Online internet courses by Call of the Page

Are you interested in a Call of the Page course? We run courses on haiku; tanka; tanka stories/prose; haibun; shahai; and other genres.

Please email Karen or Alan at our joint email address: admin@callofthepage.org
We will let you know more about these courses.

Call of the Page (Alan & Karen)

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

The G-force of Blue | Touching Base with Gendai haiku by Alan Summers


The G-force of Blue | Touching Base with Gendai haiku


Gendai: 
現代 (hiragana げんだい, romaji gendai) : the present day, modern times, today

“Through the horrors, persecutions and travails of war, the postwar gendai movement arose [ ] — creatively mixing ancient with contemporary aesthetics, language and philosophy.”

What is gendai haiku to a non-Japanese person?  It didn’t arise out of the horrors of war in Britain (or America), though we can still suffer persecution, closed minds, fear, a cultural awakening to gross misconduct by our pillars of society, and blunt opportunistic profiteering.

“Such questions as how a nature poetics might deal with urban contexts, species extinction, globalization, mechanized war — and, questions of the relevance of haiku (if not poetry) to modernity are implicitly addressed by [ ] poets [ ]: Hoshinaga's indigenous mytho-animistic conception of kotodama shinkô, Tsubouchi's linguistic concept of katokoto, and Hasegawa's 'world of mind,' [which] hopefully offer new avenues of insight for haiku, ecocriticism, and literature as a whole.”

Both above quotes from Gendai Haiku Project Précis: Aims by Richard Gilbert, Ph.D
Faculty of Letters, Kumamoto University, Japan     http://gendaihaiku.com

The Gendai approach, I feel, is a companion to consider, alongside the more familiar haiku we find comfort in, along with occasional senryu.

"Kiyoko Uda has been at the forefront of haiku's growing popularity among younger poets for the past several decades. She recently became president of the Modern Haiku Association--the most avant-garde of Japan's major haiku organizations.”

William J. Higginson, author, The Haiku Handbook, The Haiku Seasons, Haiku World.

Kiyoko Uda says of gendai haiku:
“It should be our method that we create haiku which match the times. This is not a new idea and was prevalent in the old days; even Sanki Saito wrote about it before the association existed.

Sanki believed: ‘To the difficult question 'what is new?’

I will answer: the new means how the emotions of today's society and people are expressed to fit the times. The haiku must be innovative in any time. So we should begin and continue to express the emotions of the people of this time and generation."

Kiyoko Uda, President, Modern Haiku Association, Tokyo, JAPAN
(Gendai Haiku, S.21.10) English Translation: Akiko Takazawa

敵の数だけの野菊をもち帰る  
てきのかずだけののぎくをもちかえる
teki noka kazu dake no nogiku o mochi kaeru

bringing back
wild chrysanthemum – only
the number of enemies

Uda Kiyoko (宇多 喜代子)
Richard Gilbert and Itô Yûki (trans.) 2007


Rough transliteration of this verse by Alan Summers

bring back as many
wild chrysanthemums
as enemies
(use only frogs)


Note:
The Chrysanthemum Throne is the name given to the position of the Japanese Emperor; in Imperial Japan, small arms were required to be stamped with the Imperial Chrysanthemum, as they were considered the personal property of the Emperor; the chrysanthemum is the seasonal flower of September; the formal surrender of Japan in WWII (2 September 1945); and September was regularly a key month throughout World War Two for Japan.

Many pre-Gendai haiku poets of the New Rising Haiku movement (shinkô haiku undô), were tortured, sometimes to death, as they didn’t support the growing Japanese corporate powers wanting to force their country into the Second World War. Who are the enemies now, for all of us, in time of war, both domestic and foreign? Even our internal workings can be in conflict with what we do and cause in our external lives.

Links
The Evolution of Modern Japanese Haiku and the Haiku Persecution Incidents
http://gendaihaiku.com/ito/new-rising-haiku.htm
http://www.simplyhaiku.com/SHv5n4/features/Ito.html
http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/files/original/5779bf2c255e96c09ec32bc2e055b037.pdf

Gendai Haiku Translations
Translated by Richard Gilbert and Itô Yûki

Forgive, but Do Not Forget: Modern Haiku and Totalitarianism

An Interview with Richard Gilbert by David F. Hoenigman

New Rising Haiku/Gendai Haiku by Melissa Allen

Innovators in English-language haiku: Gendai or not gendai...

