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| the Japanese characters - from Pamela |
slowly unfurling
the basho leaves
strong in
containment
Diana
I gathered the WEA students round the banana plants in the Botanic Gardens ( ‘basho’ is their literary Japanese word), to help us begin writing haiku. Basho, the seventeenth century Japanese poet made the ‘haikai’ a stand-alone verse. They expressed autumn beautifully with their bunches of fruit.
The tools of a haiku poet on a ginko are a notebook
and a pen. The challenge is, to convert the experience of a natural setting into
something written on the blank page.
So gently falling
on the white page
a little brown seed
Ninette
We hoped to find subjects that would signify the
season. This was the next challenge, in a Botanic gardens which has a
collection of plants from all over the world, to find something that is endemic
to Sydney. The next two haiku do this by comparing one thing with another.
Summer gone
next to the gum
tree
a plane tree turns
to gold
Ninette
nestled below the bare
peach tree––
one
tri-coloured flower
Mena Johnson
The human cheer
emanating from the café was alluring but we focused more on plant and animal
life.
poised on one leg
the plover stalks––
lunch
Mena Johnson
So simple! So complete! The next haiku has
strong imagery and leaves a lot open to the reader’s imagination.
dark throated
Bromeliad
central silent pond
-
Beautiful assassin
Leslie
And her next one illustrates how a haiku can
suggest something, that there are layers. There was an ikebana exhibition on,
and Leslie treads a delicate balance between the human and the natural. On a bamboo pole
Ikebana shivers -
Winter is approaching
Her last haiku looks ahead to the season of new life.
Green swords
Pierce the earth
Promise of spring
Leslie
Frost
Xxxxxx
These students wrote some very affecting
haikus when the course was over.
In
a foreign place,
A
banana leaf plate,
Adobo
stew – I’m home.
Some
time in the quiet winter’s night
Your
heart just stopped.
My
friend is gone.
Pamela Huggins
Petals and dreams
Blooms nodding in
the wind
caressing my
memories
Eia Stanich
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
And this last one ( can’t we all relate?) is a senryu rather than
a haiku – it focuses squarely on the human.
My computer does
strange and
mysterious things -
quiet despair
Ninette
My next haiku course at the WEA runs over 2 Saturdays, the 22nd and 29th October. Details here:
https://www.skillsoncourse.com.au/portal/class/5112720
