Welcome to episode 9 of the Haiku Pea podcast all about Haiku. I’m Patricia, your host. This week I published observations tha all took place on the same day. Hence the title…If you remember last week I changed the format of the podcast. It got good feedback from you my lovely listeners. So I’m sticking with it.
I’m delighted to say that our guest Haijin today is Tim Gardiner from the UK. It was hard to choose just which of his haiku to start with, but I chose one that was relevant to the season. I’ll tell you more about him shortly, and read you his haiku which I hope you will enjoy as much as I did.
If you go to our website at www.poetrypea.com, you will see that I have now started a page purely for recommended reading. There is an Amazon link that you can click on that will take you directly to a book, you don’t have to use that obviously, but if you do you won’t pay any more for the book than you would’ve done by going directly but I get paid a little bit of commission, which is nice.
You can go to the website to read my daily haiku and of course the haiku of my guests, but this week I want to focus on a couple of the haiku I published last week.
On Monday I wrote:
a key in the lock…
deep in the building
books wait
Alan Summers, who is always very generous with his help, noticed that I could change the juxtaposition like this:
a key in the lock
deep in the building…
books wait
I am not sure which I like best. What do you think?
Then on Saturday I published a haiku inspired by a weird start to my day. I went to town on the tram around 9am. The sky was clear and blue. Snow was still hanging around the edges of the roads and paths but on the paths and platforms themselves, there was a deep frost. The sun was out, making the frost sparkle and in the sky was the moon! Not quite a full moon, but more than half, and the different shades of its body were clear.
Everything felt a little off, do you know what I mean?
Then from the corner of my eye I spotted a garden worm on the tarmac of the platform. It made me sad, sooner or later, I was sure, it would be squashed by a commuters boot. It was definitely a boot day. What was it doing there, so far from it’s normal habitat?
a worm
wiggles through the frost…
morning moon
Alan Summers who is a font of haiku knowledge, suggested a revised haiku. That I should jiggle the words around. A simple change which I feel works much better than the original:
a worm wiggles
through the frost…
morning moon
I was kicking myself that I hadn’t seen something which was so obvious. Yet still I wasn’t comfortable with the format. You may have noticed that I no longer use the 575 format as my default but I like the sound of the short long short format of lines, so the latest version of this haiku is:
the worm wriggles
across the frosted platform…
a daytime moon
I don’t like to over edit, so I might just leave it like that.
I am grateful to Alan for pointing out something that was so obvious to me. Sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees eh?
And so for recommended reading.
This week I’m going to recommend a website and blog. If you go to the website, you will find the links to the websites I’m talking about.
I think I owe it to Alan as a thank you for all his generous and thoughtful help, to point you in his direction and give you his website. You will find many resources there to help you improve your poetry. Click here.
If you would like to read interesting Haiku and some thoughts by other Haiku lovers, I recommend the Haiku Commentary blog.
So onto our guest haiku, which today comes from Tim Gardiner in the UK, The county of Essex to be more precise.
Tim is inspired to write by wildlife and natural surroundings, using them as a reflection of his emotional state. Often he finds that a landscape can either lift his mood or plunge him into a beautiful melancholy. I think I know what he means, I would probably say the same for myself. What do you think?
He is a scientist by training, but has turned to creative writing for the freedom to express his emotions. He currently has a fascinating job. Since the beginning of 2017 he’s been working as Poet in Residence for the Munnings Art Museum in Dedham, Essex, UK.
The Museum and the River Exhibition promotes the landscape paintings of Sir Alfred Munnings. Tim finds, SIr Alfred’s often melancholic take on the surroundings a source of inspiration for poetry writing. As well as landscapes, many of his paintings reflect the state of society and the countryside at the time, for example The White Canoe was painted at the outbreak of World War Two, whilst Tagg’s Island appeared after the end of World War One. The latter painting evocatively portrays a high society party and an outpouring of joy after a long and bloody war. I don’t have permission to reproduce the paintings here, but perhaps if you are near Essex you could visit and experience them in person. Failing that, visit the museum website check out the opening times, and you will get a feel for Sir Alfred’s work
Tim’s Haiku:
snow birds
I can’t pick you out
from the crowd
Which of Sir Alfred‘s paintings inspired this piece?
A winter scene at Castle house, painted in the 1940s.
Thanks so much for your submissions Tim. I really enjoyed reading them and the good news is that Tim will be featured again so we will get to know him better as we go through the year.
But if you can’t wait here is his website.
http://www.essexfieldclub.org.uk/portal/p/Insect+poetry
I’ll be back in next week, until then I hope you have a great week. Whether you are a relative newbie to Haiku or an expert I’d be happy to see your haiku and consider them for submission for the podcast on the website. Don’t hold back! Write! See you soon