Shinko and Gendai Haiku

Haiku — Take Five Brilliant Corners
by Richard Gilbert, Japan (scroll down)
http://www.hsa-haiku.org/frogpond/backissues/32-3-Frogpond-Fall2009.pdf 


The Disjunctive Dragonfly: A Study of Disjunctive Method and Definitions in Contemporary English-language Haiku
Richard Gilbert, Kumamoto University
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard_Gilbert11/publication/237303353_The_Disjunctive_Dragonfly_A_Study_of_Disjunctive_Method_and_Definitions_in_Contemporary_English-language_Haiku/links/550bf87f0cf2b2450b4e32ab.pdf?origin=publication_list 


Saito Masaya talks with Udo Wenzel including war haiku:
http://www.chrysanthemum-haiku.net/media/Chrysanthemum%203.pdf 

Further Reading on Haiku (Rattle Magazine)

SURREALISM & CONTEMPORARY HAIKU ~ OR ~
SURREAL HAIKU? 
by Philip Rowland 

Poems of Consciousness
A Review by Johnye Strickland
 

Haiku's American Frontier by Paul Miller

The Haiku Universe for the 21st Century
by Modern Haiku Association


Alan Summers‬‬‬ 
I wonder if the engine of haiku is simply choosing wisely from the slew of techniques and devices available, and as any serious poet would be, mindful of each word, and of the power of poetry as a force beyond the sum of its parts. I really liked this from Richard, and to paraphrase it, or hijack it, to say that haiku poetry “opposes closure, opposes definition, opposes completeness and finality.”


Pharmakós the name you scratch inside
Alan Summers, Does Fish-God Know (Yet To Be Named Press 2012)


Note:
This allusive one-line haiku touches on a senior military officer’s poem after witnessing the 911 Pentagon attack. His poem is now part of the joint renga and art project led by writers and artists such as Bob Holman and Jeff Koons.



麦よ死は黄一色と思い込む
むぎよしはきいっしょくとおもいこむ
mugi yo shi wa ki isshoku to omoikomu

wheat –
realizing death as one color
gold

Uda Kiyoko (宇多 喜代子)
Richard Gilbert and Itô Yûki (trans.) October 29, 2007


corn chaff realising oil as one colour
Alan Summers, Does Fish-God Know (YTBN Press 2012)


I've always felt the term rapeseed for a flower was disturbing, and reminds me that in some cultures both Western and otherwise, a raped woman is not allowed to have an abortion if she so chooses. That's a vile sentence to add upon the one of complete desecration.  Sadly there is no age limit to a person being raped.


field of dreams an unborn child's color isn't rapeseed

[one line haiku aka monoku]

Alan Summers
Monostich (May 2011)


Anthology credit: EarthRise Rolling Haiku Collaboration 2016 Foodcrop Haiku http://www.thehaikufoundation.org/international-haiku-poetry-day/

Collection: Does Fish-God Know (Yet To Be Named Free Press 2012):


Gendai haiku in Japan is written by perhaps just over a third of the haiku writing population, and covers a wide variety of subjects, and often includes kigo.  Surreal gendai haiku is a parallel genre or sub-genre as many gendai haiku are raw unforgiving social realism covering modern/contemporary topics. Tohta Kaneko, influenced by Issa, combines the nature of Issa with the nature of his ongoing contemporary society of post-war Japan.

“Mr. Kaneko believed that Issa obtained the greatest degree of sensitivity to life, what Mr. Kaneko calls “raw perceptions of living beings.” ( ikimono kankaku).”
Part I: The Romance of Primitivism: Tohta Kaneko’s Ikimonofûei, Notes from the Gean 13: June 2012; VIEWS, Jack Galmitz  pub.Cyberwit ISBN 978-81-8253-314-1 (2012)


死にし骨は海に捨つべし沢庵噛む
Shinishi hone wa umi ni sutsubeshi takuan kamu

Kaneko Tohta 金子兜太

dead bones into the sea I chew pickled radish

English version Alan Summers


This haiku is about the horrific aftermath of WWII Japan suffering atomic attack radiation in some parts, and food shortages and extreme poverty across Japan. Pickled radish is very loud when chewed, like bones being crunched, and human bones were disposed of in the sea.  Hunger, and no choice but to dispose of so many bodies, became an unforgiving duet of death and informed much of Kaneko’s post-war work.

Where are our dreams, where do they go in war? While everything changes nothing changes, and the gendai practitioners are keen to capture this disparity in our supposed civilisations utilising any contemporary phenomenon in their path.

Where in fact does religion end and science take over, should it, will it?


end of matins
I decode into genomes
into petals

Alan Summers, Does Fish-God Know (YTBN Press 2012)

Gendai haiku isn’t just about the horrors of war, that may never leave some of us, or of all the cruel social issues that abound in this world: But should we be allowed to overlook how we’ve dragged the excesses of the 20th Century into this new opportunity of the 21st Century?



