Haibun and the Blo͞o Outlier Journal Special issue #2, 2021 UPDATE

 

photograph by Alan Summers

Wearing two hats today!

Call of the Page regularly has one-to-one sessions with poets and their haibun and tanka story:

https://www.callofthepage.org/courses/special-payments/

There are plans afoot to create another group haibun course too, so do keep checking the website:

https://www.callofthepage.org/courses/

The Blo͞o Outlier Journal's second issue focuses on the art of combining prose and poetry. Namely the two genres of haibun and tanka story. Although you can surprise us and perhaps come up with a new or different haikai or tanka genre that uses poems with prose!

Blo͞o Outlier Journal Special issue #2, 2021 UPDATE 

https://bloooutlierjournal.blogspot.com/2021/03/bloo-outlier-journal-special-issue-2.html

Sunday 20th May 2018 – Spring Haikai Celebration and Book Launch Evening Event - haibun, tanka story/tanka prose

photo@Kim Shams Richardson

Sunday 20^th May 2018 – 

Spring Haikai Celebration and Book Launch

Venue: 

Found, 5 Ravey Street, London EC2A 4QW

Time: 7pm (till 9pm)

A congenial Spring Sunday haikai evening in the wonderful Found bar!

http://www.foundthebar.com/

Celebrating all haikai forms - with a special emphasis on haibun and tanka prose. 

Readings of haibun and tanka prose will be read by accomplished poets in these forms, along with haiku and senryu; and the launch of Night Ferry, Kim Richardson's first solo collection of haiku, senryu and haibun. 

Night Ferry – haiku, senryu and haibun collection by Kim Richardson. 90pp, A5 paperback. Available from info@albapublishing.com £12 + p&p. 

All while enjoying Oskar's peerless cocktails, great company, and inspired writing!

Alba Publishing is also proud to announce the publication of one-line haiku (monoku) by the highly respected Stuart Quine:

Sour Pickle – one-line haiku, first collection by Stuart Quine. 108pp, A5 paperback. Available from info@albapublishing.com £12 + p&p. 

Alba Publishing

http://www.albapublishing.com

Alba Publishing

P O Box 266 • Uxbridge • UB9 5NX • UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1895 832444
Web: www.albapublishing.com • 

Email: info@albapublishing.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/albapublishing

www.callofthepage.org

Intrigued about monoku?

Travelling the single line of haiku - one line haiku / monoku / monostich

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/travelling-single-line-of-haiku-one.html

all those red apples | travelling the monorail - haiku travelling in one line - one line haiku aka monostich aka monoku

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/all-those-red-apples-travelling.html

Or haibun?

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-beat-is-back-haibun-prose-and-haiku.html

Call of the Page runs online courses in haibun; haiku; tanka prose/tanka story; and other related genres.  

For further information please do not hesitate to contact Karen at:

admin@callofthepage.org

About Karen & Alan:

https://www.callofthepage.org/about-1/

Tanka Prose aka Tanka Story - prose narrative with tanka 5-line lyrical poems

Tanka Story

A small tanka prose (tanka story) description:

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.

Tanka Prose is similar to the prose of the haibun, but a little more subjective perhaps, and emotive, as influenced by the tanka poems themselves. 

EXAMPLES:

Steps

Not just any steps, but Covent Garden underground tube station when the lifts don’t work.

It’s not just the slow rumble of different sole thicknesses

absorbing the trains as we climb:

It’s more than humanity, it’s those bloody steps,

those stairs are in love with us, they must be, don’t you think?

the moon

at my shoulder

a child cycles

across the Sea 

of Tranquility

Alan Summers

Publication Credit: Blithe Spirit 26.2 (May 2016)

Note: 

Covent Garden Tube Station:

The stairs and steps of Covent Station:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGQUq1kcDSA

The station itself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covent_Garden_tube_station

***

Sky Fishing 

When there are fish that drop from the sky, they are not necessarily dead, just visiting.

I know this woman who waits for fish to die. Mary is not mad; she is just not a fish killer. 

She tells me she hangs around for them to dive
from cars, aeroplanes, or from tankers in busy shipping lanes. 

Once a fish fell off a cliff, and Mary was driving
an open top bright green Volkswagen round and round. 

There’s always a plate of salad on the passenger’s side.

