Category Archives: Blog

Blog, News, Other Writers

The THF goes to work: Worker’s Haiku

After all this buzzing with insect haiku in January, February 2013 is a quiet, reflective month.

This month’s guest editor, Matthew Paul’s selection is on the ever-present figure of the worker in haiku. Dentist, doctor, driver, gravedigger, barber, policeman, the solitary worker seen at work, engaged or not, lively or bored, cuts an impressive figure.

Visit the The Haiku Foundation site and see the workers at work. Every day, one haiku/senryu will appear in the Per Diem: Daily Haiku panel, at the right-hand corner, lower down the home page. Let the workers speak to you:

 

aros, Blog, Haiku, NaHaiWriMo

NaHaiWriMo February 2013

In a few days, on the first of February, National Haiku Writing Month begins. Again. Once a year, during the shortest month of the year, the shortest form of poetry is being celebrated by writing at least one haiku a day for the duration of the month.  And so a dark, dismal month, in the Northern hemisphere, that is, is being transformed through haiku. (No doubt, the poets in the Southern Hemisphere see this differently. I look forward to hearing what they say… )

Once again, the world becomes quieter. A sense of awe and expectation grips the bankers, the nurses, the old age pensioners, the performers, the writers, the psychologists, the traffickers. All eyes are glued to the NaHaiWriMo panel, waiting for the day’s prompt to appear.  The moment it appears, the magic unfolds. Noradrenaline flows. Nerve cell upon nerve cell get activated, electrical signals spread, transmitter substances are released, sending out tentacles of attention to gather material.

do not disturb —

gathering of poetry

in progress

What a state of mind to be in! Though some poets are more relaxed than others!

The moon, a grain of sand, the sound of the carburetor, the horse’s neighing, the blackbird’s song, waves rolling to the shore; the child’s hand, a kite, tomatoes…  Whether snow, cold or warm weather, the poets are watching and waiting, fingers poised over the laptop to catch it, hold it in the palm of their hand, share it.

Will you join NaHaiWriMo? Do if you can bear the world come nearer to you; if you believe you can hear the wind’s voice; if you can let this big, big wonderful world sing to you.  If not, you’ll be fine. Just watch from a distance: read what these daring poets are attempting to do, day in day out, here

Michael Dylan Welch, the founder and coordinator of the group, put together a first anthology of the group’s work in August 2012, “With Cherries on Top”. It is a PDF of astounding beauty. And so it goes,

cherries

again this insatiable need

to come into bloom

Blog, Blog items, Short stories, Sources/Related Material

SOAS Rebetiko

Rebetiko, the blues of the Greek refugees from Asia Minor, and of Turkey, is alive and well. A “Byzantine blend of the Turkish rhythms brought by the immigrant Greeks uprooted from their homes in Asia Minor with the contemporary Greek music of the twenties and thirties,” it can be heard Monday nights haunting the corridors and the JCR (Junior Common Room) of SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies, in London. I went to listen to the Rebetiko band this week and was amazed at the quality of sound and soulful singing.

SOAS Rebetiko
SOAS Rebetiko

The band SOAS Rebetiko describe themselves as follows:

“The Famous SOAS Rebetiko Band plays Rebetiko music of Greece, a broad genre of urban songs and instrumental music which developed in and around the major port areas of Eastern Mediterranean — Smyrna/Izmir, Istanbul, Syros, Piraeus and Thessaloniki.” 

I listened to this music growing up in a community of first- and second-generation refugees from Asia Minor, in Athens, and hearing it being played again, reminded me of the depth of feeling expressed through it; through the songs of loss and mourning, but also resistance, survival and life affirmation sang by the refugees.

Blog, Haiku, News, Other Writers

NeverEnding Story

Chen-ou Liu (劉鎮歐), Chinese-Canadian poet, essayist, editor, translator, with numerous awards up his poetic sleeve, has started a new web-based project titled NeverEnding Story, a First English-Chinese Bilingual Haiku and Tanka Blog,  in which he aims, in his words,

“to fulfill my butterfly dream portrayed in the haibun, entitled “To Liv(e),” which was published in Frogpond, 34:3, Fall 2011. I hope it can bring the beauty of English language Japanese short form poetry to Chinese readers around the world”

His dream is  to put NeverEnding Story on the literary map of “Cultural China,” the one “that has been promoted by Tu Weiming (杜維明), Research Professor and Senior Fellow of Asia Center at Harvard University, who authored “Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center,” Daedalus, Vol. 134, No. 4,  Fall, 2005, pp. 145-167.”

Chen-ou has already collected a good number of poems and it seems to me he is well on his way to turning his dream into reality.

I am really honored to be included in this project, and for my poem to be translated into Chinese. It can be read in its English and Chinese forms here

Do visit NeverEnding Story, and if you are a haiku or tanka poet, do submit. There is an anthology on the cards, and essays, lit crit and more wonderful stuff on offer.