The Renku Sessions: Cotton Clouds – Week 3

Welcome to a new 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 3 (daisan) offerings:

lily of the valley
in every vase
in every room

Pamela Garry

blown bubbles
drifting down
the stone stairs

Ben Oliver

putting off
for another day
spring cleaning

Richard Straw

sweet pea
sweetens
my windowsill

Tracy Davidson

a scent
of lilacs lingers
in the hallway

Eavonka Ettinger

a bounty
of tulips spilling
over the vase

Eavonka Ettinger

humming Stravinsky
as a prelude
to spring cleaning

Laurie Greer

the fragrance
of wild lilac colours
my room

Kala Ramesh

By far, the factor that eliminated otherwise attractive verses this time was the seemingly instinctive writing of haiku. Renku verses are not haiku. They do not feature internal juxtaposition of disjunctive images. They do not feature grammatical breaks.

Here is my choice for the third verse

a bounty
of tulips spilling
over the vase

Eavonka Ettinger

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

This week, we will be working on the fourth verse. This will be two lines. It will be a non-seasonal verse, so nothing from our list of season words should appear in it. It should not register as a complete poem in itself. In collaboration with the previous verse, it should create a poem that takes us somewhere poetically different from previous combinations of verses. Here are some other considerations:

• A night verse, but not one featuring the moon or stars, might be good here. (The next verse will be a moon verse.)
• As the last of the opening four verses (jo) of this renku, it should avoid unpleasant or controversial subject matter.

Please enter a maximum of five verse-four offers. The deadline for submission will be midnight, eastern US time on Monday, May 12.

Keep up the good work,

John

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