The World Haiku Club (WHC) joined the
second PRO ART London Haiku event: "HAIKU - INSPIRATION - IMAGE -
CREATION" at Salon des Arts, 191 Queen's Gate, London on Saturday 2 March
2002. The event also marked the inauguration, in the "real" world, of
a new WHC platform for all poets, with a specialist mailing list
"WHCpoetrybridge" which was already launched in the Internet
"virtual" world on St. Valentine's Day, 14 February 2002.
John E. Carley, Director & Editor of
WHCpoetrybridge, chaired WHC's part of the presentation and invited Susumu
Takiguchi, Chairman of WHC to give an opening speech. Susumu sketched the state
of play of the contemporary world haiku community and
stressed the importance of newcomers
and non-haiku poets to engage with the fathers of Japanese haiku tradition
directly (which is becoming more and more possible) in order to gain genuine
poetic values, inspiration and understanding of haiku by themselves and for
themselves. This is because of the "state of flux" or "creative
chaos" which characterises the present world haiku, and which would only
serve to confuse or mislead them. To make the point, Susumu compared the process
to the Chinese whisper and suggested that one might benefit from ignoring all
those whispering voices which had been heard for the last fifty or one hundred
years.
Against this background, it became
increasingly necessary, Susumu pointed out, that the unfortunate and unnecessary
gap between haiku poets and non-haiku poets should be bridged. The gap has been
augmented partly by the narrow-mindedness and closed nature of some of the
entrenched haiku fundamentalists. WHCpoetrybridge has been created to provide a
meeting place (a bridge) for these two communities of poets, who could exchange
views, share works, discuss poetic issues, collaborate in poetry composition,
learn from and influence each other for their mutual benefits. Susumu ended his
speech by officially declaring the inauguration of WHCpoetrybridge.
In the following inaugural workshop, John
chose a short stanza first proposed by the poet Ray Stebbing in the 1990's
called Tetractys, in order to illustrate the sort of exercises which can be
actively dealt with at WHCpoetrybridge. John explained that this form took its
name and shape from a quasi-mystical numeric sequence attributed to Euclid -- 1,
2, 3, 4: 10. After giving some examples of Tetractys which Stebbing has
mentioned "could be Britain's answer to the haiku", John encouraged
the audience to write their own Tetractys, some of which were read out by the
authors.
Tetractys has characteristics which are
common with traditional Japanese haiku, such as adherence to form (syllable
count), breaks (line breaks), imagery and musicality. The intellectual and
emotional elements of Tetracrys may be a point of departure, and reference to
season is not required. John then led the audience to discuss the pros and cons
of Tetractys, which could be useful when dealing with other short forms of
Western-generated poems. Positive attributes included the progressive nature of
the form, its good rhythm and musicality and the power of its brevity. On the
other hand, concerns were voiced about the ill-effects of adhering to strict
syllable count at the expense of contents and other poetic values and
sensibility.
John said that Tetractys had had a fair
degree of success in the UK. There is an annual competition in the genre. He
also gave a sneak preview of two of the Tetractys poems which are shortly
published in the March issue of World Haiku Review. The Tetractys will continue
to develop and be enjoyed. As for its ultimate success, only time will tell.
However, it was not presented as "the" answer to what haiku in English
should be in the UK or elsewhere. The whole point seems to be a demonstration of
a new and refreshing approach whereby poems in English under the name of haiku
are not tried by the conventional method of mimicking the Japanese haiku
tradition but by searching for English equivalents to haiku, making the most of
the prosody, tradition, linguistic qualities and other poetic values which are
all part of the English culture and language. This has an important implication
that the same may be true with other languages and cultures. It is not to ignore
Japanese tradition. It is to rescue English tradition from having been abandoned
in the creation process of haiku in English.
This was a small step WHC took but under
the direction of John it could become a bigger step and certainly a useful
addition to the armoury of haiku in the West. Taking the traditionalist line
only or conversely the line of innovation and experiment alone would be the
easiest thing in the world. To tackle both and try to create new poetic values
and sensibility through the interaction of the tow forces is the tough and only
worthwhile occupation, which only the brave would and could try to challenge.
John is one of them.
Alan Summers led the second presentation,
which was a co-ordinated haiku reading. Alan founded "Naked Haijin
Productions" which organises a series of transmedia projects with an aim to
promote and bring haiku into the 21st century. Alan is an international haijin
and well-liked across the world. Based in the UK, his initiatives may spread
beyond borders and cultural barriers. He introduced Karen Hoy who works on
wildlife programme productions for the BBC, National Geographic and the
Discovery Channel. She travels extensively throughout South America and Africa.
She talked about her experience in these projects and emphasised the importance
of us humans to go back to nature and regain harmony with her from the
ecological and conservation points of view. She pointed to the similarity of
climate and seasons between Britain and Japan and the validity of haiku to be
practiced in the British Isles.
Then, Paul Conneally joined Alan from WHC,
to conduct the haiku reading. Paul travels across the UK in the capacity of
WHC's Educational and Regional Director and has been making an important
contribution to the dissemination of haiku among school children, general public
of local areas as well as helping WHC members in different countries of the
world to organise consorted events such as simultaneous kukai. With Paul, was
another WHC member, Kevin Ryan, Director of Arts. Kevin is also Director of
Charnwood Arts. Paul, Alan and Kevin demonstrated an orchestrated haiku reading
of their own haiku poems, which is not part of the Japanese haiku tradition but
in which the Japanese are getting interested and have started to experiment by
themselves.
The organiser of this event was Vesna
Petkovic of PRO ART, 218 New King's Road, London, SW6 4NZ
