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Remember last month we started to talk about place names? Well there were so many great examples brought to us by Richard Tice that I decided to split his workshop in two and as I promised today we’ll hear part two, this time place names in English language haiku. I hope that it will inspire your submissions to Poetry Pea this month which of course is the topic of place names. Deadline 20TH August 2021.
Today we are going to hear many, many great examples of English language haiku. From my guests David J Kelly and Richard Tice.
David will also give you some great advice about getting your work published.
David J Kelly reads from his book, small hadron divider
A Touchstone Distinguished Books Honorable Mention 2020.
I hope you enjoyed hearing David read from his book and the chat we had about getting published. If you were thinking of trying to get your work published perhaps he’s given you some ideas of how to go about it. Thanks David.
If you’d like to buy David’s books then here are some contacts for you.
small hadron divider, Red Moon Press
Hammerscale from the Thrush’s Anvil, Alba Publishing,
Or contact David on Twitter @motto_sakura
Now I’d like to ask you a favour. If you’re enjoying the podcasts I’d just like to ask if you can spare the price of a cup of coffee to support us. I know not everyone can so don’t worry but if you’d like to you can click the buy me a coffee button on the website and the process is very easy. I’d really appreciate help with the cost of putting the podcasts and YouTube offerings together. Thank you.
and now onto the next part of the podcast the continuation of the workshop with Richard Tice.
Last time if you remember we listened to Richard talk us through some Japanese examples of haiku with place names and this time we’re going to hear some examples of English language haiku. We’ll start with a poem from Sandra. Take it away Richard.
Mist above Mt. Paul,
above the mist
wild geese . . .
Sandra Ramgoolam
Haiku West 7.2 (January 1974)
Mt. Paul rises above Maligne Lake in Jasper National Park, in the Canadian Rockies in Alberta Province. 2,850 meters high (9,350 feet), Mt. Paul is located in a subarctic climate, so mist here is probably caused by airborne ice particles rather than vapor.
laughing,
Kamakura’s bronze buddha
fills with children
Richard Tice
Modern Haiku 16.2 (Summer 1985)
The largest seated bronze Buddha in Japan resides in Kamakura, the capital of Japan during the reign of the military shōgunates. The Buddha statue is hollow, and tourists may enter and climb the stairs to the head. It is a very popular stop for school trips.
Cabo San Lucas . . .
Moths on siesta decorate
the cool toilet wall
James W. Hackett
A Traveler’s Haiku (2004)
Cabo San Lucas is today a city of nearly 300,000, on the tip of Baja California, the peninsula in Mexico that extends south from California. With beautiful beaches and plenty of sun, it is a top destination for boating, surfing, whale watching, fishing, and cruises. Yet its reputation as a lazy, out-of-the-way destination on the Pacific still lingers, more so than the other tourist destinations of Acapulco and Puerta Vallarta on the Pacific coast of Mexico.
Tiananmen wind . . .
the way gusts whip all the flags
into a roar of red
James W. Hackett
A Traveler’s Haiku (2004)
In the West, Tiananmen Square is known as a place of resistance where protestors were crushed by the Chinese military. Ironically, Tiananmen means Gate of Heavenly Peace. It is the main entrance to the Imperial City in Beijing.
tripod holes
in the creekside mud—
Yosemite dawn
Michael Dylan Welch
The Heron’s Nest 6.4 (May 2004)
Established as a national park in 1890, Yosemite was the second of America’s national parks. It is home to towering waterfalls, sheer cliffs, mountain rivers and creeks, alpine meadows, the Yosemite Valley with its own ecosystem, and ancient forests, including the sequoia groves. Instead, we see tripod holes in mud. We are left to wonder what vista was being photographed in the dawn light. Michael loves to take photographs, though the tripod holes may have been left by another. The three holes recall the history of picture taking in Yosemite, from the photographers of the 1800s that risked travel for their plate photography, to later more famous photojournalists such as Ansel Adams, to thousands of anonymous tourist photographers.
border crossing—
cherry petals drift
into Canada
Carole MacRury
In the Company of Crows (2008)
Canada is the second largest country in land area, so this utamakura is enormous. Carole lives on a small peninsula bordering Canada. It actually is part of Washington State, though none of the land touches the U.S. To go to the U.S. she has to cross the border into Canada, drive a ways, and cross the border again into Washington. The poem is actually more meaningful now since the border between Canada and the U.S. has been closed during the pandemic.
