Ninth Day: Haiku poetry showcase by Alan Summers at Cornell University USA

A month of haiku poems by Alan Summers at Cornell University USA
 
Cornell University, Mann Library
Supporting learning and research in the life sciences, agriculture, human ecology and applied social sciences: http://mannlib.cornell.edu/


As a poet and writer I often frequent libraries for workshops I'm running or being asked as a guest poet at a reading series.  During one such event I got talking to the library run café manager who had lost her official work keys.   It didn't go down well as you can imagine with the City Council, but I knew she'd need to relax for the rest of the day, and we did manage to have a few laughs about a very stressful situation.


library café–
we swap lost key stories
as my coffee cools

Alan Summers


My wife and myself are roughly equal on misplacing or losing things, but after losing my keys twice in my younger days, I never put my keys anyway but my trouser pocket.  There is something incredibly discomforting about being  less than an inch away from being able to enter your home but for the lack of a bit of metal designed to open up that inch or so of wood that makes for a front door to your home.

image©TheEgyptian

Description	A leather keychain
Date	24 June 2007
Source	Own work
Author	TheEgyptian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Leather_key_chain.JPG

How well do you fare in losing things?
 http://www.iol.co.za/lifestyle/people/losing-our-stuff-losing-our-tempers-1.1262282#.UTt2NIXYw7A


Poem publication credits:
Presence 32  (2007);  Tinywords.com  (2007); The O’Keefe Brief, O’Keefe Library at SAU, St Ambrose University, Iowa, U.S.A. (2007)
.

renga party at the small smaller smallest exhibition

FREE EVENT

Please click the image to see a larger image, and print it for your convenience.

FREE Exhibition & renga party event
(click to go to Library page)

Click here for images of the day: http://www.flickr.com/photos/andreweason/tags/alansummers/

Renga is a relaxing way to pass the time, and a great icebreaker.
Learn a bit about haiku, and poetry in general, while having a good time!
The renga party event happens on Thursday 2nd April 2009 5 p.m. - 7.30 p.m.

When:
Thursday evening
April 2nd
5 p.m. - 7.30 p.m.

Where:
Bristol Central Library (Reference Library)
College Green
Bristol BS1 5TL
Tel. 0117 903 7202

web link: Streetmap: Bristol Central Library


Dusk at the Bristol Central Library©Firefox (http://www.flickr.com/photos/crayzy_ray/)
-
The event is free to everyone.
For further information please don't hesitate to email me at: alan@withwords.org.uk

==============================
Exhibition: Small, Smaller, Smallest
==============================
The exhibition itself runs from:
Sunday 5th April 1:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Thursday 2nd–Saturday 4th 9:30 a.m.- 5:00 p.m.



Artists' Books, Multiples, Private Press Books & Livres D'Artiste evade easy classification and make life interesting for librarians. Small, Smaller, Smallest therefore presents an exhibition of books & multiples from the collections of Bristol Libraries and the University of the West of England, in order of size.


images©Andrew Eason

Timed to coincide with the Bristol Artists' Book Event at Arnolfini (4th-5th April), Small, Smaller Smallest will see books scandalously cheek by jowl with one another which really don't belong together in a library.

Herefordshire Haiku: poems on the move

Library van image by Alan Summers; Emma & myself image by Simon Holroyd.

I met Emma Stevens, Library Learning Officer at Hereford Station, and met up with the mobile library van at Fownhope to start my one day library van haiku poet-in-residence. Here are the five places we visited:



Herefordshire's lovely countryside replete with crows & rooks:


carrion crow call
refracted river-ripples
on the horsechestnut

mist haze -
a crow cleans its beak
on a rooftop aerial

2 haiku by Alan Summers

on a leafless branch
a crow comes to nest -
autumn nightfall

Basho (1644 - 1694) trans. Haruo Shirane

harusame no
dobei hi tomaru
karasu

mud wall perch
in the spring rain
a crow

Shiki Masaoka (1890-1902) English version trans Alan Summers.

The people:

picture by Simon Holroyd
Mrs Hulbert, who paid us a visit, (and helps out at Age Concern), is an artist who was interested in the tradition of combining pictures with haiku known as haiga in Japan.


(Please click onto the pictures for a larger image)
Mrs Hulbert deservedly is awarded a haiku detective badge!

photo by Alan Summers (selfie)

Mrs Slade was the second of my home visits to people unable to get out and visit the library van. Mrs Slade will be 100 in June this year. We also visited Mrs Oxley, in her nineties, who was also great fun, despite her fragility.









Simon Holroyd, the library van driver. It was a shame it was a very wet day, but the visitors we did have made it all worthwhile.

I left some of our haiku detective badges to encourage many more haiku being written at local libraries and with Simon Holroyd on his library van so I hope even more haiku get written.

Herefordshire Haiku: poems on the move

I'm going out on Herefordshire's new mobile library this Saturday, 15th March 2008, meeting people in each location. The van visits a variety of countryside and village locations, and we're going to try and capture some of those surroundings in haiku with the people we meet. The haiku can then be shared and displayed around the county. If you are local, please come and find us, and write a haiku or two!



"Sat, 15 Mar 2008: come along and join Haiku poet Alan Summers on the Mobile Library. Using the fabulous scenery of Herefordshire as inspiration, Alan will be on hand to encourage your imagination and enable you to write your own haiku. Feel free to bring along your own Japanese Haiku poetry, or have a go whilst choosing your books as the mobile visits Fownhope, Goodrich, Lea, Whitchurch and Llangrove."

images from sign-rite

weblink: Council brings Japan to Herefordshire this Easter

myherefordshire.com weblink: Herefordshire Haiku: Poems on the Move

.