梅咲いて庭中に青鮫が来ている

ume sai te niwajû ni aozame ga kite iru

Kaneko Tohta 金子兜太

plum blossom
blue sharks also visit
this family garden

English version Alan Summers


Blue sharks are also Requiem Sharks, and a Requiem is known as Mass for the dead, while the Latin also means "rest", so perhaps the sharks are blossom viewing? The plum blossom is associated with the start of spring, because they are some of the first blossoms to open during the year: In the Tokyo area, they typically flower in February and March. Dhugal Lindsay suggests the blue sharks are playful suggestions of a weak new spring sun.  Perhaps then, blue sharks are neologistic seasonal words adding humour to potential kigo, that many Japanese writers try out every year.

“While, given the clear seasonal reference, it is not difficult to grasp the sense-impression of biting cold from the Daliesque image of blue sharks in the garden [. . .] demanding a      [. . .] bold imaginative leap on the part of the reader. Like much of the best surrealist art, it manages to be at once powerfully disturbing and humorous.” Philip Rowland (“Surreal Haiku?” Roadrunner 9.3)

As humans, we often enjoy nature within a park or on a ramble, or within a natural history documentary, if we are not the actual film crew, but really many of us are unnerved by the raw stuff invading our own personal and private spaces e.g.


Hirst's butterflies disturbing the exhibits people
Alan Summers, Roadrunner 12.3 (2013)


I observed people at Damien Hirst’s exhibit at the Tate Modern become intimidated by butterflies around them.  Despite flying/floating slowly and delicately around a constrained space of light, beautiful, harmless and fragile, the butterflies had people spooked, visibly uncomfortable. Was the whole purpose to make the audience an unintentional art installation, their uneasiness on display?  Are we too removed from nature in its real state,  in an over mechanised, gadgetized cushioned world, rarely admitting to conditions elsewhere that are contrary to a 21st Century experience?

Gendai haiku is evolving in the West, and will inform and complement, not compete or threaten the currently accepted haiku genre format.   We carry many memories, and I wonder if we still carry too much of our lizard brain? The human Lizard-Brain has been evolving for around 285 million years, and is similar in power and concept to the total brain capacity of a modern lizard.   Gendai haiku is perhaps another way around the lizard brain still in us, and its approaches may in time be a welcome travelling companion, alongside more familiar haiku practices.



chestnut moon shifting in my memory ghost floors


The G-force of Blue | Touching Base with Gendai haiku was originally published in Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts Vol.1, No.1 February 2013 and forms part of the Amazement & Intensity Course/Project by Alan Summers.

This article is also in memory of Shimada Seihô (1882-1944) who died from his torture treatment.


More recent gendai or experimental haiku:




depleted plutonium       消耗したプルトニウム
the creases in a photo       写真のしわ
run across a face        顔を横切る

Alan Summers
Honorable Mention
2nd World Haiku Association Haiku Contest 2017
Main judge: Ban’ya Natsuishi WHA Home Office 3-16-11 Tsuruse-nishi, Fujimi, Saitama, Japan








an angel’s kiss birthmark a Hollyhock Blacknight sucks in its dusk


blink slowly the Jellicle cat is stealthy as a footpad



Alan Summers 
From the Sōzō-mono sequence
Weird Laburnum 1st September 2020



fingers in the water trailing our dna back to its source

Alan Summers
Sublunary Review (August 2020)



light rain & blackbird sing the distance of harm


Alan Summers
Pandemica’s Clouds sequence
behind the mask: haiku in the time of Covid-19
Singing Moon Press Pandemic Anthology ed. Margaret Dornaus







lemon-scented hospital beds how they hold our hands as blackbirds

Alan Summers
Weird Laburnum (July 1st 2020)
three haikai verses


Réka Nyitrai, author of While Dreaming Your Dreams said:
"I can envision "lemon-scented hospital beds" taught as how to write a memorable monoku."




an intercessory prayer to endless blue string

Alan Summers
Publication credit:   Blithe Spirit 26.3 haibun: Growing Pains Of The Fairy Tale Train
Anthology credit:   EarthRise Rolling Haiku Collaboration 2017 Reconciliation (April 2017)



night clouds
the pull of the sound-fox


duostich

Alan Summers
Publication credit: Hedgerow #108 (March 2017)




