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The Haiku Pea Podcast started small in 2017. I thought I would more or less be talking to myself, but reckoned without the power of haiku, and the word spread. Now here at Poetry Pea there are a number of ways to celebrate haiku with lots and lots of like minded haiku poets.
In 2021 the Haiku Pea podcast will be offering two podcasts a month on the 1st and 3rd Mondays of the month, the first to explore haiku topics and the second to hear the haiku and senryu that you have been writing.
Listening options:
You can listen here on the website or you can find us on a number of podcasting platforms: iTunes, stitcher, spotify, amazon, google, player and tunein radio not forgetting YouTube.
Please subscribe to the podcast where ever you chose to listen and the latest episode will be delivered to your feed, and if you have a moment leave a review. Alternatively, you can sign up for our mailing and you’ll get information about every new release and all the latest news.
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Hello, from me Patricia in a very snowy Switzerland and welcome to the haiku pea podcast. It only seems like two minutes since I was welcoming you to the last episode and now here I am, welcoming you to the final episode of this series, number 24.
This year has been universally awful but there have been highlights for me; the first hug I was able to give my children, a little bit of travel, and all that we’ve achieved together this year here at Poetry Pea. Our Journal, PEA TV Moments, (keep the videos and haiku coming), more voices being heard on the podcast and a huge increase in the number of people submitting. I was recently sent a mail telling me that we are the number 19 poetry podcast worldwide. I can be terribly competitive, how about we aim for top ten next year? Spread the word.
Thank you all for being there this year.
Next year some changes, but I’ll go over them in the next podcast. One thing to remember though, the new submission period is 1-20th of the month and the next one, will be humourous haiku and senryu. Don’t forget to listen to episode 23 or watch Roger Watson on the Poetry Pea youtube channel for help and advice on humourous haiku. The submission period for spring and autumn kigo is now closed.
You were really kind with the coffees last month. I was able to buy Stephen King’s “on writing” and also Richard Gilbert’s “the disjunctive dragonfly”. I expect you will hear more about that in the coming months. Thank you so much for the coffees, they do help to keep the podcast going and pay for those little incidentals like my reading materials for research, the website and soundcloud.
To those of you who are on the mailing list thank you for your responses on the topic of Imagery. You gave me so much to read and I have added to that reading list myself. I will give you some feedback in a later podcast. Currently I am deeply embedded in a book of Ezra Pound’s essays. If you are not on the mailing please sign up on the website to make sure you get all the latest discussions and news, like the Journal being released.
There was a great response to the Autumn Journal, thank you to everyone who bought a print or kindle copy. I’ve had good feedback so I hope you are all enjoying it. If you could, I’d be very grateful if you would go to Amazon and leave our Journal a review.
Now this time I asked you to write haiku and senryu with no verbs. Very many of you told me how hard you found it, but equally many of you found it to be a very satisfying technique to use. We had a lot of submissions and my thanks goes to Robert Horrobin this month for reading them all and choosing the verses for the podcast and Journal. Cheers Robert.
I was recently at a zoom haiku event where Lee Gurga said “a verbless fragment and phrase. Something we see in the best haiku”. I may not go that far myself, there is room for many techniques in haiku writing, but I do find them very satisfying to read and write. Please do go to the Poetry Pea website and read this selection at your leisure and enjoy them again. Maybe pick a few favourites and analyse what you like about them. Do they have anything in common? Can they help you improve your own work? If you come to any conclusions don’t forget to email me and let me know.
So let’s get started with some fantastic poetry. First I’ll give you some work that has been published and then we’ll hear brand spanking new work by you. I’ll read the poem first and then tell you who wrote it and along the way I’ll have some comments.
Don’t forget to let me know what you think, I love getting emails from you.
Now I’m going to start with a very famous poem by one of the imagist poets. I did not come across William Carlos Williams until I saw the film Paterson, but I’ve made up for my ignorance since then.
Published
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
William Carlos Williams
Now in this present guise I don’t think it is a haiku but if we take out the first line, do you think it qualifies to be designated as a haiku?
