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)

Friday, November 29, 2019

Van Gogh – painter, artist: a haibun by Alan Summers (incorporating a body of words with haiku)



photo©Alan Summers 2019


Van Gogh’s combat fatigues
The EY Exhibition: Van Gogh and Britain,Tate Britain 2019


the man who isn’t
with anyone
stops alongside
different people

choosing them
over the paintings

he has birds
in his arms

and loose locks
of hair made from thought

there are small lives 
within the frames of paintings
having candlelit dinners

and the last door 
out of the exhibition
will begin to sound 
like a trombone
taking leave 
of someone

we hear the chatter
between airlocks
it’s news of a hundred 
and two decades old

as the hours close
in on themselves
the trombone reflects 
on Louis Armstrong
talking to Vincent


backend rain…
a pair of canvas boots
framed by the door


haibun©Alan Summers

Publication credit: 
Weird Laburnum ed. Michael O’Brien (August 2019)


Note: 
Published on the morning of the last day of the exhibition with thanks to editor Michael O'Brien


Exhibition:Tate Britain

THE EY EXHIBITION VAN GOGH AND BRITAIN 



About the Haiku:

backend rain…
a pair of canvas boots
framed by the door

Seasonal Note: backend = autumn rain (North of England)


If Vincent van Gogh could visit one of his exhibitions in modern times:

Vincent Van Gogh Visits the Gallery 
Vincent And The Doctor | Doctor Who



photo©Alan Summers 2019



Haibun came to the fore as literary writing, and as a new genre to some extent, by Matsuo Bashō, with in particular his masterpiece:

Oku no Hosomichi (奥の細道, originally おくのほそ道, meaning "Narrow road to/of the interior"), translated alternately as The Narrow Road to the Deep North and The Narrow Road to the Interior, is a major work of haibun by the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō, considered one of the major texts of Japanese literature of the Edo period. WIKIPEDIA

Haibun is now practiced in many ways, 
and derives from straight prose accounts interspersed by haiku that create either vignettes in their own right, or lateral narratives, or cut aways as we see in documentary interviews, or filming drama where the camera breaks away to a café scene etc…


photo©Alan Summers 2019




HAIBUN (prose+haiku genre)

Our haibun courses usually sell out, 
but we have an extra one!