The Renku Sessions: Cotton Clouds – Week 11
Welcome to the current renku session. I am John Stevenson and I’ll be your guide for a twenty verse, nijûin renku.
We will be using an on-line list of season words and phrases (kigo) for those verses that require a seasonal reference: https://yths.org/season-word-list/
Here is my short list of verse 11 offerings:
ladder’s up
too soon
for Christmas lights
Biswajit Mishra
winter wind
cutting through
clapboard
Pamela Garry
skiers surprised
by the copy of ‘Le Pouce’
carved in ice
Lorin Ford
a blade
of winter grass
between his thumbs
Kelly Sargent
scissors snip
loose threads
off the snowflake quilt
Debbie Feller
wearing mittens
still wet from
the last snow
Sharon Ferrante
freezing wind
rips open
the storm door
Belinda Behne
not the first time
the falconer
risks his fingers
Tracy Davidson
ice skaters
notice cracks
in the pond
Carol Jones
black walnut trees
scrape blue shadows
onto snow
Wendy C. Bialek
losing words
in the white space
of endless snow
Anne Fox
the stoic grin
on the cooling face
of the gingerbread man
Laurie Greer
Post-it note
swirling
in an icy stream
rob barkan
winter bees
keep
their queen warm
madeleine kavanagh
fallen pink glove
still warm
in the snow
Margaret Anderson
hoping the hole
in the ice
provides dinner
Debbie Scheving
Once again, so many creative avenues among your offers that I feel unable to summarize them.
I am still getting offers that are written like haiku. That’s a shame because, good as some of them may be, I am only considering renku verses. And renku verses, unlike haiku, do not have breaks or pauses within them and do not attempt to be complete poems, in themselves. Over a break that is the space between themselves and the previous verse, they do the kind of work that haiku or senyu do. But they don’t attempt to do it within themselves. Renku is all about collaboration.
Those of you who are new to renku can, if you wish, send me a message requesting feedback about why your verse or verses were not short-listed. Please include the verse(s) in your message if you do so.
.
Here is my choice for the eleventh verse:
the stoic grin
on the cooling face
of the gingerbread man
Laurie Greer
This is a hard choice because there are many attractive offers. Some of them are eliminated because we already have a verse from the author. Some of them have references to arts and we have had such subject matter twice in the last three verses. Some have references, either overt or strongly implied, to “reading.” As a strong element of the verse before last, this is especially foreclosed in the current verse.
The verse I have selected covers a major topic area that we have not yet touched upon – food/cooking. It has a kind of humor that is a good match for the verse to which it links. It does name a body part – face. There was a previous verse with “bare shoulders” but this was five verses ago. These two images may mean we will not be able to specify any body parts when we get to our last pair of love verses, but this is just the sort of challenge we should expect in the course of a renku.
So, here is what we have, so far:
Cotton Clouds (working title)
a pinto colt
canters the meadow
cotton clouds
John Stevenson
muddied boots
on the welcome mat
Jennifer Sutherland
a bounty
of tulips spilling
over the vase
Eavonka Ettinger
the comfort of song
sung together
Anne Fox
the hermit crab’s
new shell glistens
in the moonlight
Sally Biggar
he fell for the sundress
on bare shoulders
Debbie Scheving
sweet nothings
with a hint
of Bengay
Diana Ming Jeong
we tip the busker
for attempting ‘teen spirit’
Margaret Anderson
everyone dies
at the end but
we keep reading
Devin Wilson
paper cuts
not withstanding
Michael Henry Lee
the stoic grin
on the cooling face
of the gingerbread man
Laurie Greer
This week, we will be working on the twelfth verse. This will be two lines. It will be our second (and last) winter verse, so it must contain a word or phrase from our list of winter season words.
Please enter a maximum of five verse-twelve offers. The deadline for submission will be midnight, eastern US time on Monday, July 7.
Looking forward to your offers!
John
The Haiku Foundation reminds you that participation in our offerings assumes respectful and appropriate behavior from all parties. Please see our Code of Conduct policy: https://thehaikufoundation.org/about-thf/policies/#code-of-conduct
