TED Talk : Transcript from the TEDx video: Amazement of the Ordinary: Life through a haiku lens by Alan Summers

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Amazement of the Ordinary talk on haiku: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxLTiR7AKDE

Transcript from the TEDx video:

Amazement of the Ordinary:  

Life through a haiku lens

“We see things not as they are, but as we are.”
That’s a quote from the Talmud, an ancient text, containing opinions of thousands of rabbis on a variety of subjects.

Now I’m sure many of us have been there, overlooking the ordinary because we feel it’s… well ordinary… mundane, boring, annoying, a distraction, or mostly unnoticed in our busy schedules.

I’d like to talk about how a tiny practice of reading or writing haiku, the world’s shortest type of poetry, can add an extra depth to our world.

I’m adding examples of my own haiku poems to attempt to inject some lateral shift time, as in our linear lives some of us can rarely take time to step off, safely, we’ve just got to keep going even if it kills us, even if it alienates those we love.

Lateral shift?   Bending time?  No.  

It’s just that sometimes we are only aware of how long time is if

1) it’s horribly boring, or

2) we are in great danger. 

This could be your third choice, your third option, and all without a safety net, to have something parallel on your timeline.

mist haze-

a crow cleans its beak

on a rooftop aerial

Ah, perhaps you are a driver, worried you might miss the early morning sights and sounds of birds getting up for their own day ahead?

traffic jam

a driver fingers the breeze

through the sunroof

One of the world’s greatest short story writers, Raymond Carver, back in the old century, wrote about people who worried whether their cars would start in the morning; about unemployment and debt; of individuals who make our day to day life tick.  He never pretended a wonderland still existed but said:  “a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing—a sunset or an old shoe—in absolute and simple amazement.”

Are we not writers of our own life, writing out cheques, or pin numbering our way to coffee and snacks;  those last minute remembered bunch of flowers at a supermarket, to filling our cars with petrol to get somewhere…

an attic window sill

a wasp curls

into its own dust

…and however much we can afford a mortage, or need to pay the landlord…

the rain

almost a friend

this funeral

As the 1931 song says: "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?"

Brother, Sister, can you spare yourself a haiku moment?

sunlight breaks

on a bird

and its portion of the roof

A day consists of 86 thousand and 400 seconds: A haiku is six seconds. 

Try bending some time, maybe on your travels, catching a…

train whistle
a blackbird hops
along its notes

Mary Oliver, a poet, said, from When Death Comes:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

I’d like to end with this last haiku, that takes less than six seconds to say,

and, time me if you’d like…

      this small ache and all the rain too robinsong

–end–

TEDx YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxLTiR7AKDE

Other links:

http://www.ted.com/tedx/events/5181

http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Amazement-of-the-ordinary-life
 

Online courses in haiku and related genres:

Japan Times award-winning writer Alan Summers regularly teaches haiku and tanka, and other popular online courses.  

For more details please contact Karen at:  admin@callofthepage.org

www.callofthepage.org

haiku poetry publication credits:

mist haze-

a crow cleans its beak

on a rooftop aerial

First publication credit: 
Azami journal issue 38 ed. Ikkoku Santo (Osaka, Japan 1996)
Other credits: The Haiku Calendar 2003 (Snapshot Press); Watermark: A Poet’s Notebook - Crows (2004)

Anthology credit: First Australian Online Anthology (1999): Wing Beats: British Birds in Haiku (Snapshot Press, 2008)
Feature: Cornell University, Mann Library, U.S.A. "Daily Haiku" poet (October 2001)

Award credit:

Runner-up, The Haiku Calendar Competition 2002 (Snapshot Press)

traffic jam

a driver fingers the breeze

through the sunroof

Publication credits: Snapshots 2 (1998); tinywords.com (2002)
Anthology credit: The New Haiku (Snapshot Press, 2002)
Feature: Travelogue on World Haiku Festival 2002, Part 2  (Japan, Akita International Haiku Network 2010)

an attic window sill

a wasp curls

into its own dust

Haiku of Merit: Ginko & Kukai event, London, England with Professor Hoshino Tsunehiko (1997)

Publication credits:

Woodpecker Special Issue, Extra Shuttle Issue (Holland, 1997); Snapshots Four  (1998); Swot, arts & literature magazine, Bath Spa University (2007);  Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan (for my birthday, September 16th 2002); tinywords (2002)

Award credit:

Highly Commended, Haiku Collection Competition, Snapshot Press (1998); Joint 7^th Best of Issue, Snapshot Five (1999)

