Off the Beaten Track: A Year in Haiku
Off the Beaten Track: A Year in Haiku, featuring thirty of my haiku, appeared in January of 2016 from England’s
Boatwhistle Books. In early 2013, editor and
publisher Hamish Ironside asked me to contribute by writing haiku daily for April
that year—that cruelest of months. The idea was for each of twelve authors to write
haiku every day for a given month, and thus to cover an entire year of quotidian
experience as the seasons unfolded. The kicker was that six poets were well-established
haiku writers (me, Hamish Ironside, Matthew Paul, Christopher Herold, George
Swede, and Bob Lucky), with the others being accomplished writers but essentially
new to haiku or inexperienced with it (Hugo Williams, Matthew Welton, Sally
Read, Momus [Nicholas Currie], Fabian Ironside, and Éireann Lorsung). This
resulted in a wide-ranging book of poetry presenting haiku as each author perceived it to be, cumulatively
freeing the genre of expectations that sometimes seem to constrain even the
English-language haiku community. In other words, each group was showing
the other what haiku could be. The book offers no foreword or introduction to explain itself, but lets the poems speak for themselves. Nor does the book include any author bios, putting further focus just on the poems. A brief afterword (unsigned) provides only the slightest guidance to the reader after the poems have done their own talking, referring to the collection as an “experiment” that may well be “off the beaten track.” As the afterword says, “The hope was that [the six less-experienced writers] would bring to the project the ‘beginner’s mind’ that is traditionally considered an important element of haiku in a more literal, perhaps purer sense than a more experienced haijin would be able to.” More specifically, the afterword notes that “The point of the project . . . was to both juxtapose and integrate the two camps, and in doing so perhaps achieve a little more integration of the currently quite separate worlds of haiku and other forms of literature.” Of the more experienced haiku writers, two were in England, two in the United States, one in Canada, and one in Saudi Arabia. Of the six other writers, four lived in England, one was an American living in Belgium, and one was a Scot living in Japan. The book also features artwork by twelve different artists, one for each month. The Boatwhistle website includes author and artist bios, sample poems, and a news blog with author interviews (including my interview, also here). While you’ll have to read the entire book to decide if the experiment works, you can at least read my contributions here. Hamish Ironside selected the following thirty poems out of 151 I had written in that productive month. See also the postscript at the end, which addresses issues of imagination, experience, and empathy as they relate to daily haiku writing. 1 April pinker against the blue graveyard cherry blossoms 2 April painterly clouds— the steering wheel warm for the first time this spring 3 April rain in the forecast— what have I done with my afternoon? 4 April hazy sun— the rest area sign says free coffee 5 April burn ban— a eucalyptus leaf between my fingers 6 April estate sale— a dried-up cactus in the garden shed 7 April coastal drive— we roll down the windows to hear the ocean 8 April elbow to elbow at the poetry reading . . . her black coffee 9 April a day without rain— I save the thickest envelope to open last 10 April old gas station— one suction cup popped loose on the closed sign 11 April after the news the morning paper still unread 12 April spring sun— my shaver changes pitch as I plug it in 13 April graupel in the shadows— the schoolyard tetherball twists in the wind 14 April a hearse up from the valley wet with blossoms 15 April tax day— reading glasses left on the kitchen table 16 April spring cleaning— tossing out a box of old business cards 17 April national haiku day— where’s a scrap of paper when I need it 18 April moss on the path— you ask me, quietly, if I have summer plans 19 April April showers— a library book left under an oak 20 April soap bubbles popping on the lost puppy poster— inner city park 21 April little league photo day— mud stains on the catcher’s knees 22 April car trip— we add new harmonies to a disco tune 23 April on an old memory card a photo of my sister in her chemo wig 24 April the ferry quiets as it drifts in to dock— rising moon 25 April sapwood— I learn something new about my mother 26 April a stand of larch— the towhee tells me to go home 27 April new neighbours— the story again of the wasp nest 28 April poetry reading— I hear nothing more after he says loam 29 April national anthem— the bald coach removes his cap 30 April extra innings— she goes on telling me about her divorce PostscriptBefore and after I wrote my contributions for Off the Beaten Track in April of 2013, Hamish Ironside and I had an ongoing discussion, some of which I share here, about the balance of experience and imagination in the writing of haiku. His personal approach is to write pretty much only from direct and recent personal experience. I often favour that approach, but do not limit myself to it. I find that empathy makes it possible to write about the experiences of others, and I also feel that one can write effectively from long-ago memory and imagination, especially when readers can seldom tell from the poem itself whether the poet “actually” experienced what the poem depicts. My feeling is that even a so-called “actual” experience can come across as lacking authenticity if it is not crafted well. So for me the point of haiku, in this regard, is to craft the poem so that it comes across to the reader as if it is authentic. In other words, authenticity is judged by the reader, not the writer, regardless of what “really” happened, but it is up to the writer to make the reader believe. As an example from classical Japanese haiku, Buson’s wife was alive when he wrote about stepping on his “dead wife’s comb” in their bedroom. We are, after all, writing poetry, not diary entries (see my essay “Haiku Stances”). Furthermore, as I’ve written in “Haiku as History: The Ultimate Short Story,” all haiku are written from memory, even those written just after the event. What matters is the vibrancy of that memory, not its recency. The following are two slightly edited email messages that were part of our discussion.From: Hamish Ironside To: Michael Dylan Welch Sent: Mon, May 20, 2013 2:06 pm Subject: RE: Haiku project Hi Michael I just had another look at your April haiku, bearing in mind some of your comments, and have got the selection down to 30 (attached here), which we could regard as the final selection, if you’re happy with it. A few comments that struck me on this reading. Interesting (and well judged) that you use a question mark at end of 3 April but not 17 April. The lack of question mark really makes the latter poem one of my favourites, but the former does need the question mark. 5 April (burn ban): this is one I like more with every reading. 10 and 12 April are two more favourites. And 13 April is great; for one thing, I learned a new word! Had to look up “graupel” (“towhee” was the other word I had to look up). 13 April is one that is musically very pleasing—by which I mean not just the rhythm but every aspect of the sound of the words; they all go very well together. 14 April, too, is one I liked very much from first reading. So these mid-month ones were, for me, when you really hit your stride. 16 April is another I liked instantly, and this may show partly how subjective haiku can be, because I just happen to be mildly fascinated by business cards. 18 April I like a lot because of the commas around “quietly.” 20 April’s first two lines are you having fun with the sound of the words, and very successfully. Why do so few haiku make use of the sounds of the words? 23 April is one of my favourites, as I mentioned before. And the ones now selected for 25, 26, 27, and 28 April are all ones I like very much as well. Cheers, Hamish From: Michael Dylan Welch To: Hamish Ironside Sent: Mon, May 20, 2013 4:04 pm Subject: Re: Haiku project Hi Hamish, Your selection [of my April poems] works very well—thanks. I appreciate your close reading and all your comments. It’s a profound luxury to have one’s poetry given such attention. Now to the question, if we dare, about which poems are “made up” or not. As I mentioned, I tried to give extra attention to writing from the moment, more so than usual for me, in addition to writing from further-away memory. Would you care to guess which poem is which? Stop reading now if you really want to think about that, then come back here to read my thoughts below on which are which. To be honest, it’s a little hard for me to tell, because they’re all memories, and I don’t always remember how recent the memory is. Or it’s complicated by the notion that something here-and-now might trigger a poem, yet what I’m writing about isn’t just the here and now—I also have in mind past events too, more often than not. Nevertheless, I think I can say accurately that the following poems were written FULLY from the moment (about a third of all the poems):
Cheers, Michael |