I look even now to see if there’s a fish flapping in a lay-by. 

A soft-top car isn't good in a city full of crime but it can be good for fish dropping in. 

this black hole

in my coffee

I fold the dirty laundry

back into myself

window-rattling a moon

Alan Summers

Publication credit:  Blithe Spirit Vol. 27 No. 2 May 2017

***

Coch Rhi Ben

nuclear winter

I only count

98 red balloons

There's singing snow, and I try to catch its tune. A robin with the prerequisite red breast is keeping pace, flying and jumping from spade handle to outpost, dodging the bullets and the missiles. We make our final stand, and form a duet, defiant that we forget politics, and who killed his brother.

the snow

is stinging

and we both

join up

the red dots

Alan Summers

Blithe Spirit (February 2018)

NOTES:

Coch Rhi Ben

As Lugh was the primary god representing the red sun, his name in alleged common parlance would have been "Coch Rhi Ben" anglicised to "Cock Robin" – a leftover from the belief that souls became birds after death. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_Robin#Origin_and_meaning

The haiku (deliberately numbered as 98) refers both to Banksy’s famous image Girl with Balloon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_with_Balloon 

to the famous song "99 Luftballons" ("99 balloons") which is an anti-war protest song by the German band Nena. 

An English-language version titled "99 Red Balloons", with lyrics by Kevin McAlea, was also released on the album 99 Luftballons in 1984 after widespread success of the original in Europe and Japan. Of course now Japan is under nuclear threat by another country, just as they are unveiling a memorial to all those Japanese haiku poets who protested about entering the WWII arena.

English:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14IRDDnEPR4

German:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lur-SGl3uw8

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Luftballons

"99 Luftballons" (German: Neunundneunzig Luftballons, "99 balloons") is an anti-war protest song by the German band Nena from their 1983 self-titled album. 

An English-language version titled "99 Red Balloons", with lyrics by Kevin McAlea, was also released on the album 99 Luftballons in 1984 after widespread success of the original in Europe and Japan. The English version is not a direct translation of the German original and contains somewhat different lyrics.[1]

[1]

 "99 Red Balloons – interview with the writer, Kevin McAlea". Eighty-eightynine. Retrieved 17 July 2014:

http://www.eightyeightynine.com/music/99luftballoons-english.html

Strange Bed - this is an ekphrastic blend of haibun [prose+haiku] and Tanka Story [prose+tanka] also called "tanka prose", published by The British Haiku Society

Strange Bed 

Pulling clothes off each other
            we crawl up the stairs of your parents’ home.

   
bed, vt:
to have sexual intercourse with somebody (informal). 

A transitive verb is an action that requires one or more objects

our clouds of breath

the river bank reveals

its water vole

Already the final act is begun, squared up, and oblonged.
This small rectangle of a room in a room; we play our dance card.

this waiting room

of ladders

I run to the sky

so every bell rings out

with your musk

bed, noun:
a rectangular state of sexual intimacy associated with being in bed with somebody. 

noun (from Latin nōmen, literally meaning “name”)

the bee hotel

a solitary walk inside

my numbered cells

Linguistically, a noun is a member of a large, open part of speech whose members can occur as the main word in the object of a verb, or object of a proposition.

sticker book…

I peel away your edge

of the galaxy

We begin our syllabary of death and sex on this raised platform,
a simple structure that serves as a base for keeping things simple and above ground.

buddleia

the rain opening

                and closing its proboscis

bed, early, meaning:
important development lifting straw piles off the ground to avoid drafts, dirt, and certain pests. 

the greenness

of new songs into blue

streaming out of clouds

I see the way ahead

is a yellow brick road

Strange Bed © Alan Summers 2017


Haibun/Tanka Story 

Note:

Ekphrastic treatment of ’Strange Bed’ by David Cobley
oil on linen 12x12in (30.5 x 30.5cm)

Publication Credit:

Blithe Spirit (Journal of the British Haiku Society)

Vol. 27 no. 1 (February 2017)

See: http://britishhaikusociety.org.uk/journal/

Deliberate typos and dodgy definitions by Alan Summers

Strange Bed by David Cobley:

David Cobley: http://www.bsartists.co.uk/artists/david_cobley/davidcobleythumbs.htm

If you are intrigued by haibun check out our forthcoming online course called The Passion of Haibun:
http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/the-passion-of-haibun-online-course.html

For further information please do contact Karen at: admin@callofthepage.org

.

