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)

Monday, March 20, 2017

Haiku: Somewhere a clock is ticking - Part One





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 Bashō 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 

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?


***

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)

***
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:




***



a toy I made I was your only child

Alan Summers

Journal Credit: Roadrunner 12.3 MASKS 4


***
is/let


she carries the warm gun’s child

Alan Summers

Journal Credit: is/let ed. Scott Metz (January 2017)


***
the glass child
sometimes just being held
as winter arrives

Alan Summers

Journal Credit: is/let ed. Scott Metz (January 2017)


***
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)


***

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)


***

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:


***

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)



***

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)



***
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)

***

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)

***
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)



***
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)



***

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)


***

tearing up snow falls slowly a kind of blue

Alan Summers

Journal Credit:  Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku No. 3 (December 2013)


***
my inevitable death mayflies

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Bones 6 (March 15, 2015)
i.m. Terry Pratchett OBE (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015)

***

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 


***
I once was this stone home for another

Alan Summers

Journal Credit: 
Bones - journal for contemporary haiku no.7 (July 2015)

***
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)


***

dragonfly army I slip off the skins of men in pain

Alan Summers

Journal Credit: 
Bones - journal for contemporary haiku no. 7 (July 2015)


***

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)

***
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


***

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


***

my amber resin exit button

Alan Summers

Journal Credit: 
moongarlic E-zine, Issue: 1
Issue: 1, Nov 2013 ISSN 2052-675X  Nov 5th. 2013


***
the smaller hours
when others sleep deeply
the dots I join

Alan Summers

Journal Credit: Moongarlic issue 5 (November 2015)


***

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


***

a
n
o
n
y
m
o    all the lost names
u    another building ticks
s    adjusting to change


Shahai art:
Photo + Haiku = Shahai 写俳
sha … from shashin (photo) 写真
hai … from haiku 俳句

photograph by Karen Hoy
words by: Alan Summers

Journal Credit: 
moongarlic E-zine, Issue: 6
May 2016 ISSN 2052-675X

weblink to the artwork:


***

For information on various courses taught by Alan Summers please feel free to contact Karen Hoy at: admin@callofthepage.org