Kittens and compassion

I experiment with Haiku Narrative.

Welcome back to the end of week11 to returning readers, and a 初めましてどうぞよろしく(pleased to meet you) to any new readers.

I tried a little experiment his week and I’m not sure how I feel about it. My writing felt off due to lingering health issues (brain fog, lack of oxygen etc).

This week I had the pleasure of reading about half the essays in Hiroaki Sato’s, On Haiku. As a book of essay will be, On Haiku, is a bit disjoinntedd as each essay does it’s own thing. Some are historical, some examine contemporary writing in light of history, some given insights into Haiku movements and arguments in Japan. I also finished lisitening to a Haiku Pea Podcast on the Haiku Split Sequence Form invented by Peter Jastermsky and bought David Lanoue’s Write like Issa. Consequently, sequences (though not split varieties) and haiku f compassion where on my mind.

The nuts and bolts

This week there was quite a bit of variation; four haiku beginning with noun phrases, two verb phrases and on prepostional phrase. In terms of format, I wrote one monoku while the rest of the haiku fell into 3 line arrangements, of which 6 were short-long- short. The average syllable count was down under 13 and the range was reduced as well, to 3.

The poems

bang on time

the stray kitten emerges

for dinner

This poem has turned out to be the most boosted and favourited ut of all 80 odd written this year. I think that it’s more to do with the subject matter than any skill on my part though. This one went thrugh a few line changes befre i settled on the first line. I wanted to convey the speed and suddeness of the kitten’s appearance and I think this phrase does it.

switched off

the drone of the idling engine

drones on

It’s seeding time here and my neighbours were cleaning seed in praration for planting. This results in a low dull drne of an engine idling for about 6-8 hours a day. Sometimes I have to check to see if the engines still running as my ears can tend to hear the sound ling after it has stopped. Hence the doublling of the word drone in this piece.

two jumper day heating the first thing she cuts

Here is were I sterted the poetry of compassion series. This and the following haiku can be read as part of a narrative. Hopefully the stand on thier own though. I like the misdirection of meaning that occurs up until she cuts. It forces the reader to reconsider the menaing, to take a longer look, which is perhaps what this series is about.

sleeping upright again

she makes a wish through

the windscreen

Treading the line here between telling too much and having the content of each haiku too close together in narrative timing. There’s a preponderance of S and W sounds that make it euphonic.

her childhood bane

she scoffs the discarded

toastie crusts

Again this haiku is euphonically pleasing with repeted S sounds and a partial rhyme between scoffs/crusts.

a broken tooth

she forgets as she smiles

at the soup cup

A bit of my life found its way into the fiction. I snapped a tooth Saturday, but it also triggered memories of working with clients whos poverty meant that they couldn’t get dental work of had to wait long periods of time on the public system. It’s amasing how one’s smile is so sentral to our identity/sense of self. The repeated S and P sounds give this one a pleasing sound.

little sparrow

from table to table

she scrounges

While the other haiku had been quite clear in identifying a human protagonist, I felt this one worked better with a little ambiguity. On its’ own I think it would be read as a nature linked poem, in the context of this series though it takes on a different meaning. I sense sporadic, desperate movement from table to table.

Final thoughts

I am not sure about the sequence, if it works or if the narrative needs another vehicle. Writing the Haiku in the sequence felt easier and so I’m not sure that they really work as Haiku.

In other news, I have had a couple of poems from the Haiku-a-day series accepted for publication. I’ll post the info when I’m allowed.

Til next time,

じゃあまた (See you later)

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