Happy New Year - and a brand new honour! Alan Summers, President of the United Haiku and Tanka Society

United Haiku and Tanka Society weblink:
http://unitedhaikuandtankasociety.com/biographies.html

More details about the UHTS:
http://unitedhaikuandtankasociety.com/submituhts.html


For those who know me, or have yet to meet me in person or online, here is my longer biography:

Alan Summers, Chippenham, England, U.K. has been involved in haikai literature (haiku; senryu; haibun; renku; haiga and shahai), and tanka, for over a quarter of a century.  He is a double Japan Times award-winning writer; recipient of a Ritsumeikan University of Kyoto Peace Museum Award for haiku (1998); and Pushcart Prize nominated poet for both haiku and haibun, as well as Best Small Fictions nominated for haibun. 

.  

In September 2015 he was filmed by NHK TV of Japan for Europe meets Japan - Alan's Haiku Journey: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VS36AGVI6s

He also holds a Masters Degree in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University (U.K.), and a Diploma for Creative Writing from the University of Bristol (U.K.)

See also Alan’s December 2016 interview with Sonic Boom magazine talking about his background; “the stiletto of poetry”; and the white paintings of haiku:

http://media.wix.com/ugd/61020d_87ad491fe433421b87e2a87033aca1ad.pdf 

From 1998 to 2000, he was General Secretary of the British Haiku Society, and from 2000-2005 he was on the panel of editors for The Red Moon Anthologies of English-Language Haiku. 

He has been an editor for a number of groundbreaking online haikai literature magazines: This includes being a founding editor for Haijinx (humor in haiku), and a founding editor, and now editor emeritus, of Bones Journal.  He was Linked Verses Editor for Notes from the Gean, and has been the Special Feature Editor for the award-winning Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts. More recently, for a number of issues, he was temporary haibun editor Blithe Spirit, the journal of the British Haiku Society.

Alan Summers has been an essayist, article writer, book reviewer, critic, international competition judge, co-editor of a number of haiku and short verse anthologies, and now founding editor of this journal:

https://bloooutlierjournal.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-bloo-outlier-journal-winter-issue.html

His time as a TEDx speaker for Amazement of the ordinary- life through a haiku lens can be watched here:

http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Amazement-of-the-ordinary-life

Transcript: 

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/transcript-from-tedx-video-amazement-of.html

Various essays and articles include:

The definite and indefinite article–

how a house passes along the train of haiku

https://area17.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-definite-and-indefinite-article-how.html

Haiku: The Art of Implication over Explication

http://livinghaikuanthology.com/poets-on-haiku/defining-haiku/2901-haiku-the-art-of-implication-over-explication-by-alan-summers.html

More than One Fold in the Paper: Kire, kigo and the meaning of vertical axis by Alan Summers (New Zealand Poetry Society, April 2016) accessible via: 

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/more-than-one-fold-in-paper-kire-kigo.html

  

http://www.underthebasho.com/2013-issue/features/84-more-than-one-fold-in-the-paper.html

575haiku - Traditional Haiku as three lines and in a 5-7-5 English language syllables pattern

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/575haiku-traditional-haiku-as-three.html

Travelling the single line of haiku:

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/travelling-single-line-of-haiku-one.html

The Reader as Second Verse

http://britishhaikusociety.org.uk/2016/10/reader-second-verse/ 

Black dogs and afternoon rain:

http://britishhaikusociety.org.uk/2016/10/black-dogs-afternoon-rain/

Themocracy: The Themocrats and their Concept Albums

Four book reviews by Alan Summers of writers who weave theme:

http://haikureality.theartofhaiku.com/bookrew69.htm 

The Golden Carousel of Life:  Senryu, 

An Application to be a) human

Failed Haiku, A Journal of English Senryu

https://failedhaiku.com/2016/09/20/the-golden-carousel-of-life-senryu/ 

http://www.haikuhut.com/Senryū-An-Application-to-be-a-human-by-Alan-Summers.pdf 

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

https://area17.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-g-force-of-blue-touching-base-with.html

He has been a mentor for over two decades, and ran the With Words online courses in haiku and related genres.  In 2017 Alan Summers, with Karen Hoy, created Call of the Page and its new online courses; day workshops; one-to-one and residential courses; as well as taking haiku to the road.

