enjoys reading and writing haiku.

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

Portrait by Laurel Parry

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Photo Credit:

Banner photo credit:  Lafcadio

Haiku Dialogue offers a triweekly prompt for practicing your haiku. Posts appear each Wednesday with a prompt or a selection of poems from a previous week.