National Cemetery
P-51 flyover
trailing smoke
Richard Tice
A Moment’s Longing (2017)
National Cemetery is in the name of federal cemeteries for veterans. Arlington National Cemetery is the most famous. The full name of the cemetery near my home is Tahoma National Cemetery. These cemeteries feature ceremonies on Memorial Day (end of May in the U.S.) and Independence Day (July 4). The P-51 is the Mustang, the legendary WW2 fighter plane—this haiku takes place on Memorial Day because the P-51 is trailing smoke, as if it had been hit in combat, to commemorate all those in the Armed Forces who lost their lives.
Paris fog
the approaching clip clop
of a horse-drawn carriage
Jay Friedenberg
Presence 69 (March 2021)
Modern Paris, but here the attention is on the clip clop of a horse and a tourist carriage today. Previously, when carriages were the norm, the sound would be on cobblestones, and perhaps it still is here. The yūgen in the fog obliterates boundaries, displacing us in time and transporting us to a Paris of the 1800s.
obscuring
the view of Kyiv . . .
strangers’ fingerprints
Nicholas Klacsansky
Last Train Home, ed. Jacquie Pearce (2021)
Nicholas lives part of the time in Seattle and part in Kiev. Notice he uses the Ukranian spelling of the city’s name. Interesting that something as small as fingerprints on glass can obscure a grand skyline. The fingerprints are temporary and have their own unknown history, compared to the more permanent city with its own, largely unknown history of millions of inhabitants.
In writing haiku with place names, consider that the place name may act as a setting, as in “Venice street market” or as the focus, as in the Amazon and Milky Way descending to the sea. The place name, either as the setting or as the focus, can work as long as the name adds more significance. The depth in the place name may lie in history, culture, identity, meaning, characteristics, experience, or even just the feeling you have for the place. I suggest that rather than trying to write about a place you write about what is happening in or with the place. You might also look at some of your previously written haiku and see if a place name would work more effectively in some of those poems.
To summarize:
1) The place name either as a setting or as a focus is okay.
2) Ask yourself, “What depth does the place name add?”
3) Write about what is happening in the place.
4) See if some of your existing haiku work better with a place name.
Ellis island
sharing dust motes
with adventurers
Bisshie
Failed Haiku, #61
Thanks once again to Richard. I thought it was worth mentioning that the use of a place name really anchors your poem in its environment and I’d like to give you one example to illustrate this. It’s by Marion Clarke and was first published in modern haiku, issue 45.2.
Carlingford Lough
a heron crosses
the moon
Marion Clarke
Modern Haiku, Issue 45.2 Summer 2014
Again I’ll ask the question could this poem be written in another place? I think the answer is yes:
I could place it on the Jungfrau
Jungfrau
a heron crosses
the moon
Here at the top of the mountain there is no rippling water, no gentle lapping of waves. There is only one picture, that of the mountains the moon and the heron whereas in Carlingford Lough there are two, because you have the reflection.
Brighton Beach
a heron crosses
the moon
Again the setting on Brighton beach gives a different poem. You do have the water but the reflection on the sea is very different. You still have sound but this time you have the sound of waves on the shingle beach which is very different from the sound of waves on the lake. It’s also possible that whilst you could hear the heron crossing the moon at Carlingford Lough perhaps that sound as drowned out by waves on the beach. And of course the waves look very different in the Brighton Beach version.
So I hope you can see that even though we have said I’ve said you can change the location, and Richard and I discussed this in the workshop, anchoring the place in your poem does make a difference to the feel of it.
Now I hope you’re submitting this month to the place names topic, your deadline is the 20th of August 2021. We’ve given you some examples to inspire you and I look forward very much to reading poems from the particular places you’ve chosen to write about.
Next time on the podcast we’re going to hear more of your original work, this time yūgen. We had more submissions than ever for that topic. It certainly seemed to have captured your imagination. Thanks to James Young, Robert Horrobin and Vandana Parashar, who edited the submissions for yūgen.
Looking forward to joining you again in a couple of weeks until then keep writing…