From My Haiku Notebook, March 2009
World Haiku Review, Volume 7, Issue 1, March 2009
From My Haiku Notebook
A New Feature
Introduction
This is a new feature of World Haiku Review. It will provide a showcase where an individual poet can voice his/her individual thoughts and present works accordingly without the editor’s interference. So, there will be no selection or judging on the part of the editor whose job is reduced to such menial tasks as cleaning the glass of the showcase, making sure that right labels are in place, dusting the exhibit from time to time, attracting viewers and audience etc. (Let me hasten to add that selection of poets is the editor’s job!) On the other hand, invited poets in this feature will be ‘unprotected’ by editorial help and exposed to danger as they reveal their thoughts and show their works at their own responsibility and also at their own peril.
Some may say that any poet can do it through his/her own website or magazine. But that is different because it is SUBJECTIVE and could be self-serving, or at least taken to be such by viewers. This new feature FROM MY HAIKU NOTEBOOK is to solve the dilemma, or to try to strike the right balance between editor’s objectivity and authors’ subjectivity.
Indeed, poets like the featured haijin in this issue, John W. Sexton, do not need any editor to tell him what he should or should not do. This is because he knows it in his authority and pride (in a good sense) as a poet. However, this is still SUBJECTIVE. Also, such authority and pride should be genuine ones. On the other hand, the editor should also maintain his/her authority and pride (in a good sense) as someone with critical eyes and the ability to look at anyone’s works OBJECTIVELY. Poets and editors need each other for better poems to be born.
What and how the featured poets say or show will be entirely up to them, except for certain style or abusive language which will be subject to scrutiny. However, if they frankly share their struggle, difficulty or problems in haiku-writing as well as showing what they think are good haiku poems, that will help others enormously. Also, if they share some of their efforts for innovative works and experimental pursuit, that would add to the value of the new feature. Simply put, FROM MY HAIKU NOTEBOOK is something like the case of an artist inviting someone in his studio and showing his/her latest efforts and struggles in a raw, unadulterated and primeval manner.
Featured Poet in this issue:
John W. Sexton
I am showing several one-line modernist haiku, as well as some children’s / teen haiku, plus several renhai and poems that were first composed for the WHCpoems-for-children forum on the Internet. The idea of the forum is to investigate new approaches in children’s poetry influenced by haiku and minimalist techniques. The work shown in that section contains poetry for both pre- and mid-teens. All poems shown are mine.
John W. Sexton
County Kerry
Republic of Ireland
1: Seven assorted haiku (General section, adults)
walking the stilts
of her long-legged shadow -
winter night
only darkness in the clear sky crows
spring forest losing its consciousness of snow
human shadow immortal fossil hiroshima
universe ant star everything is nothing to entropy
worms eating their shape into the dark
burnt moth will light from this candle ever reach the stars?
2: Six assorted haiku for children and teens.
Going nowhere
in circles of here -
carousel horse
a snail up his
own merry-go-round
tunnel
a dog pees
the snowman's feet
yellow
frosted stiff
on the washing line -
dad's boiler suit
we tread wild mint -
sudden flies swarm
from a cow-pat
whirligig beetles -
drafting their crazy math
of circles
3: Five solo Renhai originally composed for the WHCpoems-for-children forum for younger readers and teens. The forum was originally set up with a view to looking at new approaches to children’s poetry influenced by haiku and minimalist techniques.
Renhai: A short linked form created by Vaughn Seward in 2007 and currently being developed in collaboration with other haiku poets. A three-verse poem, each verse linked by an overall theme as well as each verse linking with the one previous. The final verse must back-link to verse one.
Dark
A Solo Renhai
Midnight -
radiators on, the house
talks to itself.
Dark stones bright after rain -
Blackbirds peck sopping moss.
Wringing the rag
takes three vicious twists -
a clean car.
Not
A Solo Renhai
No, not moths -
gently one by one
snowflakes land.
Snowman thinner, thinner -
a good carrot-nose for the chop.
Smiling moon –
loft room, bare bulb lit
with moonlight.
Furthest
A Solo Renhai
Empty?
Kitten’s head lodged in
the tin can.
Spitting apple pips furthest –
ladder’s top hid with branches.
Shy earwig -
stowaway from the
grocery bag.
Own Up
A Solo Renhai
Moth wings
in the spider’s web –
but no moth.
Wheat heads stripped on stalks -
katydids own up their names.
Humming fruit -
an engine in the apple
pours out wasps.
Begin
A solo Renhai
Morning gossip
at the garden fence -
chat of sparrows.
Blind mouselings snug
in the wood shavings.
White cat -
leaf shadows stippled
on its back.
4: Five poems for children and teens, originally composed for the WHCpoems-for-children forum, influenced by haiku and minimalist techniques.
Jack Smoke
waits around
for things
to hot up
lingers
on a blown
match
goes grey
and thin
up the chimney
not
much to him
on a windy day
comes into his own
at the end
of a flame
can wear
the outside
of your jumper
Old Lady Frinkens
Old Lady Frinkens
sits mumbling
to the holes in her gloves
smoky cats
the colour of her cardigan
sleep at her feet
her skin is yellow
but her eyes
still shine like rain
Old Lady Frinkens
strides through the sky
in her magic boots
her long silver heels
pierce the waves
keep her dry above the sea
she’s old and batty
and her false teeth
are still in their glass
but she guards
the gate to the west
where giants loiter
Gutter Mutter
sparrows troubling
the guttering
for insect grit
bits of wings
half-bodies
bugs long dead
sparrows twittering
a water-song
in the dry bed
Things to See and Do
with an Autumn Leaf
You can find
misshapen windows
in their broken frames;
skeletal veins
like the bones
of fish;
remnants
resembling the rungs
of ladders -
all in this
rotted, mottled
leaf.
It's a brittle page
of see-through
words,
a crumble
of dust
in your fist,
a scattering
of grey confetti
for a snail's wedding.
In the Beginning, Woodlouse
Woodlouse
sloughs its skin onto the sky:
Moon is born.
On the way down,
Woodlouse tears holes in the night:
stars become.
Woodlouse
rolls into a ball:
dreams it’s the Earth.
Woodlouse:
sleeps through the everything
of was to is.
About the Featured Poet:
John W. Sexton lives in the Republic of Ireland. He is a haikuist, poet, short story writer, dramatist, children’s novelist, radio scriptwriter and broadcaster. He has published three collections of poetry, including one of haiku, Shadows Bloom / Scáthanna Faoi Bhláth, with translations into Irish by Gabriel Rosenstock (Ireland, 2004). His individual haiku and haibun have been published in most of the leading haiku journals.
He created and wrote The Ivory Tower for RTE radio, which ran to over one hundred half-hour episodes, and gained a cult following amongst both children and adults. His novels based on this series, The Johnny Coffin Diaries and Johnny Coffin School-Dazed are both published by The O’Brien Press, and have been translated into Italian and Serbian. He has also recorded an album with legendary Stranglers frontman, Hugh Cornwell, entitled Sons of Shiva, which has been released on Track Records. He is a past nominee for The Hennessy Literary Award and in 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.
For the past two years he’s been engaged in two personal haiku experiments, one investigating one-line haiku, the other looking at new approaches to children’s poetry using haiku and minimalist techniques. The work in this selection reflects these reflects these recent literary preoccupations.