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Hello and welcome back to the haiku pea podcast, this time S3 E22 a podcast about social Social Issues. My name is Patricia and this time I thought it would be interesting to find out what’s going on around the world, what’s bothering us and if there are any similarities. Of course when I created the topic list for this year Covid was not on my radar. Not surprisingly that was a global theme but there were others, I’ll not spoil the surprise but globally we have more in common than we do differences.
Thank you to everyone who bought me a coffee since last time, I’ve not been out and about anywhere interesting this month. Switzerland is currently one of the sick countries of Europe so I’m doing as little mixing as possible. Instead of coffee I’m going to treat myself to a book. It’s “On Writing” by Stephen King. I got it from the library the other day and I love it so much I want my own copy so I can scribble in the text. I’d recommend it as a writing manual but also it’s just a good read and that’s from someone who is not been able to read his books since I saw Carrie many moons ago.
Also a terrifically big thank you to James Young who guest edited this podcast. We’ve done our best to keep politics out of it but we are both British so maybe we missed something that’s obvious to someone else.
A big thank you to all of you who submitted, whether your work was chosen or not, it was lovely to hear from you and I hope we’ll hear from you again.
Remember that the topics for next year kick-off with spring and autumn Kigo. I’m taking submissions from the 1st to the 20th of December for that but at the moment Robert Horrobin is reading your submissions for the No verbs topic, deadline first of December. Emails only please. I know it’s a challenge, it was meant to be! More challenges to come in 2021. Please come along on the 7th of December and listen to the podcast as there’ll be news.
So without further ado, your submissions on the social issues theme. I’ll read the verse first and the author afterwards.
by the radio
waiting for four aways
my dad with his fag
James Young
Firstly, when we Brits use the word fag, it’s usually, as here, a colloquialism for cigarette. Now, when I and obviously James, were young, there was something called the pools. It was something like a lottery in which you had to predict the results of football matches and if you scored enough points you would win money. The sort of money that could make a real difference to your life. That’s what James is referring to.
Back to his verse. Although the trip back to my childhood appealed to me, the point I wanted to make was that Jim has used a moment from his past but he’s written it in the present tense. A haiku expresses the moment, whether it’s in the past or what’s happening in front of you right now and it should be expressed in the present tense.
Let’s hear it again.
by the radio
waiting for four aways
my dad with his fag
Continuing on:
history
records
senseless events
slow learners
Wayne Kingston
Saraswati goddess
with a hole in her sock
fragile spring
Damir Damir
castoffs –
rummaging through old clothes
at the shelter
Elaine Wilburt
blackboard lessons –
eyes stare through gap in roof
as dark clouds gather
Neera Kashyap
winter wind –
only bread and milk
in her bag
Daniela Misso
homeless girl
in her sleeping bag –
dead to the world
Peter Draper
hungry and tired
walking the streets daily
feeling lost
Katherine E Winnick
bitter winds
cardboard flapping
alone at home
Linda L Ludwig
address unknown
a drifter finds solace
in a cardboard box
Paul Callus
streets now cleared
of homelessness that some
may walk untroubled
Ian Speed
homeless
between him and the others
double social distance
Samo Kreutz
harvest moon –
a beggar and the hope
in his dog’s eyes
m shane pruett
without a roof
the biting wind
of winter
W R Bongcaron
I’d just like to say a few words about Willie’s verse. Listen to the repetition of W in all three lines. Can you hear how that makes the verse stronger?
*************
uncounted…discounted
tent dwellers
food pickers
**E L Blizzard
refugee
so hard to learn to speak
in future tense
Maya Daneva
refugees
washed up on a beach
lost dignity
Kim Russell
sunless town
the rain burns
a refugee’s eyes
Srinivas S
beachcombing
a scatter of refugees
looking for a life
John Hawkhead
rumbling louder
than the evening storm
a refugee’s belly
Hifsa Ashraf
his favorite
boyhood racial slur:
ubbits
**M Kelly Peach
MLK Day
the lingering taste
of black-eyed peas
Nika
filthy little hands
selling tissue boxes
during school day
Riham El Ashry
red light –
small hands sell balloons
faded blossoms
Neena Singh
happy women’s day
he wishes wife
securing her veil just so…
Anjali Warhadpande
The next two verses speak of my awkward teenage years – I bet there are some of you listening who could say the same…
construction site
cacophony of wolf whistles
I flip the bird
Doris Lynch
shy dog walker
how much she must see her feet
she shuns my ‘morning’
Mark Morris
magdalen laundry
mammy’s skinned knuckles scrubbing
daddy’s sins away
Mike Gallagher
I think Mike’s verse is powerful even if you don’t understand the history behind it. The Magdalen laundries were run by religious convents Ireland. Young, unmarried, pregnant women were often sent to work in them and then the babies taken for adoption. The girls often had no choice. Anyway to return to the verse, the second and third lines are quite haunting, don’t you think? As you know if you listen to the podcast I’m not a great lover of adjectives, if you’re going to use them they really, really need to prove their worth. I think Mike’s use of skinned when describing mammy’s knuckles is masterful. To me anyway these two lines reflect the prevailing thought of the time that there was something dirty about these young girls, their pregnancy et cetera and that these sins had to be paid for.
