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Poetry from 'Haiku Beach'
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I want this site to be something like a beach: a scene ever shifting, ever revealing, but always a place of beauty.
no breath of wind -
only as he sits to write
does the water move
Much of my inspiration comes from walking the wide banks of the River Taw, close to my home in Barnstaple, North Devon. The same muddy, jetsam strewn banks that enthralled me as a child. The scene has changed very little over the past 50 years; some erosion here, a fallen tree there....
Someone once asked me why I continued to return to those littered banks. That person found them an eyesore. The following sprang to mind:
"The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason."
*John Cage.
"How blind that cannot see serenity!"
*Henry David Thoreau. 'Walden'.
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So what is haiku?
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First, a little bit about my background.
I am a reluctant ex-member of the 'British Haiku Society' and have had selections of my work published by them, as well as the 'Haiku Society of America'; 'The Journal Of The Association Of Croatian Haiku Poets'; and the 'Iron Press'.
In 1998, The North Devon Journal published an article about my work in their 'News' section, relating to a BHS/Iron publication where four of my haiku were included (The Iron Book of British Haiku).
I have been writing haiku for approximately 30 years and am inspired by the North Devon countryside, particularly the River Taw, from Black Rock and on to Penhill Point and Fremington Station.
There are varied and scholarly descriptions of the genre, but I intend to explain it plain language. This really is for my own benefit. I would rather concentrate on the haiku itself, than sit around tugging at my beard and worrying about the often intricate and subjective mechanics of describing it.
I now quote from a 'British Haiku Society' paper:
'Haiku began in Japan during the 17th century. Haiku are short, imagistic poems about the things that make people feel connected to nature.
In Japanese, haiku traditionally have seventeen syllables divided into three lines of a fixed five-seven-five pattern. Most though not all haiku reflect nature or one of the four seasons.
A haiku should share a moment of awareness with the reader. Peace, sadness, mystery - these are only a few of the emotions that evoke haiku and which we can feel when we read a haiku.
In haiku you have to give the reader words that help recreate the moment, the image or images that give you the feeling.
Telling the reader how you feel does not make the reader feel anything and does not make a good haiku. The words of the haiku should create in the reader the emotion felt by the poet, not describe the emotion'.
Jack Kerouac, arguably one of the finest American writers of the 20th century, said this about the American Haiku:
"The American Haiku is not exactly the Japanese Haiku. The Japanese Haiku is strictly disciplined to seventeen syllables, but since the language structure is different I don't think American Haiku's (short three-line poems intended to be completely packed with Void of Whole) should worry about syllables because American speech is something again...bursting to pop.
Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi Pastorella."
Here's another view, by another great poet -
"...poetry must sing or speak from authentic experience...poets, as few others, must live close to the world that primitive men are in: the world, in its nakedness, that is fundamental for all of us -
birth, love, death; the sheer fact of being alive."
*Gary Snyder. 'The Gary Snyder Reader.'
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