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
After the party
empty chairs in the lawn:
new moon and I
Prof R K Singh
Tiny Word 15 April 2002
percheron
sixteen hands full
of stars
Debbie Strange
Commended
New Zealand Poetry Society International Poetry Competition, 2018
And now, to your work. Thanks to all of you who sent me your submissions:
In this first part there are many verse which would have worked well in any of the Kigo episodes we’ll be writing this year, but here, without verbs some seasonal works:
winter storm –
the shape of the wind
in the bend of trees
Máire Morrissey-Cummins
winter waterfall
the sound
of cold
Pat Davis
brief seasons
first snowflakes on my shoulders
mother’s funeral.
**Achingliu Kamei
winter frost
bent grasses
all the same
Samo Kreutz
frosty evening
my pen on the last page
of my diary
Maya Daneva
spring evening
piano music in the air
a song-bird chorus
**Seretta Martin
summer picnic
sandwiches
with ants
Giddy Nielsen Sweep
sunshine
blue sky
and golden leaves
**Harry Massey
summer heat
the first blueberry
a little sour
Kristen Lindquist
lightning
in the sky
swallows
**Lola Scollard
fall persimmon
fruit even more brilliant
than its foliage
Doug Lanzo
umber sycamore
kaleidoscope pattern leaves
this autumn’s old cloak
**Lucie Payne
autumn sorrows
the hillside
naked again
Anna Maria Domburg-Sancristoforo
moonlit night
the coiled autumn snake
in a wood pile
Christina Chin
a kingfisher
only
the splash
Roger Watson
daybreak
amidst the echoes
stillness
**Cyril Ioutsen
long engagement
a glimpse of moon
behind thick clouds
Ronald K Craig
Is it just me, or do you feel a certain sensuousness in that verse?
moon’s serenity
chaotic-less
rejuvenation
RJ Tungsten
new inspiration
kaleidoscope of pendulums
on the dusty ground
Sarah Mahina Calvello
rain
mountain lake river sea
rain
James Young
Many of you will listen to James’s poem and think, but Patricia rejected my verse and it was all nouns, and you would be right. Why then did I accept James’s? Because of the cycle it speaks of. Rain at the beginning and end creates that circle of watery life, doesn’t it?
the wrinkles
between us
on the picnic blanket
Sari Grandstaff
gothic mist –
at my feet a leaf
skeleton
Dorothy Burrows
on the fence pole
a snow owl
sedate philosopher
**Ibrar Hussain
dawn frost
on every bench
a sleeping bag
Carrie Ann Thunell
pink dawn—
in a dewdrop
the moon
Neena Singh
cardinals
and sycamore sky
triadic wheel
EL Blizzard
in my plantain farm
noisy metallic music
rainy season now
S Narayanan
red wagon
full of leaves
no child in sight
Kathleen Tice
.
pitch black
honks in surround sound
Orion’s Belt
Erin Castaldi
crimson cloud shards –
the last sharp remnants
of the set sun
Rob McKinnon
glacier ice…
the depths
of blue light
Angela Terry
the red sun
between the brow of two hills –
Sanskrit chants
**Kala Ramesh
landscape
rule of thirds
empty sky, endless water
**Sharon Mahany
Stoic cranes –
statues
in the wintry rain
**Mary Harwell Sayler
on a still lake
a reflection –
one crane,
now two
Christopher Peys
We don’t often have 4 line haiku on here, but actually I don’t think it could be anything but a 4 line verse, unless you cut the second line.
near sunset
half moon in the sky
coexistence
Riham El-Ashry
most days
a collection of leaves
today this poem
**Paula J Lambert
forest clearing
the sudden relief
of blue sky
Srinivas S
I wander through the woods by foot or on my bike. I know most of the woodland paths round here but sometimes I take the track less taken and I did that recently and got lost. Coming across a clearing was somehow a little reassuring, even if I didn’t know where I was. Still, I got a signal on my phone…
red alert
the amaryllis
in full glory
Valentina Ranaldi-Adams
open field:
yellow butterflies
yellow flower
Bob Carlton
Did you notice how this verse narrows its focus. It’s a topic that we’ll be using in 2021. In line 1 we have the open field, then we can see yellow butterflies, which to me is a smaller image than the wide open field, though admittedly that might have something to do with my eyesight, and then finally we home in on a yellow flower, just one.
sunlight shaft
from beneath the door
a mouse’s tail
Arvinder Kaur
thick white duvet sky,
nature’s prescription of bed
rest for this poor world.
