A selection of haiku, by Alan Summers, published by Asahi Shimbun, Japan, between 2010 and 2013

 

The Asahi Shimbun literally Morning Sun Newspaper, is one of the five national newspapers in Japan. Its circulation, which was 7.96 million for its morning edition and 3.1 million for its evening edition as of June 2010, was second behind that of Yomiuri Shimbun.

Monet's Haystacks At Chailly 1865

Monet's Haystacks

a group of crows tug

at twilight

rook chatter
tracking each snowflake
to the end

first quarter moon
dancing pinheads burst
into new angel DNA

Also published in Does Fish-God Know (YTBN Press 2012)

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









river festival  
just a birdsong afternoon  
and talk of hedgehogs

Fraser Island
the pre-sunset whine
of mosquitoes

Fraser Island: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraser_Island

Upolu Cay
my own skeletons
unearthing

About Michaelmas and Upolu

www.nprsr.qld.gov.au/parks/michaelmas-upolu-cays/about.html

green clouds
the scarecrow worries
a loose thread

Maple moon

Grandmother’s recipe

settles in the pan

This was also published by the Hailstone Haiku Group, Japan

Early morning rain

the sound between

the sound

Night clouds

a spider shows me

the harvest moon

Cloud kigo

a light rain patters across

your nightingale floors

"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, Asahi Shimbun

David McMurray has been writing the Asahi Haikuist Network column since April 1995, first for the Asahi Evening News. He is also the editor of OUTREACH, a bi-monthly column featuring international teachers in The Language Teacher of the Japan Association for Language Teacher (JALT).

He is professor of intercultural studies at The International University of Kagoshima where he lectures on international haiku. At the Graduate School he supervises students who research haiku. He is a correspondent school teacher of Haiku in English for the Asahi Culture Center in Tokyo.

Call of the Page runs popular online courses in haiku, tanka and other related poetry.

Please don't hesitate to contact Karen for further information: 

admin@callofthepage.org

www.callofthepage.org

. 

A selection of haiku short verse poems around BIRDSONG and the SOUND OF BIRDS

BIRDSONG and the SOUND OF BIRDS -
A Series of haiku around birds and birdlife 

sunflower heart

the chiffchaff sings

its name

Alan Summers

tinywords 13.2 2013  (ISSN 2157-5010)

eJournal/eMagazine San Mateo, CA : D.F. Tweney : El Camino Press

http://tinywords.com/2013/09/13/13405/

Chiffchaff song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_C2Z9PWEaM
http://www.bto.org/about-birds/bird-id/willow-warbler-chiffchaff


Chiffchaff/Common Chiffchaff:
http://www.garden-birds.co.uk/birds/chiffchaff.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Chiffchaff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Chiffchaff

roll of the apple…

I decide to let birdsong

back out of the box

Alan Summers

Under the Basho Vol 1.1 Autumn 2013

http://www.underthebasho.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=70&Itemid=90

an up-too-late moon

the blackbird whispers its song

as I stumble home

Alan Summers

Yamadera Basho Memorial Museum (Japan 2013)

this small ache and all the rain too robinsong

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Modern Haiku vol. 44.1 winter/spring 2013

         cool morning

birdsong

light on a distant cloud

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Modern Haiku, (1999); Azami Haiku in English Commemorative Issue  (Japan 2000); Birmingham Words Magazine Issue 3 (Autumn 2004); Birdsong - a haiku sequence  Together They Stood, Poetry Now (2004); Haiku Friends Vol. 3 ed. Masaharu Hirata (Japan  2009)

down side streets -

gulls turning the sky

in and out

Alan Summers

Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years. Ed. Jim Kacian, Allan Burns & Philip Rowland (W. W. Norton & Company 2013) http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=4294972241; The Disjunctive Dragonfly, a New Approach to English-Language Haiku by Richard Gilbert (Red Moon Press 2012) [Elemental Animsim p80] http://www.redmoonpress.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=32&products_id=179

cumulus clouds

a clattering of jackdaws

rearrange their pattern

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Blithe Spirit  vol. 20 no. 3 (2010)

note:

An archaic collective noun for a group of Jackdaws is a "clattering."

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Jackdaw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackdaw

First recorded in John Lydgate's Debate between the Horse, Goose and Sheep, c.1430, as "A clatering of chowhis", and then in Juliana Berners Book of St. Albans, c.1480, as "a Clateryng of choughes."

A "clattering" of Jackdaws:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thekrankis/4375039089/

Other names for Jackdaws include caddesse, cawdaw, caddy, chauk, college-bird (from dialectal college "cathedral"), jackerdaw, jacko, ka-wattie, chimney-sweep bird, from their nesting propensities, and sea-crow, from their frequenting coasts. ..or just plain "Jack"

talkwildlife.com: http://www.talkwildlife.com/photo/a-clattering-of-jackdaws

four rosellas distant sounds to blue

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Azami #34 (Japan 1996)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosella

through an open window

a kookaburra laugh

enters

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Frogpond (Haiku Society of America journal, Summer 1994); Scope Feature (FAWQ, Australia, 1994); Micropress magazine; Micropress: best poems Ed. Kate O'Neill, Micropress NZ (1997; Moonlighting; sundog haiku journal: an australian year  (sunfast press 1997 reprinted 1998);   California State Library - Main Catalog Call Number : HAIKU S852su 1997

Kookaburra calls:   

http://www.soundboard.com/sb/KooKaburra_sound_clips

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feJZ7heOK2I

Seven Sisters the call of owls either side

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Blithe Spirit (British Haiku Society journal, March 2012)

train whistle
a blackbird hops
along its notes

Alan Summers

Publications credits:

Presence #47 (2012): The Haiku Foundation Per Diem (September 2012): The Elements

V to U

a parliament of rooks

shift their flight

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Icebox, Hailstone Haiku Group, Japan (2010)

Selected by Hisashi Miyazaki

fading last note

torresian crow sounds

the darkening sky

Alan Summers

Publications credits: Paper Wasp (Australia 1997); Azami (Japan 1998); Blithe Spirit, (June 2004); Shamrock Haiku Journal, Irish Haiku Society, Spring 2006; Sketchbook, A Journal  for Eastern & Western Short Forms Nov. 2007; Haiku Hike; THFhaiku app for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch (2011)

Calls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=079uBwOi2w8

Torresian Crow: http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/speciesfactsheet.php?id=5786

http://www.graemechapman.com.au/library/viewphotos.php?c=85

the names of rain

a blackbird’s subsong

into dusk

Publications credits: Haiku News Vol. 1 No. 35 (September 2012); featured poet at Cornell University USA (Cornell University, Mann Library haiku showcase March 2013.)

haiku news: http://www.wayfarergallery.net/haikunews/?p=4018

http://www.wayfarergallery.net/haikunews/?tag=alan-summers

subsong soundtrack: http://tinyurl.com/blackbirdsubsong

 

A Blackbird in the rain...

Al.

Alan Summers, a Japan Times award-winning writer, regularly runs online classes and workshops on haiku, and related genres such as tanka, haibun, and tanka prose.  

For further information, please don't hestitate to contact Call of the Page Course Director Karen Hoy, who will only be too delighted to send you information about these intriguing short verse poetry genres.

Karen's email: admin@callofthepage.org

.

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.