Online internet courses by Call of the Page

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, February 19, 2014

Crows and haiku poetry

Ohara Shôson - part image of Crow on a Willow Branch in Snow



































Crows and haiku poetry
by Alan Summers



dark news
the comfort
of crows


Alan Summers
Publication Credit: tiny words 15.1 (March 31st 2015)



floating snowflakes -
the triple caw of a crow
within the tree


Alan Summers
Publication credits:  
Snapshots six (1999); Watermark: a poet's notebook - crows (2004); Mainichi Shimbun (Japan, 2008)




intermittent rain I shed another crow


Alan Summers
Publication Credits: 
Frogpond (magazine of Haiku Society of America, autumn 2013 issue 36:3)




Monet’s Haystacks
a group of crows tug
at twilight


Alan Summers
Publication credits: Asahi Shimbun (Japan, 2010)




powdered snow -
a crow’s eyes above
the no parking sign       


Alan Summers
  
Award credit: Joint Winner, Haiku International Association 10th Anniversary Haiku Contest (Japan, 1999)

Other publication credits: The Mie Times (Japan, 1999); Haiku International (Japan publication, 1999); Watermark: A Poet’s Notebook - Crows (2004); The In-Between Season (With Words Pamphlet Series 2012); Does Fish-God Know (YTBN Press 2012)

Does Fish-God Know:




    early hours crow
         I invoke a prayer
    to its god and mine


From The Crow Walk ©Alan Summers 2006
HAIKU HIKE (World Walks) Part of Crossover UK's 'Renewability' project (2006)

(different earlier versions of the haibun text published in ‘Paper Wasp’ haiku journal, Queensland, Australia 1997; ‘Azami haiku journal’, Osaka, Japan 1998; and ‘Blithe Spirit’ British Haiku Society journal, June 2004.)




fading last note
a torresian crow sounds
the darkening sky


From The Crow Walk ©Alan Summers 2006
HAIKU HIKE (World Walks) Part of Crossover UK's 'Renewability' project (2006)

(different earlier versions of the haibun text published in ‘Paper Wasp’ haiku journal, Queensland, Australia 1997; ‘Azami’ (Osaka, Japan 1998; and ‘Blithe Spirit’ British Haiku Society journal, June 2004.)





messenger shooting crows

Alan Summers
Publication Credits: Roadrunner 12.3 MASKS 4; Does Fish-God Know (YTBN Press 2012)

Does Fish-God Know:


Books about crows:

In the Company of Crows and Ravens
by John M Marzluff and Tony Angell


Crow Country: A Meditation on Birds, Landscape and Nature
by Mark Cocker 


.



Sunday, February 09, 2014

Connecting haiku with prose: online course Land of the Rising Haibun: Setting Japanese Poetry Forms in Prose

To see our current courses and ask for further information do check out our new website:


warmest regards,
Alan & Karen


Online Course:

Land of the Rising Haibun: Setting Japanese Poetry Forms in Prose

weblink: http://www.poetrycoop.com/poetry-workshops/land-rising-haibun-setting-japanese-poetry-forms-prose


How do Rooster Moans online poetry workshops work?

What is asynchronous learning?

Other frequently asked questions:
http://www.poetrycoop.com/faq

 

Japhy says: "A real haiku's gotta be as simple as porridge and yet make you see the real thing." 

Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums 

http://www.amazon.com/Dharma-Bums-Jack-Kerouac/dp/0140042520

 

Land of the Rising Haibun: Setting Japanese Poetry Forms in Prose

http://www.poetrycoop.com/poetry-workshops/land-rising-haibun-setting-japanese-poetry-forms-prose

Dates
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 to Sun, 27 Apr 2014


Robert Lowell said "almost the whole problem of writing poetry is to bring it back to what you really feel, and that takes an awful lot of manoeuvring".

The joy of haibun and its sister form "tanka prose" - and perhaps the reason why they are catching the imagination of writers in English - is that they bring an extra opportunity to manoeuvre, juxtaposing the verse against the prose, creating new works that can even surprise ourselves.Using excerpts, handouts, and examples of haibun, we will delve into the work of famous practitioners such as Matsuo Basho, and from outside Japan, poet/novelist Jack Kerouac and others.

The two prose/poetry forms we'll explore and write are:

Haibun: prose pieces in various styles from prose poetry to journalistic writing, travel writing, diary entries, long fiction through to flash fiction.  These prose narratives usually include one or more haiku inside the body of prose, or can start or conclude the body of prose.

Tanka Prose: fast becoming a 21st Century narrative (with antecedents in history) it combines short 5-line tanka poems that carry over a thousand years of history behind them. Tanka, grounded in concrete images infused with intimacy, and emotion tempered with implication, suggestion, and nuance, leap in and out of linear narrative with lateral, and dynamic, reverie.



Teaching artist Alan Summers resides in Bradford on Avon and is a Japan Times award-winning writer with a Masters Degree in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University. He has studied and written haiku and other Japanese form poetry for over twenty years. Alan has won awards, been published internationally and translated into 15 languages. He helped his American team win Japan Times Best Renga of 2002.

He’s a co-editor of five haiku anthologies: Parade of Life: Poems inspired by Japanese Prints; The Poetic Image - Haiku and Photography; Fifty-Seven Damn Good Haiku, Press Here; Four Virtual Haiku Poets; and c.2.2. Themes of Loss of Identity and/or Name.

Alan has been General Secretary of the British Haiku Society and a Foundation Member of the Australian Haiku Society. Alan has been a Founding Editor of two highly influential haiku magazines, Haijinx, haiku with humor, and Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku.  He is working on The Kigo Lab, a project to use the potential of Western haiku seasons for eco-critical writing.

Alan's latest collections are a haiku pamphlet collection called The In-Between Season (2012), and a haiku and short verse book collection called Does Fish-God Know (2012).

Dates: 
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 to Sun, 27 Apr 2014