Haiku: Somewhere a clock is ticking
Title inspired by:
Snow Patrol’s Somewhere a clock is ticking
Why the title for this blog post?
Ever since Masaoka Shiki adopted a little known term for a new poetry to come out of the older classical haikai literature of Matsuo BashÅ things have never stood still. Haiku keeps time, both its own time, and the time where society is or maybe going.
Masaoka Shiki
Extracts about hokku and haiku:
Columbia University Press
Columbia University Press
The hokku of Basho, and those before him and up to Shiki, was fixed in the pre-industrial era, and the force of nature, and was always more of a form than a genre. Haiku is contradictorary a form that doesn’t, and cannot, stay fixed, yet is more than just a general genre. Haiku came about in the new world of early globalisation, and the Industrial Revolution, quickly followed by the various technological advances of the 20th Century. Haiku became so flexible, and challenging its own ‘form’ and ‘perceived genre’ that it keep up and go beyond mere social fads, and social media. It’s a poem and a record of evolving times.
Haiku [plural spelling as well as the spelling for a single haiku] is the strange and wild; surreal; and even wilder; avant garde; gendai; political; social commentary; social conscience; socio-political; the seasons of nature and the seasons of society; it’s conscience writing; a writer of conscience; contemporary poetry, and at the same time rooted in a classical tradition. It’s a chameleon of poetry and should never be pinned down because it’s the challenge and not the conquest. Mastery is an illusion and not an end goal. We need to be in constant beginner mode, and if we need to master anything it’s ourselves, and to always get back to zero, to the beginning, always the beginning.
Haiku, the new poetry that came at the same time as the industrial revolutions, and changed everything, and got caught up in the fight against suppression of voice:
New Rising Haiku
Forgive, But Do Not Forget
The Evolution of Modern Japanese Haiku and the Haiku Persecution Incidents:
The G-force of Blue | Touching Base with Gendai haiku
In Part I there is a selection of my work across four major online contemporary haiku magazines that have or are changing the face of this already modern genre of poetry.
Haiku:
Part I: Somewhere a clock is ticking
- Roadrunner
- is/let
- Bones
- moongarlic
Roadrunner
ground zero into the new friend's story
Alan Summers
Journal credit:
Masks 4 (Roadrunner 12.3 – December 2012)
Anthology credits:
in fear of dancing: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2013
ISBN: 978-1-946848-24-9
Haiku 2014 ed. Scott Metz & Lee Gurga (Modern Haiku Press, 2014)
Book Award Credit:
(Joint) Winner
The Touchstone Distinguished Books Award 2014
Lee Gurga and Scot Metz, editors of Haiku 2014, asked a simple question with complex undertones: “what can haiku be?” The question, of course, dwells in possibility: it is tinged with future, as: what do the haiku which interest us most tell us about the new directions the form is beginning to take? But it is also grounded in the vibrant present, a question a child might ask upon coming across a strange creature for the first time: what is it?
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Hirst's butterflies disturbing the exhibits people
Alan Summers
Journal Credits:
Roadrunner 12.3 (December 2012); Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts Vol.1, No.1 February 2013
Collection: Does Fish-God Know (Yet To Be Named Free Press 2012)
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chestnut moon shifting in my memory ghost floors
Alan Summers
Journal Credits: Roadrunner 12.3 (December 2012); LAKEVIEW International Journal of Literature and Arts Vol.1, No.1 February 2013
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messenger shooting crows
Alan Summers
Publication Credits: Roadrunner 12.3 MASKS 4
Solo Collection: Does Fish-God Know (YTBN Press 2012)
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sloe-eyed horses in Lichtenstein bubble gum wrappers
Alan Summers
Journal Credit: Roadrunner 12.3 MASKS 4 (2012)
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end of matins
I decode into genomes
into petals
Alan Summers
First publication: Roadrunner 12.3 MASKS 4 (2012)
Second Publication: Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku Issue 0.1 2012 reissued 2013
Collection title: Does Fish-God Know (Yet To Be Named Free Press 2012)
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soul her fish fingers to the second knuckle
Alan Summers
Journal Credit: Roadrunner 12.3 MASKS 4 (2012)
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all those red apples amongst the blue tit
Alan Summers
n.b. Titmice are related to Chickadees
Journal credit: Roadrunner 12.3 MASKS 4 (2012); Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku Issue 0.1 2012 reissued 2013
Collection title: Does Fish-God Know (Yet To Be Named Free Press 2012)
Feature:
all those red apples | travelling the monorail - haiku travelling in one line:
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a toy I made I was your only child
Alan Summers
Journal Credit: Roadrunner 12.3 MASKS 4
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is/let
she carries the warm gun’s child
Alan Summers
Journal Credit: is/let ed. Scott Metz (January 2017)
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the glass child
sometimes just being held
as winter arrives
Alan Summers
Journal Credit: is/let ed. Scott Metz (January 2017)
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Bones
journal for contemporary haiku
Alan Summers, co-founder and editor emeritus
my spare self
a vegetarian
on a meatship
Alan Summers
Journal credit: Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku Issue 0.1 2012 reissued 2013
Collection title: Does Fish-God Know (Yet To Be Named Free Press 2012)
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nitrating cellulose
and emulsion
new illnesses in the wind
Alan Summers
Publications credits: Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku Issue 0.1 2012 reissued 2013
Collection title: Does Fish-God Know (Yet To Be Named Free Press 2012)
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all those red apples amongst the blue tit
Alan Summers
n.b. Titmice are related to Chickadees
Reprinted: Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku Issue 0.1 2012 reissued 2013
First publication: Roadrunner 12.3 MASKS 4 (2012)
Collection title: Does Fish-God Know (Yet To Be Named Free Press 2012)
Feature:
all those red apples | travelling the monorail - haiku travelling in one line:
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end of matins
I decode into genomes
into petals
Alan Summers
Second Publication: Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku Issue 0.1 2012 reissued 2013
First publication: Roadrunner 12.3 MASKS 4 (2012)
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giallo this restricted area my birthplace
Alan Summers
n.b.
