|
Back | Next
|
|
|
WHCrenku
Seminar 2000 - A Shiny Icicle
Begins |
When the World Haiku Club
activated its first mailing list, Haikuforum, in December 1999, it quickly
became a bustling centre for learning about haiku and related forms of poetry.
Within two months, a lively interest in the renku form led to the first onlist
WHC renku seminar led by member, Paul MacNeil. Nine essay-lessons were
interspersed with discussion, workshop-style participation and the exercise of
building two traditional renku. Those members who did not actively take part in
writing watched and learned from the sidelines, often participating in
discussion.
The first and second installments
of the seminar lessons were published in World Haiku Review, Volume 2, Issue 1
March 2002, including a renku by Paul MacNeil and Ferris Gilli, "The
Fox Circles". Also in that issue were the 8th and 9th
installments: guest lectures by Ferris Gilli, "English
Grammar: Variety in Renku" (WHCessays), and Christopher Herold, "The
Alchemy of Live Renku" (Guest Speaker's Corner). The 3rd installment, "A
Fox Circles, writing a shisan renku" was presented in the July 200
issue. November's 2002 featured "A
Mosaic in Words". We will be presenting the complete series of
lesson-essays including the renku composed during the seminar in upcoming issues
of World Haiku Review.
WHC Renku Seminar
Haikuforum Seminar on "Traditional" Renku in English
Session 5: "A Shiny Icicle," The First Game Begins
Paul
MacNeil
It is a long held custom that the most revered writer or senior master in a
renku group is given the honor of going first. In a democratically aligned
partnership, it can be the one who comes up with the best hokku, first-verse
haiku, or we may take turns. It may fall to the one who suggested the session.
Basho himself often asked others to take that first place. It is also customary
for the host/hostess of the session to go second. Via the Internet? It can be
anyone either first or second. Susumu-san, in his wonderful Glossary
of Japanese Renku Terms, gets at a bit of this as he describes the rise
of hokku as independent entities (definition #7). A friend has told me of the
pressure on one who, by surprise, is asked by a renku session master to begin.
This is one reason why players come to sessions armed with a collection of their
original haiku, memorized, so as to be able to pick one if the master called on
them. Then, with some pause, a facial expression of agony followed by beatific
thoughtfulness, perhaps if a man -- stroking a beard, the chosen one declaims
his or her verse. If it is not accepted by the master, the
crestfallen individual can make real expressions this time and fall back on
another prepared at home -- and hope.
We shall divide the role of the master equally. I, myself, am certainly no
higher than my partners, Peggy and Ferris. Each verse when shared is a proposed
verse. It is not done with until each of the partners approves. This doesn't
have to be a formal process, indeed, most partners in renku either are or soon
become friends. A guideline for playing this non-Western "game" is to
check your ego at the door. There is no one-upsmanship. We all will make
mistakes, and each of us hopes that we or our partners will catch our mistakes
in time for correction. In fact it is a duty of each member of the team to
honestly scrutinize a proposed stanza for how it sits with
"Tradition."
Once a verse is approved and covered by the next one, I am rarely in favor of
any major editing. Other writers may disagree. Certainly small things such as
switching articles or even clause order can be done with a reason. Major changes
of adding to a verse that has already been replied to, or deleting from it
should be avoided. As we will experience together later in the seminar, a kasen
gets quite long, and it's harder and harder to stay clear of rule violations.
Renku to 100, and they are done today, seem unimaginable to me. In renku there
is a flow of the group's thinking. Images and their variety, the pulse and mood
are all an organic thing -- a process in renku. A series of stimuli allow the
creation of subsequent verses. They inspire them. In parallel, the presence of
wording or subject matter in early verses precludes even going in certain
directions. It is a tapestry. After the warp is blocked tight in a loom, it is
hard to later pull and replace a yarn. Most of the time it will show as a
defect. Back editing, rather than simultaneous suggestion, is harmful to the
whole.
Let the game begin! (proclaimed with chalice raised, spilling nary a drop)
Winter Shisan for three partners:
Paul MacNeil (A); Peggy Willis Lyles (B); Ferris Gilli (C)
a shiny icicle
on the sidewalk --
pieces end-to-end
1 - pm
the form:
verse# /Season /player A-C
1 winter A - hokku
2 B
3 C
4 B
5 A
6 C
7 B
8 A
9 C
10 A
11 autumn B
12 autumn C
Somewhere between 2 and 10 will be, in order, two springs together, then one
summer verse. Within #'s 2-10 will be two love verses together. The one moon can
light up any of the season verses (6 of them) including the hokku. One of the
spring verses should be the sole flower verse.
