A selection of ekphrastic haiku from Monet to netsuke by Alan Summers, Japan Times award-winning writer

Artist: Claude Monet

Artist Info: French, 1840 - 1926
Title: The Bridge at Argenteuil
Dated: 1874
Medium: oil on canvas
Classification: Painting
Credit: Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
Accession No. 1983.1.24
Digitization: Image Use
Open Access

Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Source: Open Access (OA), via National Gallery of Art, Washington

What is Ekphrasis?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekphrasis

I'm running a five week course on ekphrastic haiku at the Quest Gallery:

Quest Gallery | The Ekphrastic Haiku Sessions

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/quest-contemporary-art-gallery-haiku.html

The following haiku are by me, and the idea on completion of the Quest Gallery course is to produce ekphrastic haiku by the participants which will go into the exhibition catalogue providing a legacy for both participants, visitors, and the gallery.


Monet’s Haystacks
a group of crows tug
at twilight

Alan Summers
Publications credits: Asahi Shimbun (Japan 2010)



Monet’s pain–
the shadows of haybales
lengthening the sunset

Alan Summers
Publications credits: The Bath Burp: Poetry, Music & Arts Monthly Issue No. 10 (2012)
 

The painting that inspired me from the time I saw it at this museum:
http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=1088&handle=li 

Monet's Pain: 
http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=260 

[Monet] remained loyal to the Impressionists' early goal of capturing the transitory effects of nature through direct observation. In 1890 he began creating paintings in series, depicting the same subject under various conditions and at different times of the day.

His late pictures, made when he was half-blind, are shimmering pools of color almost totally devoid of form. 


Discover... Claude Monet:  

http://www.impressionist-art-gallery.com/claude_monet.html 

 




Van Gogh’s wheatfield
the width of a hand fills
with crows

Alan Summers
Publications credits:  The Bath Burp: Poetry, Music & Arts Monthly Issue No. 10 (2012)



Waterloo sunset
the Thames disappears
from the Tube map

Alan Summers
Publications credits: haijinx  vol III issue 1 (2010); Across the Haikuverse, No. 10: Bleak Midwinter Edition (2011)

Newspaper article: http://travelblog.dailymail.co.uk/2009/09/who-stole-the-river-thames-from-the-london-tube-map.html





the blue
of the aubergine
a spider is caught
in the netsuke

Victoria and Albert Museum

Alan Summers







 Publications credits: Snapshots Seven (2000)

netsuke...
the hare with amber eyes
jumps back in again

Alan Summers
Publications credits: Mainichi Shimbun (Japan 2011)

Quest Gallery | The Ekphrastic Haiku Sessions

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