What is a Giallo Movie, and Why Should You Watch One?
Publications credits: Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku Issue 0.1 2012 reissued 2013
Collection title: Does Fish-God Know (Yet To Be Named Free Press 2012)
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Os Sacrum
this pear on Plato’s diaphragm
Alan Summers
n.b.
Os Sacrum
According to Plato's philosophy, the soul has three basic parts, or levels of expression. Located in the solar plexus, between the diaphragm and the navel, the Gastric Center is the seat of the lower part of the mortal soul, or what Plato called the Appetitive Soul. It's also the seat of personal power, ambition and drive, which seeks to conquer all and assimilate it into oneself…and sparkles with the fire of a million jewels: http://www.greekmedicine.net/b_p/Greek_Chakras.html
Publications credits: Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku Issue 0.1 2012 reissued 2013
Collection title: Does Fish-God Know (Yet To Be Named Free Press 2012)
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morning moon
I think I met the man
who kills you
Alan Summers
Journal credit: Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku Issue 0.1 2012 reissued 2013
Collection title: Does Fish-God Know (Yet To Be Named Free Press 2012)
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h=k=l=0 each love number sleeps
Alan Summers
Journal credit: Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku Issue 0.1 2012 reissued 2013
Collection title: Does Fish-God Know (Yet To Be Named Free Press 2012)
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Rethink
my clothes black
with crows
Alan Summers
Journal credit: Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku Issue 0.1 2012 reissued 2013
Collection title: Does Fish-God Know (Yet To Be Named Free Press 2012)
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quickthorn my cardiac sufficiency for rain
Alan Summers
Journal credit: Bones Journal issue 1 (December 2012)
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regenesis the child from without primeval soup
Alan Summers
Journal credit: Bones Journal issue 2 (June 2013)
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tearing up snow falls slowly a kind of blue
Alan Summers
Journal Credit: Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku No. 3 (December 2013)
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my inevitable death mayflies
Alan Summers
Publication Credit: Bones 6 (March 15, 2015)
i.m. Terry Pratchett OBE (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015)
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700,000 olive trees remember the butterfly
Alan Summers
n.b. Eco-killers and the Anthropocene.
Publication Credit:
Bones - journal for contemporary haiku no. 7 (July 15th 2015)
700,000 oliviers se souviennent du papillon
French translation by Serge Tome
Anthology credit: EarthRise Rolling Haiku Collaboration 2016 Foodcrop Haiku
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I once was this stone home for another
Alan Summers
Journal Credit:
Bones - journal for contemporary haiku no.7 (July 2015)
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robins outside the Christmas cards
Alan Summers
n.b. European Robin - symbol of Christmas
Journal Credit:
Bones - journal for contemporary haiku no. 7 (July 2015)
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dragonfly army I slip off the skins of men in pain
Alan Summers
Journal Credit:
Bones - journal for contemporary haiku no. 7 (July 2015)
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Ticking Moon
conjugating verbs
across a battlefield
matins moon
a child looms large
in collerateral damages
hunkered moon
transcribed notes
in every hymn sheet
politicians moon
a people’s moon
the song of blackbirds
in every trench
cobweb moon
a man’s opening lines
fill with mortar
a list of people
paper the tunnels
neglected moon
cullingmoonmanycolorsuniform
we learn to adjust
the clocks of our hands
borrowed moon
Alan Summers
Ticking Moon sequence:
Journal Credit: Bones 7 (July 2015)
we learn to adjust haiku:
Anthology Credit: Heart Breaths: Book of Contemporary Haiku ed. Jean LeBlanc
ISBN: 9789385945038 (Cyberwit March 2016)
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moongarlic
moongarlic is an E-zine for short verse, art, word sculptures, photographs, propaganda, for the unwanted, the crazy, the lonely, the good, the bad, the psycho-tropically challenged, the loaded, the clean, the dirty, the hair washers, the head shavers, the fakers, the shakers, the laminated takers . .
day moon
a crow slices
half of it
Alan Summers
Journal Credit:
moongarlic issue 5 November 2015
From The Eight Assassins haibun
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a
fairy
tale
full
of
tires
burning
Alan Summers
Journal Credit:
moongarlic E-zine, Issue: 1
Issue: 1, Nov 2013 ISSN 2052-675X Nov 5th. 2013
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my amber resin exit button
Alan Summers
Journal Credit:
moongarlic E-zine, Issue: 1
Issue: 1, Nov 2013 ISSN 2052-675X Nov 5th. 2013
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the smaller hours
when others sleep deeply
the dots I join
Alan Summers
Journal Credit: Moongarlic issue 5 (November 2015)
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Today I sail through your mouth
Alan Summers
Journal Credit:
moongarlic E-zine, Issue: 1
Issue: 1, Nov 2013 ISSN 2052-675X Nov 5th. 2013
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a
n
o
n
y
m
o all the lost names
u another building ticks
s adjusting to change
Shahai art:
Photo + Haiku = Shahai å俳
sha … from shashin (photo) åç
hai … from haiku 俳å¥
photograph by Karen Hoy
words by: Alan Summers
Journal Credit:
moongarlic E-zine, Issue: 6
May 2016 ISSN 2052-675X
weblink to the artwork:
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For information on various courses taught by Alan Summers please feel free to contact Karen Hoy at: admin@callofthepage.org