Article: Travelogue on World Haiku Festival 2002 , Part 2  (Akita International Haiku Network, Japan 2010)

Anthologies:

First Australian Online Haiku Anthology (1999); Haiku International 2000 Anthology (Japan 2000); The Omnibus Anthology, Haiku and Senryu, Hub Editions (2001); The New Haiku, Snapshot Press (2002); Raku Teapot: Haiku Book and CD, Raku Teapot Press in association with White Owl Publishing Book (2003); First Australian Haiku Anthology (Paper Wasp 2003)

Feature/Showcase:

Cornell University, Mann Library, U.S. "Daily Haiku" poet (October 2001)

Japanese newspaper article:

Yomiuri Shimbun Go-Shichi-Go On-Line Language Lab (Japan, 2005)

iPad/iPhone/iTunes:

The Haiku Foundation haiku 2012 app

Education: 

HaikuOz Information Kit  HaikuOz, the Australian Haiku Society Getting Started With Haiku.

the rain

almost a friend

this funeral

Award credit: Highly Commended, Haiku Collection Competition, (Snapshot Press 1998)

Joint 9^th Best of Issue, Snapshot Five (1999)

Publication credits: Azami #28 ed. Ikkoku Santo (Osaka, Japan, 1995); Snapshots 4 (1998); tempslibre (2001); Birmingham Words Magazine Issue 3 (Autumn 2004); tempslibre (2010)

Anthology credits: First Australian online Anthology (October 1999); The Omnibus Anthology, haiku and senryu  (Hub Editions Hub Haiku series 2001); Hidden (British Haiku Society Anthology 2002); The New Haiku (Snapshot Press, 2002); First Australian Haiku Anthology (2003); The Temple Bell Stops: Contemporary Poems of Grief, Loss and Change ed. Robert Epstein (Modern English Tanka Press 2012); iTunes The Haiku Foundation THFhaiku app for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch (2011)

Article: Blithe Spirit article On minimalism and other things  DJ Peel Vol 9 No.3 (1999); Travelogue on World Haiku Festival 2002, Part 2  (Japan, Akita International Haiku Network 2010)

Collection credit: The In-Between Season (With Words Pamphlet Series 2012)

Featured Poet: Cornell University, Mann Library, U.S.A. "Daily Haiku" (Oct 2001); Blogging Along Tobacco Road: Alan Summers - Three Questions (2010); Charlotte Digregorio's Writer's Blog Daily Haiku, June 17, 2015

Magazine feature: seven magazine feature: “Three lines of simple beauty” (2006)

la pluie

presqu'une amie

ses funérailles

la pluie

presqu'une amie

à cet enterrement

haiku: Alan Summers

French trans. Serge Tomé

Temps Libre analysis in French:

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/analysis-of-haiku-structure-in-work-of.html

sunlight breaks

on a bird

and its portion of the roof

hi   wa   torini   yane   no   ibasho   ni   sosogi   keri

Romanised version (Romaji) trans.

Hiromi Inoue, Masegawa Kawauchi town, Ehime Prefecture, Japan

Publication credit:

Haigaonline vol. III (2003)
Anthology: Haiku Friends ed. Masaharu Hirata  (Japan 2003)

train whistle
a blackbird hops
along its notes

First publication credit:

Presence journal #47 (2012)

Anthology credits: 

naad anunaad: an anthology of contemporary international haiku ed. Shloka Shankar, Sanjuktaa Asopa, Kala Ramesh (India, 2016)

Last Train Home, an anthology of haiku, tanka and rengay ed. Jacquie Pearce (2020)

In Swedish:

tågvissla
en koltrast skuttar
längs med dess toner

trans. Marcus Liljedahl

Gothenburg, Sweden

theevandiude choolam
oru karutha pakshi thulli
athin swarangalil

Malayalam translation by Narayanan Raghunathan (2012)

neruppu vantiyin choolam
oru karuppu paravai thulliyatu
antha svarangalil

Tamizh translation by Narayanan Raghunathan (2012)

train seeti
ek kale rang ki chidiya naachti
vah svar lahiri me

Hindi translation by Narayanan Raghunathan (2012)

sifflet du train

un merle sautille

au long de ses notes

French translation by Serge Tomé

this small ache and all the rain too robinsong

Note: single line haiku also known as a one-line haiku or monoku

Publication credit: Modern Haiku vol. 44.1 winter/spring 2013

Anthology credit: naad anunaad: an anthology of contemporary international haiku ed. Shloka Shankar, Sanjuktaa Asopa, Kala Ramesh (India, 2016)

robin subsong: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueSGPA2UPDk

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