T.V. news 
the frightened room 
is quiet 


Alan Summers
Publication Credit: Right Hand Pointing 2017
low sky issue of winter haiku 2017
Eric Burke, Guest Editor
digital painting "low sky" D. Wisely




we shift and turn 
the migrating clocks 
fallen leaves 

Alan Summers
Publication Credit: Right Hand Pointing 2017
low sky issue of winter haiku 2017
Eric Burke, Guest Editor
digital painting "low sky" D. Wisely



a click and clank the kitchen awake and demanding


Alan Summers
Collection: Forbidden Syllalbles (Bones Library May 2020)




she carries the warm gun’s child

Alan Summers
Publication Credit: is/let islet Scott Metz January 2017





sunflower forest
a half-human climbs
into van Gogh

Alan Summers
Publication Credit: Prune Juice : Journal of Senryu, Kyoka, Haibun & Haiga Scifaiku feature Issue 21: March, 2017 ed. Steve Hodge





sharkskin shoes
the whisper of nanobots
on his breath

Alan Summers
Publication Credit: Prune Juice : Journal of Senryu, Kyoka, Haibun & Haiga Scifaiku feature Issue 21: March, 2017 ed. Steve Hodge







Information about my own book of gendai style haiku is available:
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/does-fish-god-know-haiku-collection-by.html




See also:

The Pig and the Boar: The Limits to Brevity and Simplicity in Haiku by Clayton Beach


Richard Gilbert's response can be read here:


 otata 34 October, 2018

Supplement

Clayton BeachThe Pig and the Boar, or: The Limits to Brevity and Simplicity in Haiku page 105

Richard Gilbert
Pig & Boar, in the Haiku Wild: An Appreciation page 131

www.callofthepage.org

At Call of the Page we embrace many approaches to haiku from 5-7-5 haiku, classic to modern to contemporary, three line, two line, and single line haiku.

Check out our group online haiku courses for updates:

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Thursday, July 25, 2013

With Words Online Haiku & Tanka Poetry Courses September & October, and a place available on the August course

"With Words" is now known, since 2017, as Call of the Page. Do check out our popular and classic online courses in haiku and related genres at: www.callofthepage.org








There's one week to go before the early bird rate (US$70/£45) closes on the With Words online tanka course starting 1st September 2013, and there's plenty of time to book with the early bird rate for the online haiku course starting 1st October 2013.

Plus:
There's also a place available on the online haiku course starting 1st August (US$85/£55).

If you'd like more information, please email karen@withwords.org.uk.

Thank you!

Karen & Alan, With Words


"Thank you for your feed back. You make things seem so clear ...  So enjoyed reading the others' work too."  
Margaret Beverland (permission given)

"I have enjoyed the course tremendously and know that I will return to Alan's notes frequently as I continue to write tanka."  
Jan Harris (permission given)

Tanka are five line poems well-grounded in concrete images yet infused with lyric intensity, with an intimacy from direct expression of emotion tempered with implication. They contain ingredients of suggestion colored by shade and tone, setting off a nuance more potent than direct statement. Almost any subject, explicitly expressing your direct thoughts and feelings can be contained in this short form poetry. 

Haiku (plural and singular spelling) are the shortest of all short verses, that can elicit an emotional reaction in each reader far greater than the sum of its physical count of words.  This is often obtained by making the haiku verse a two part poem, and where the gap forms, that part of the poem’s structure creates a non-verbal extra part to the poem. 

Alan Summers
Descriptions from Decoding Tanka & Writing Poetry: the haiku way
(books-in-progress)

Alan's Biography can be read at: 
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/haiku-holistic-approach-week-end.html

Amazement of the Ordinary: Life through a haiku lens by Alan Summers: http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/transcript-from-tedx-video-amazement-of.html




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Saturday, July 06, 2013

Alan Summers : events, readings, online poetry courses including haiku online workshops and tanka online workshops




















I'm a Japan Times award-winning writer with over 20 years experience in haiku and tanka poetry, and I enjoy working with people around the world who are intrigued by these two short verse genres.

Alan Summers, Director and Lead Tutor, With Words
International Online Haiku Courses:
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/online-haiku-course-early-bird-rate.html

International Online Haiku and Tanka Courses:
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/dates-for-next-online-haiku-tanka.html

For futher information about dates later in the year for online courses and workshops, both one-to-one and small groups please don't hesitate to send an email to Karen at: karen@withwords.org.uk

Live and Local (UK)
I also do occasional writing group presentations (talks; readings; workshops) and live events.  For further information drop Karen a line at: karen@withwords.org.uk






Alan Summers speaking about haiku at a TEDx event:
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/transcript-from-tedx-video-amazement-of.html


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