Each partner gets 4 verses; 2 are three-liners. The rest is up to the partners
as they write. The form was made with consideration that each writer may follow
both of the others.
BIO's (2000)
LYLES, PEGGY WILLIS: lives with her husband in Tucker, Georgia. They have a
daughter, a son, and three grandchildren. She earned her B.A. from Columbia
(S.C.) College and an M.A. in English from Tulane University; where she was a
Woodrow Wilson Fellow for 1960-61. Peggy taught briefly at Sophie Newcomb
College, High Point (N.C.) High School, High Point College, and the University
of Georgia. She was Poetry Editor of a regional magazine Georgia Journal from
1980-85.
For more than twenty years her haiku have been widely published in the US and
abroad. Her work is included in many anthologies, including The Haiku Handbook,
1985, and Haiku World, 1996, both edited by William J. Higginson; The Haiku
Anthology, 2nd and 3rd editions, 1986 and 1999, edited by Cor van den Heuvel;
Remember That Symphonies Also Take Place In Snails, edited by John and Joanne
Judson, 1989; The Rise and Fall of Sparrows, edited by Alexis Rotella, 1990;
Haiku Moment, edited by Bruce Ross, 1993; A Haiku Path, the Haiku Society of
America, 1994; snow on the water, the Red Moon Anthology for 1998; the thin
curve, the Red Moon Anthology for 1999; and the forthcoming Global Haiku, edited
by George Swede and Randy Brooks. Her two miniature chapbooks are Red Leaves In
the Air, High/Coo Press, 1979, and Still At The Edge, Swamp Press, 1980. She has
won awards from Modern Haiku, the Museum of Haiku Literature, the Hawaii
Education Association, Wind Chimes Press, the Henderson Contest, Brussels
Sprout; Haiku Quarterly; Woodnotes; The Mainichi Daily News, the New Zealand
Poetry Society, the 2nd Annual People's International Haiku Contest, the HPNC
1999 International Senryu Contest, and the Snapshot Press Haiku Calendar 2000
Competition.
You can read her work on-line at Poetry in the Light; the English-Language Haiku
Web Site; The Heron's Nest; and Pinecone: the North Georgia Haiku Society.
She says, "I think of contemporary English language haiku as something we
poets are creating together. I enjoy reading haiku as much as writing them and
consider many haiku poets 'mentors at a distance.'"
GILLI, FERRIS: lives with her
husband in Orlando, Florida. Ferris previously lived for two years in Paraguay
and four years in Germany. When she is not bird watching or writing haiku, she
writes novels, repots plants, and speaks long distance with her daughter.
Ferris Gilli earned first place in the 1998 Alabama Sakura Haiku Competition and
fourth in 1999. Also in 1998 she won third prize in the Herb Barrett contest.
She was among the ten winners of the 2nd Annual International People's Haiku
Contest and won Honorable Mention in the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society East-West 99
Hokku Contest and in the 1999 Harold G. Henderson Awards. Ferris's haiku, tanka,
haibun, and renku have appeared in Cicada, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Acorn, Raw
Nervz, Haiku Spirit, Presence, Tundra, and Lynx. Her work has been selected to
appear in The Art of Haiku 2000; American Haibun & Haiga 1999; The Red Moon
Anthology of English-Language Haiku 1999; and Snapshots. Her poems can be seen
online at Poetry in the Light, Reflections, Haiga Online, The Heron's Nest,
Chaba, Pickings, and Templar Phoenix.
Peggy and Ferris, let us title our correspondence to each other for this shisan:
Renku Seminar, Icicle, # (verse # under discussion).
And, because it is short, let's show the whole form under the list of stanzas as
it grows. Try not to send copies with ">" on each line. They get
pretty dense by the time you get to 12 verses.
"Icicle" is a working title only. The partners will name it when done.
Of course Peggy, Ferris and Paul will address each E-mail to the haiku forum. If
others in the forum have a question as we go, we'll be glad to try to answer.
Please do not post a verse to this renku -- this short one is limited to the
trio described above.
It is now Peggy's turn. Go for it!
- Paul (MacNeil)
Tue Feb 17, 2000
Originally posted to WHChaikuforum as the fifth essay-lesson in the Haikuforum
Seminar on "Traditional Renku in English".