He has regularly been involved in both traditional  and innovative readings; haiku and renga residencies; as well as edgy live events. 

For example, as attraction host & organiser at the Royal Festival Hall, in London’s Southbank, with Japan-UK 150, in September 2008, as part of the Giant Japanese Jamboree at the Mayor’s Thames Festival - which attracts around half a million visitors - in September 2008, running multiple one-to-one workshops while launching the With Words Haiku Journal notebooks. 

As the Embassy of Japan’s roving Haiku & Renga poet-in-residence for Japan-UK 150 throughout 2009 he also ran various related activities from train stations to other public spaces.  This included improvisational renga for The Fragmented Orchestra at the Watershed Media Centre, Bristol, with the passing public outside on the street (February 2009) and running two senku (1000 verse renga events) in two different cities from the South to the North of England:

In partnership with Bath Libraries (South West England, U.K.) for The 1000 Verse Renga Project (September to November 2009) becoming part of the BBC Poetry Season; followed by a triple senku renga In partnership with Hull Libraries U.K. along with The James Reckitt Library Trust and Larkin25 Festival.

In other years he has been Poet-in-Residence in various places such as at Bath Spa University (Autumn 2006 – Summer 2007) where he was involved with a number of haiku & renga workshops hired by ambidextrous, a new organisation being developed as part of a BA program for freshers.   Other activities were The 24 hour haiku answerphone and The POW Festival with haiku walls, along with another student society called Play on Words Productions, with videos made by Ambidextrous and Soft C, to encourage current and future Bath Spa University students.

He was also jointly a haiku poet-in-Residence creating Britain’s only haiku café as mentioned in the Lonely Planet's Guide to Great Britain (Spring 2006 – Autumn 2006) which also involved a ginko for deaf poets, and haiku, tanka, and renga workshops and theatre performances with the Deaf Community. Other live events have included Antony Gormley’s One & Other Fourth Plinth event in conjunction with SkyArts in Trafalgar Square, London, (July 2009).

Alan has often been involved in public art from hanging thousands of haiku on trees and bushes and along streets to having verses cut into linocuts; laser cut onto DuPont™ Corian®; or into CorTen steel along the London Road into the City of Bath: https://bathnewseum.com/2015/04/30/new-trees-amongst-the-bath-traffic/

He has twice been a featured haiku poet at Cornell University, Mann Library, USA, and been the World Monuments Fund (New York City) haiku contest judge; Guest Judge for The International Academic Forum Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award 2016 and many other competitions. 

Other organisations that have offered his teaching are as Visiting Tutor for the British nationally acclaimed The Poetry School (Spring 2007 & 2008); and a regular Teaching artist at the Poetry Barn based in the Hudson Valley, just outside New York City USA.

"Astonishingly moving haiku" 

YOMIURI SHIMBUN (Japan) January 2005

"Widely known haiku poet...as dry as vintage champagne"

YOMIURI SHIMBUN (14 million readers in Japan) 

16th September 2002 (planned for publication on my birthday) 

His work has regularly appeared in over one hundred anthologies including leading ones around the haiku genre:

Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years ed. Jim Kacian, Allan Burns & Philip Rowland  (W. W. Norton 2013)

behind the mask: haiku in the time of Covid-19

Singing Moon Press Pandemic Anthology ed. Margaret Dornaus (2020)

Corona Social Distancing: Poets for Humanity 

ed. hülya n. yılmaz, Ph.D.

inner child press international (2020)

Poetry in the Plague Year

Poems written during the Coronavirus Outbreak 2020

(Poetry Kit publishing)

Half A Rainbow 

Haiku Nook: An Anthology ed. Jacob Salzer & The Nook Editorial Staff (2020)

Dedicated to Rachel Sutcliffe (1977-2019) & Haiku Nook G+

https://jsalzer.wixsite.com/halfarainbowhaiku

Last Train Home, an anthology of haiku, tanka and rengay

ed. Jacquie Pearce (Canada 2020)

All the Way Home: Aging in Haiku (2019) 

ed. Robert Epstein

Middle Island Press (18 Oct. 2019) ISBN-10: 173412542 ISBN-13: 978-1734125429

https://www.amazon.co.uk/All-Way-Home-Aging-Haiku/dp/173412542X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=All+the+Way+Home%3A+Aging+in+Haiku&qid=1572366673&sr=8-1 

