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Are you interested in a Call of the Page course? We run courses on haiku; tanka; tanka stories/prose; haibun; shahai; and other genres.

Please email Karen or Alan at our joint email address: admin@callofthepage.org
We will let you know more about these courses.

Call of the Page (Alan & Karen)

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

The Poetry School Renga workshop

 

With a nod and thanks to Alec Finlay for his inspiration
and superb renga book: shared writing: renga days


Slug and Lettuce renga
(see below)
Renga Sabaki: Alan Summers
participants:

  • June Hall
  • Libby Houston
  • Donald Gibson
  • Linda Saunders
  • Be Mattingly
  • Lynette Rees
  • Karen Hoy


Nijuin Renga
A renga is a series of very short verses, linked into one long poem, composed collaboratively by a group. 'Nijuin' means a 20-verse renga created by 20th Century renga master Meiga Higashi. He considered the Nijuin renga to be the shortest form that could be both contemporary yet capture some of the classic feel of renga.

There are three movements in Nijuin Renga: a four verse section; a twelve verse; and another four verse section. We started in Spring going through the seasons, as well as writing love, and moon verses, to end back in Spring.
The intrepid rengaistas get their first few verses down:

 

Reflective rengaistas*
(*Alec Finlay's term for renga poets)



More thinking and working out a verse
that has to both link and shift!
 



Renga fun moments!
Although we look serious and reflective at times,
there was a lot of fun too, especially with the 'love verses'.


Action renga!


 

Last verse! Then some of us went on to Yen Sushi,
it's a hard life for rengaistas!


Nijuin Renga


A renga is a series of very short verses, linked into one long poem, composed  collaboratively by a group.

'Nijuin' means a 20-verse renga created by 20th Century renga master Meiga Higashi.  He considered the Nijuin renga to be the shortest form that could be both contemporary yet capture some of the classic feel of renga.

There are three movements in Nijuin Renga: a four verse section; a twelve verse; and another four verse section. We started in Spring going through the seasons, as well as writing love and moon verses, to end back in Spring.

This was composed jointly by the Poetry School workshop led by Alan Summers, which met in the Slug & Lettuce Restaurant in Bath in April 2008.


four hundred species

nesting gulls–
leaves carved
in Bath Stone

demolition reveals
hills and archaeology

we've lost the moon
on the way
to the station

cherry muffin
or wasabi peas

ninety-three million miles
is too close
sometimes

cider-headed
stuck in the hedge again

collapsed
in the middle
of a banking crisis

warm tattoos
Harley lovers' engines purr

text me
fizzed the love heart
on my tongue

all the screens in Curry's
have gone dark

the imprint
of a departed leaf
on the pavement

bracken light
kipper smoke

in their window
the luminous goose
rivals the moon

breaking cups
screams below

tea time
limbs thrown
in the cauldron

fleecy vests wait
for the coming child

we are hiding
from chaos
behind the sofa

a really thorough
one-eighth spring clean

four hundred species
of dandelion
ready to tell the time

are cuckoos
allowed?


Renga Sabaki: Alan Summers

Participants:

June Hall
Libby Houston
Donald Gibson
Linda Saunders
Be Mattingley
Lynette Rees
Karen Hoy

Breaking news as of May 2012:

Libby Houston wins major award:

The Linnean Society is one of the premier scientific societies in the world, whose mission is the cultivation of the science of natural history in all its branches. 

Libby Houston is also a great poet:

Other poets:

June Hall:

Linda Saunders:

Lynette Rees:

Donald Gibson (St. Andrews University):
‘Pseudo-statement or Creative Misreading: What Happens to Science in Poetry?’  

Karen Hoy works in TV Development and is a published haiku poet:
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/karen-hoy-appears-in-major-new-haiku.html 

Bea aka Be Mattingly is an adventurer and adores bikers.

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