Cloud kigo: Alan Summers haiku in Asahi Shimbun (Japan newspaper)

Cloud Kigo©Alan Summers, Bradford on Avon 13th June 2013

Cloud kigo
a light rain patters across
your nightingale floors

Alan Summers
Publication Credits: Asahi Shimbun (Japan, 2013)



"In search of the ultimate season word to associate with clouds, Alan Summers observes how “rain writes its own story across floorboards that sing like a bird.” I like the idea of the cloud kigo. Readers will too. It is always my pleasure to work with you on haiku.”

David McMurray writes a haiku column for the Asahi Newspaper (Asahi Shimbun, Japan). He is also Professor of Intercultural Studies at The International University of Kagoshima (Japan) where he lectures on international haiku.


“season is the soul of haiku”
William J. Higginson (The Haiku Seasons, p20)



The Haiku Seasons
Poetry of the Natural World
by: William J. Higginson
http://www.stonebridge.com/shopexd.asp?id=88

"The Haiku Seasons presents the historical and modern Japanese usage of seasonal themes in poetry. It shows, as nothing else in the literature has done, the growing dialogue between poets in Japan and other countries...An extremely valuable work!"
—Elizabeth Searle Lamb, retired editor, Frogpond


A Little About the Kigo Technique in Haiku
by Alan Summers

Japanese kigo are a strong allusion device (there are others) and can contain cultural and emotional tones of extreme intensity within Japan. The possibilities of kigo as a tool or device of choice, can be equally considered as valid, as any other technique of haiku.

Kisetsu

Kisetsu (season, seasonal aspect)
The seasons. The seasonal aspect of the vocabulary (kigo) and subject matter (kidai) of traditional tanka, renga, and haiku; a deep feeling for the passage of time, as known through the objects and events of the seasonal cycle. [1]

Season words, and the Japanese kigo system, are not only derived from observations of nature, they can allude to a country’s historical, cultural, and literary past.

Haiku are 'seasonal' rather than 'nature' centered poems. If looked at in this way it allows for urban seasonal markers and seasonal celebrations; in other words from this perspective it would be legitimate to compose haiku centered on the human world because the human world is also seasonal.

I feel that non-Japanese haiku can achieve an aspect of kisetsu [1] with seasonal words and phrases.

[1] William J. Higginson with Penny Harter, The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku, published by Kodansha International. Copyright (C) 1989 by William J. Higginson. (p289 & 291)

Amazon USA
http://www.amazon.com/Haiku-Handbook--25th-Anniversary-Edition/dp/4770031130/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371118239&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Haiku+Handbook

Amazon UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Haiku-Handbook-Write-Teach-Appreciate/dp/4770031130/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371118298&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Haiku+Handbook

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Alan Summers, one-line haiku in premier haiku magazine Roadrunner, plus haiku prize

Two of my one-line haiku were accepted for Roadrunner Haiku Journal, a premier publication on haikai literature.



Hirst's butterflies disturbing the exhibits people



chestnut moon shifting in my memory ghost floors

Publication Credits: Roadrunner 12.3 (December 2012)

I have a number of other haiku and short verse under various pseudonyms as part of the MASKS 4 feature.  There'll be a prize for the most guessed correctly.


Roadrunner Haiku Journal was founded and edited by Jason Sanford Brown beginning in 2004. With the first issue of 2009, Scott Metz took over as editor, and has since coedited with Paul Pfleuger, Jr.

R'r is an online journal seeking to publish the best and most diverse in English-language haiku (including senryu, zappai and short poetry inspired by haiku).

Various people have helped make Roadrunner become one of the foremost magazines about contemporary haiku including: Elizabeth Searle Lamb; Jim Kacian; Ferris Gilli; Miriam Sagan; and William J. Higginson.

Weblink to Damien Hirst, global and controversial artist: http://www.damienhirst.com/

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