Amaravati Poetic Prism 2019 - International Multilingual Poetry Anthology

ed. Padmaja Iyengar-Paddy ISBN: 9789353917920

Publisher: Cultural Centre of Vijayawada & Amaravati (CCVA), Vijayawada

Nick Virgilio Writers House Poetry: Volume 1: 

haiku, senryu, and tanka

ed. Henry Brann 

Publisher: upright remington press (29 July 2019)

BHS Conference Anthology where silence becomes song 

ed. Iliyana Stoyanova & David Bingham (pub. British Haiku Society 2019)

The New English Verse: An International Anthology of Poetry 

ed. Suzie Palmer (Cyberwit 2017)

Haiku 2014; Haiku 2015; and Haiku 2016 

ed. Scott Metz & Lee Gurga (Modern Haiku Press)

The Disjunctive Dragonfly, a New Approach to English-Language Haiku ed. Richard Gilbert (Red Moon Press 2012)

A Vast Sky, An Anthology of Contemporary World Haiku ed. by Bruce Ross; Koko Kato; Dietmar Tauchner; and Patricia Prime (Tancho Press 2015)

Journeys 2015 - An Anthology of International Haibun 

ed. Dr Angelee Deodhar

naad anunaad: an anthology of contemporary international haiku 

ed. Shloka Shankar, Sanjuktaa Asopa, Kala Ramesh (India, 2016)

The Humours of Haiku ed. David Cobb (Iron Press 2012)

Stepping Stones:  a way into haiku ed. Martin Lucas (British Haiku Society, 2007)

The New Haiku 

ed. John Barlow & Martin Lucas (Snapshot Press, 2001).

Wing Beats: British Birds in Haiku 

ed. John Barlow & Matthew Paul (2008)

Iron Book of British Haiku 

ed. David Cobb and Martin Lucas (Iron Press 1998, Third print 2000)

Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac 

ed. William Higginson  (Kodansha International, Japan,1996)

As co-editor of five Haiku-based Anthologies: Parade of Life: Poems inspired by Japanese Prints ISBN: 09539234-2-8  (Poetry Can/Bristol Museum and Art Gallery/Japan21/Embassy of Japan 2002); The Poetic Image - Haiku and Photography (Birmingham Words/ National Academy of Writing Pamphlet 2006); Fifty-Seven Damn Good Haiku by a Bunch of Our Friends published by Press Here ISBN 978-1-878798-31-2  (2010 USA); Four Virtual Haiku Poets (YTBN Press 2012); and c.2.2. an anthology of short-verse poetry and haiku (YTBN Press 2013).

Seven haiku collections:

Print:

  

Does Fish-God Know (YTBN Press 2012) 

Amazon USA: https://tinyurl.com/DoesFish-GodKnow

    

The In-Between Season  (With Words Pamphlet Series 2012)

  

Sundog Haiku Journal: an Australian Year (Sunfast Press 1997)

 

Moonlighting  (British Haiku Society Intimations Pamphlet Series 1996)

eChapbooks:

   

Comfort of Crows (Alan Summers & Hifsa Ashraf) 

Velvet Dusk Publishing (2019) 

https://www.velvetduskpublishing.com/uploads/3/7/5/9/37595991/the_comfort_of_crows_ebook.pdf 

   

Glint (Proletaria politics philosophy phenomena February 2020)

https://proletaria730964817.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/glint.pdf

 

Forbidden Syllables 

Bones Library (May 2020)

https://bonesjournal.com/books/Alan_Summers-Forbidden-Syllables-bones-ed.pdf

“I am incredibly excited and greatly honored to have been asked as the next President of the United Haiku and Tanka Society. I certainly want to embrace and encourage the society to continue to grow and develop its inclusive welcomeness to poets all around the world.”

Alan Summers

Alan runs the Call of the Page online classes with his wife Karen Hoy from 2017 to present, including the popular intermediate haiku course group courses, plus tanka; haibun; tanka prose/tanka story group courses; and one-to-one individual feedback in various related genres. 

https://www.callofthepage.org/courses/

  

FFI Karen Hoy admin@callofthepage.org