smashed beer bottles
the broken typewriter
by the river
**Oliver Leon Porter
to Cetus I pray:
grant me the gene memories
of Earth’s singing whales
Karla Linn Merrifield
may day!
more birders than birds
among apple blossoms
Janice Doppler
deforestation
reflections missing
from the lake
Ronald K Craig
on the canyon wall
a weeping red hand
oil tankers rumble
Joan Barrett
dark shadow
over the rainforest
lung cancer
Hannah Hulbert
dark days, darker nights
can’t see the woods for the trees
which are now burning
**Christopher Peys
wind in the jungle
orange haze oversweeps
souls in jeopardy
Richard Bailly
hedgerows
uprooted –
silent spring
Dorothy Burrows
decorating
the death of a sea bird…
plastic rings
Pat Geyer
plastic bottle –
bobbing in the ocean
joins a rubbish island
Rob McKinnon
palimpsest
the small erasure
of recycled glass
Lorraine A Padden
Earth Day
the dog won’t drop
its fetch ball
**Brad Bennett
apocalypse sky
they choose to look
the other way
Christina Chin
my old school
has more classrooms now
but no trees
S Narayanan
global warming
overtaken
by events
Mark Gilbert
another day
in lockdown –
fingerprints on the window
Laura Driscoll
visited only
by memories
care home
**Debbi Antebi
invincible
without a thought
for grandmother
BA France
social distancing
scrub jays gather
in the jacaranda
Deborah P Kolodji
sore heart
caress on the face
nurse’s hand
Eva Drobná
a whole drawer full
of homemade masks
rain puddles the garden
Carrie Ann Thunell
never-ending nightfall
death in solitude
covid’s autumn
Robert Quezada
COVID continues
today you will not hug Gran
perhaps tomorrow
Lekha Desai Morrison
locked border
our state gets to know
itself
Giddy Nielsen Sweep
All Hallows’ Day
the child busy sketching
on the mask
Pravat Kumar Padhy
yellow tape
around the empty playground
pandemic summer
Angela Terry
nursery class rainbows outside the lines
Marilyn Ward
virtual school
galleries of students
banned from chatting
**Doug Lanzo
flattening the curve
a forsythia branch
bends to the wind
Jay Friedenberg
social distance
mallow leaves
cup the rain
Pearl
forced bloom –
the corner diner
reopens
**Barbara Sabol
solved social issues
a hermit wearing
pjs 24/7
wendy c bialek
I like that Wendy can see a little bit of humour in such trying times. One of the topics for next year will be to write haiku and senryu with humour. In fact next month in the podcast on the 7th of December, Roger Watson is coming along to talk to us about humour in haiku. I hope you’ll join us, because some of them are just laugh out loud funny.
neighbor’s deck party
political quarrelling
thunder clouds rising
Michael Feil
dawn
his throaty jalopy that wakes
the neighborhood
Adjei Agyei Baah
social networks
liking her posts
in succession
Bakhtiyar Amini
am i
what i am
on social media
**Jitendra Menghani
Don’t you think Jitendra’s play on words in line one and two are effective?
in the fermata
between the tweets
truth lies
Robert Horrobin
networking
with algorithms –
social dilemma
Zahra Mughis
cyberbullying
hundreds of virtual strikes
real pain
Cyrille Soliman
***********
her scars
in plain sight
craters of the moon
Kristen Lindquist
touching her bruises
she disappears
out the door
Roberta Beach Jacobson
her pandemic battle
not a viral one –
she masks the bruises
Tracy Davidson
bruises on her neck
–
still her fault she says
Richard Hargreaves
am I
the only one
who cries
Jeff Brake
rented view
on the neighbour’s wall
sun shining
Jane Berg
cathedral windows
the only stories
she can read
Pat Davis
new faces move in;
more kids dropped off at ballet.
cycle shops appear.
fewer sirens blaze;
car stereos are softer,
teens in parks fade out
Avi (a two verse haiku)
something being said
on abandoned brick walls
here I…
**Jack Galmitz
Jack, your half finished sentence in line 3 certainly creates a sense of a person whose feels they’re too small to matter. I can’t help but think this is how many of us feel just at the moment, certainly I have moments when I feel like that, but then I think small steps, small steps can lead to giant strides. Remember Neil Armstrong’s misquoted quote: “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
So that’s it for today.
Your deadline for the No verbs topic is coming up fast, the 1st of December, if you haven’t got your submission in, you still have time. There’s lots of news coming up soon about happenings the poetry pea so if you haven’t signed up for the mailing list, please sign up or you might miss out on some exciting opportunities to grow your haiku experience.
If you are one of the wonderful poets who submitted to this podcast, I thank you from the bottom of my heart because without your work how would this edition have been possible.
Thanks very much for coming along and joining me, I very much appreciate your company. I hope we’ll be together again for the next podcast in a couple of days and so until then, keep writing…
If there’s something missing or wrong in the show let’s just send me over an email and let me know so I can put it right. Ciao
** poets new to the podcast
