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)

http://tinywords.com/2015/03/31/18021/

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/dark-news-story-of-crows-and-how-simple.html

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:

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/does-fish-god-know-haiku-collection-by.html

    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.)

weblink: http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Corvus-orru

messenger shooting crows

Alan Summers

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

Does Fish-God Know:

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/new-book-review-of-does-fish-god-know.html

See also:

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/crows-corvids-caretakers-of-world-and.html

Books about crows:

In the Company of Crows and Ravens

by John M Marzluff and Tony Angell

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=0300100760

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

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/jul/28/featuresreviews.guardianreview5

.

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:

www.callofthepage.org

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?

http://www.poetrycoop.com/content/how-do-online-poetry-workshops-work

What is asynchronous learning?

http://www.poetrycoop.com/what-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 21^st 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