HAIKU DIALOGUE – Surrealistic Art – “Landscape”

Thanks to Guest Editor Marietta McGregor for her exploration of looking here & there. Now we welcome Guest Editor Lafcadio who will share fantastic, fascinating visuals – happy writing! kj

Surrealistic Art with Guest Editor Lafcadio

For the next few weeks I would like to be your docent in The Haiku Foundation museum. We will only have time to visit the surrealism gallery, which I’m sure will have enough inspiration for getting in touch with our subconscious mind and release its creative potential through the power of the irrational juxtaposition in these drawings and paintings.

First, we can discuss surrealism some 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 painting is used today to transcend the boundaries of the ordinary and deliver us in the realm of extraordinary.

I can’t remember which came first for me…surrealistic poetry or surrealistic paintings. Either way I am firmly entrenched in surrealism and would love to see your responses to some of the surrealistic artwork. There is so much abstraction and symbolism in the drawings and paintings, I think there will be ample material to use in writing haiku and senryu.

prompt: “Landscape”

Step right this way. Remember no flash photography or touching the artwork. Our first drawing is “Landscape” by André Breton, who is known as the father of Surrealism. You can see it at the MoMA website here.

Breton had originally been active in the Dadaist movement but felt their art was too dark and self-destructive. In 1924 he wrote the Manifest of Surrealism which embraced the ideas of liberated expression in all forms and the dismissal of social and moral principles.

“Landscape” was not created totally by Breton but was a result of a game the surrealists played called Exquisite Corpse. They played this to stimulate creativity through collaboration. Players would contribute to a drawing, painting, poem, or story without seeing what the others had done. Besides Breton, Valentine Hugo, Tristan Tzara and Greta Knutson collaborated on this drawing. In the surrealist style, try to let your unconscious mind speak to you in your poems.

The deadline is midnight Eastern Daylight Time, Saturday October 05, 2024.

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 & residence as you would like it to appear in the column. 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.

Join us next week for Lafcadio’s selection of poems on the topic of “Landscape”…

Guest 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 Threads @lafcadio2.0

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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Photo Credits:

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.