Rengay Essays

 
This page presents essays focused on learning and appreciating the rengay form (all essays by me except as indicated). Rengay is a six-verse poem usually by two or three writers using a set pattern of three-line and two-line haiku, invented by Garry Gay in 1992. Read more about the form and its origin on the Rengay page. For details about the context in which rengay was invented, please read “Japanese Renku Group Visits San Francisco” (includes a new postscript about rengay). See also “Finding Your Paths,” my introduction to Ancient Bloodlines, a book of rengay by Simon Hanson and Ron C. Moss. For renku and other collaborative writing, please see the Collaborations page. See also the Rengay page I run on Facebook.       +       +       +       +
 
If you have any comments or questions about rengay, please contact Michael Dylan Welch.

Learning Rengay

Publishing Rengay

How to Present a Rengay (layout and attribution considerations)
Rengay Markets (good places to publish your rengay)
Linked Verse Courtesies: Seven Proposed Rules of Conduct (ethics and best practices for poetic collaboration)

Essays on Rengay by Others

Collaboration: Exploring Rengay by Ce Rosenow
Rengay: Going Solo by Cherie Hunter Day
Rengay: The Art of Partnering by Carolyn Hall
The Rengay Verse Form by Joan Zimmerman (overview of rengay)
Writing Rengay by Garry Gay (by rengay’s inventor)
The Moment of Awe — an interview with Garry Gay by Udo Wenzel

Historical Rengay

The following are the first rengay written by two and three writers, and the first solo rengay, and then the first rengay to be published. I am not certain when the first six-person rengay was written, but it might have been “Journey in Blue” (unpublished, and not presented here), written 28 April 2002 by Garry Gay, Claire Gallagher, Fay Aoyagi, David Noble, Bruce Kennedy, and Michael Dylan Welch, in Santa Rosa, California.

Deep Winter by Garry Gay and Michael Dylan Welch (1992)
A Rain of Leaves by Donna [later Claire] Gallagher, Pat Gallagher, and Michael Dylan Welch (1993)
Night Rain by Cherie Hunter Day (1995)
Between Storms by John Thompson and Garry Gay (first published rengay, Albatross, January 1993)