**Charlotte Oliver
gentle breeze
… over a canopy
of cicadas
Willie R Bongcaron
deep sun
a football’s
echo
eddy lee
thirsty hummingbirds
gathered around the feeder
happy hour
Richard Bailly
at the foot of
the smallest gravestone –
a song thrush
Peter Draper
majestic wingspan
over the quiet pond
a mirrored twin
Barbara Carlson
a small twig
in the way
of a traveller
Lovette Carter
stillness
of a cat
in a rocking chair
Matt Synder
a picket fence
white
in washed fog
Lori Becherer
Not only do you have what is possibly a pivot line in L2, white could apply to the picket fence and to the fog, but there is a juxtaposition of image, between the fence and the fog and there is a change of rhythm between the first line and the next two, which I think is created by the w sounds.
chai dukan …
aromas heavy with
gossips
**Cherry A
thoughts on thoughts –
too many layers for today’s
virtual world
Ian Speed
my hermitage
inside my mind
so many storms
Michael Feil
arugula
such a tender word
in my salad
**Eve Castle
emotions
on a platter
all raw
Anjali Warhadpande
alone in a room;
outside the calls of ravens…
too soon the darkness
Pat Geyer
mum’s old ring
too small for my finger
her golden silence
Kim Russell
laid off
the last bag of birdseed
in the cupboard
Bruce H Feingold
Does this verse ignite any emotion in you? It does for me. It’s very sad, yet the poet hasn’t written any emotive words, has he? It’s a very clear concise poem, we know someone has been laid off, they have no work, so we naturally feel sad for them, but the killer, at least for me, is the phrase. All done without flowery language, without emotion but don’t we feel it?
Likewise in this verse:
big bill from the vet
no pet food this week
Robin Rich
brittle bones …
the season
of curled leaves
**Isabella Mori
funeral service
ululations from the storm
with your name
David J Kelly
the lone witness
to our quarrel
living room figurine
Richa Sharma
hot climate –
the incandescent tone
of your silence
**Luisa Santoro
past five autumns
mother’s loneliness
in the dark
**Lakshmi Iyer
Red and yellow beets,
spicy cloves from Zanzibar—
Ah, grandma Mimi!
Karla Linn Merrifield
night rain…
in her handbag
parma violets
Marilyn Ward
layered clouds—
the substance of
maternal love
m shane pruett
November
your sister’s first
silver hairs
Doris Lynch
no mention of
the burnt taste
mother’s recipe
Debbi Antebi
chalk dust
in sunlit beams
a leather strap
Mike Gallagher
Buchenwald survivor
dad’s ashes
finally free
Jay Friedenberg
the monogram
on Mother’s locket
baby teeth
Joan Barrett
our car never nearer the shimmer of black water on the desert road
Richard Tice
Did you hear the effect of the r sounds in that monoku?
under the leaves everything
Roberta Beach Jacobson
before dark pastel clouds and dresses
Elancharan Gunasekaran
black and white wherever and wherever clean and clear
**Nani Mariani
tree pose autumn colours outside
Maeve O’Sullivan
toadspawn in chains ourselves
Alan Summers
I thought this monoku had a very contemporary feel to it. It talked to me about Covid and expressed how I sometimes feel. I asked Alan about it and his technique when writing it and he sent me a great deal of information which you might like to read through. Thanks for such a comprehensive answer Alan.
“I incorporate my own types of technique when writing haiku, and perhaps they are even better suited to single line haiku aka one line haiku.
There is my method of “A rêverie observation” which is a term I coined for Slip Realism methods.
“rêverie observation” is a new aspect of Slip-Realism but one where versions of memory from our earlier life or lives are captured.”
When I approach single line haiku poems I look at the tension of the line, and as a poetic line. I might take something from my past, a rich reservoir, and meld that memory experience with something currently happening or something that I realise has been happening for a very long time.
As a British kid, the activity of studying frogs and collecting tadpoles was part of our childhood culture. With little money and not even an awareness of sparse finances, we had simple and natural hobbies that were outside in nature and freely available. Toads are different from frogs, where their spawn are wrapped in chains for protection and a chance at life.
And then there is covid-19 which has opened our eyes to many inequalities and evil injustices past and present, and chains is an image both metaphorical and literal at the same time, and horribly real for those people made into slaves.
As haiku is now the errant grandson of hokku and other pre-1890s haikai verse it will still on occasion entertain the link and shift of renga and renku, and the turn which is the feature of the non-haikai verse called tanka which of itself is a cousin of waka. We are all rooted in the past, shackled for good or for bad. There are many kinds of shackles and we carefully or carelessly use the terms shackles and chains in our vocal and written currency.
Technique?
We have toadspawn, they are in a term called chains.
So there is toadspawn in chains which is a natural history term.
And then the realisation that ‘in chains’ we also put ourselves under restrictions before and now during covid-19. And even worse we have both placed ourselves under invisible chains, and in the past we have also put actual physical chains on our fellow humans.
We are in chains ourselves, and covid-19 is an opportunity to change. From toadspawn young to adults so we are still in that jelly stage as humanity on many levels, and can try to turn for the better, just as this verse turned from toadspawn to a realisation that humans are little different in “acts of potential”.
fugue writing?
I touch upon that in “Interview with Alan Summers”
It’s the opposite of the ‘writer’s block’ which will be part of a project I’m working on for 2021:
segue writing?
That’s a mixture of parallelism where I think and write in two streams concurrently, at the same time, to produce a poem that has the haiku moment wrapped up in the past, present and future, and still remain something in the ‘now’. A bit like parallel universes.”
anger management deep chinks in the blade
Vandana Parashar
dusk a cityscape in the woodland shadows
Christine Wenk-Harrison
in a fog bank white space
Linda L Ludwig
There are many forms in haiku. Would you think it fair of me to say that fragment phrase haiku are prevalent in the haiku we read today?
I recently read a journal in which I was surprised by the number of one image haiku. You don’t really see many three image haiku but I have some for you today.
When I spoke to Elaine about the next verse being a three image one, she said it was not written with that in mind.
broken strings
a twisted bridge
songs of yesterday
Elaine Patricia Morris
Elaine was writing about a broken guitar. Yet I saw three fragments to it, the strings, the bridge and the songs. What do you think?
crossword solutions
autumn colours in the park
the story of us
Sarah Bint Yusuf
marble gravestone…
fresh rose petals –
a saint’s fragrance
Neera Kashyap
burned out hollow house
charred bed linens cast-off clothes
yellow police tape
**Ron Tobey
rain on the roof
aroma of onions in the skillet
long table set
**David Watts
cold coffee pot
cold cinders
cowboy kitche
Robert Quezada
casino
the irrelevance
of windows
Lorraine A Padden
distant silent screams
from the infinite blackness
astronaut
Richard Hargreaves
satin moon
the softness of her skin
next to mine
Nika
forty days
and forty nights …
dandelion fluff
Natalia Kuznetsova
singsong voice
his only method of math
multiplication
wendy c bialek
watermelon seeds
additions and subtractions
with my son
Daniela Misso
aromatherapy…
shalimar on
her wrist
Elaine Wilburt
ill
a butterfly pinned
to the mattress
Mark Gilbert
twenty twenty
year not over yet
why not
Lekha Desai Morrison
hot sake –
easy on the tongue
the flow of words
Paul Callus
warm hug
ginger and cardamom
in the aroma lamp
Nadejda Kostadinova
rainbow marriage
a slice of
equal opportunity
Bona M Santos
fallen lemons
the sour look
on his face
Jackie Chou
a shadow
by the broken window
november sunset
Zahra Mughis
dry fountain
the blue tongue
of a gargoyle
Debbie Strange
small flakes
scent of base flowers
in a cup of tea
Eva Drobná
for no apparent reason
over the Savannah river
fireworks show
David Oates
Finally my thanks to our last two poets for a little bit of Christmas one a very contemporary idea of Christmas and one more in the spirit of normality
advent calendar
all those empty spaces
behind my door
Tracy Davidson
before sunrise
Christmas lights –
in winter frost.
Laura Driscoll
Thank you to all of you who have taken part in today’s podcast. Thanks to Robert for being our editor this month and reading all the work that was submitted, it was a huge task. To all of you who are listening, thanks, for coming along, if you haven’t submitted yet, well next year is a new year. Make it one of your resolutions perhaps? You’re too late for the kigo episode but do you have anything humourous? Remember emails only please and your submission period is the 1 -20th January.
Once again my thanks to all of you for taking the edge off the awfulness of the year. May I wish you all the very happiest 2021.
Until next year, keep writing….
If I’ve messed anything up, or missed something off the shownotes, please email me….
Ciao
**Poets new to the podcast
