2012 British Haiku Society Haiku ContestI cojudged the 2012 British Haiku
Society’s annual haiku contest with Alison Williams, each of us choosing our
selections independently. The following two reports of my choices and
commentaries start with a shortened text as published in Blithe Spirit 23:3, May 2013. After this is the longer text I initially submitted.
Both originally written in March of 2013.
2012 British Haiku Society Haiku ContestThe novelist Katherine Paterson once wrote about a key motivation for her work:
“I am called,” she said, “to listen to the sound of my own heart—to write the
story within myself that demands to be told at that particular point in my
life. And if I do this faithfully, clothing that idea in the flesh of human
experience and setting it in a true place, the sound from my heart will resound
in the reader’s heart.” This, to me, is the essence of Japanese poetry forms, especially
haiku—to set one’s personal experience in a true place so that fidelity to one’s
own heart finds resonance in the reader’s heart. Haiku, as a result, becomes a
sharing of vulnerability, a sharing of emotion that comes from the heart. This
was as true a thousand years ago as it is today. No wonder Ki no Tsurayuki’s
preface to the first Imperial poetry anthology of 905, the Kokinshū, begins with a matching proclamation: “Japanese poetry
takes as its seed the human heart.”
In this context, I narrowed 437
submissions down to eight and chose the following poem for second place:
moonrise
a commuter train
without a soul
Roland Packer, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Seldom can an abstraction or subjective feeling, such as thinking a train has a
soul, succeed in haiku if it is not grounded in a concrete image, as we see
here (set in autumn if one interprets “moon” in the traditional Japanese
manner). More importantly, we get a sense that it is so early in the morning
that perhaps the train is still empty, and thus does not yet have its “soul” of
people. A deeper reading is that this train may well be full of morning
commuters, yet is still utterly soulless, its occupants behaving as dutiful
automatons on their way to another daily grind. The word “soul,” too, brings an
open-endedness to the poem that allows for many interpretations.
The following is my choice for the
winning poem in the 2012 British Haiku Society haiku contest:
shadows under water
my daughter asks me
how to wish
Hamish Ironside, Teddington, England
It is easy to imagine observers on a bridge over a stream, or by a wishing well.
“My daughter” tells us of a relationship, and we sense a young girl. Her wish
may be childlike, but “under water” first offers very adult overtones. It can
mean that your house or stocks are worth less than you paid for them, or it can
mean that you feel like you’re drowning, either literally or metaphorically.
These overtones heighten a contrast between an adult world and the child’s
innocence. The verb “asks” turns the static image-moment of shadows under water
into a dynamic moment—the instant something happens, thus focusing the poem.
And then everything snaps into place with the word “wish.” We feel a child’s unsullied
hopes and dreams, and her trusting desire to welcome help from her parent, to
wish for something brighter against the shadows of reality. We are left with
many possibilities for what could be wished, and such an open-endedness is
perhaps the best we could ask of any haiku.
My gratitude to all the poets who listened
to their own hearts and submitted their poems, and to the British Haiku Society
for the opportunity to select winning poems.
2012 British Haiku Society Haiku Contest [longer text]The novelist Katherine Paterson once wrote about a key motivation for her work:
“I am called,” she said, “to listen to the sound of my own heart—to write the
story within myself that demands to be told at that particular point in my
life. And if I do this faithfully, clothing that idea in the flesh of human
experience and setting it in a true place, the sound from my heart will resound
in the reader’s heart.” This, to me, is the essence of Japanese poetry forms,
especially haiku—to set one’s personal experience in a true place so that
fidelity to one’s own heart finds resonance in the reader’s heart. Haiku, as a
result, becomes a sharing of vulnerability, a sharing of emotion that comes
from the heart. This was as true a thousand years ago as it is today. No wonder
Ki no Tsurayuki’s preface to the first Imperial poetry anthology of 905, the Kokinshū, begins with a matching proclamation:
“Japanese poetry takes as its seed the human heart.”
In reviewing all 437 submissions
for the British Haiku Society’s 2012 haiku contest, my first thought was to
recognize that nearly all of the poems are an offering of the poet’s heart,
each verse emerging from a private haven of emotional introspection and
appreciation. I am truly grateful to have received each of these moments, and
to be entrusted to experience them. Thank you to each poet for sharing these
private and personal introspections.
E. E. Cummings is famous for
saying “since feeling is first,” emphasizing his appreciation for heart over mind.
But he said feeling came first—not instead of mind. In narrowing my
selections to what ended up being 23 top contenders for the BHS contest, I
looked for several traits that balanced both head and heart. One trait was
flawless crafting. It’s surprising how many poets submit poems with
misspellings, grammatical problems, and other issues. Another was an effective
use of a two-part structure to create implication and resonance between the two
parts. Such a structure isn’t necessary in every haiku, but most of the best
haiku use it for good reason. Likewise, I don’t believe seasonal references are
required in every haiku, but their use can deepen the poem by connecting a
present ephemeral experience to the larger cycles of life, sometimes adding a
metaphorical layer of interpretation as readers equate each season to a stage
of human existence.
Another trait I looked for was
ordinary shared experience, presented in an instant of vulnerability, a moment
that says, “This is what happened to me—maybe it also happened to you.” Yet
merely presenting the ordinary is never enough. Again and again the best haiku
seem to make the ordinary extraordinary, not the least by simply opening our
eyes to the everyday. I think what exists in the finest haiku is a sense of awe
and wonder. As Billy Collins once put it in The
Paris Review, “Almost every haiku says the same thing: ‘It’s amazing to be
alive here.’”
Finally, each poem had to speak to
me personally, with the poem resounding to the sound of my own heart. It is
here, in fact, where a dozen judges would likely pick a dozen different poems,
not necessarily because their perceptions of quality are all that different,
but because they are being true to their own individual hearts. Nevertheless,
if the best poems are sufficiently open-ended (yet not too ambiguous), it is
likely that they will speak deeply to many different hearts.
In this context, I narrowed my 23
contenders to eight top poems and eventually decided on the following poem for
second place:
moonrise
a commuter train
without a soul
Roland Packer, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Years ago I used to say that one should avoid subjectivity and abstraction in
haiku, but now I think it’s more important to control these aspects of one’s haiku. Here, to think of a train
having a soul is indeed an abstraction, yet it is grounded in clear and
immediate images (set in the autumn season if one interprets “moon” in the
traditional Japanese manner). Seldom can an abstraction or subjective feeling
succeed in haiku if it is not grounded in a concrete image, as we see here.
More importantly, we get a sense that it is so early in the morning that perhaps
the train is still empty, and thus does not yet have its “soul” of people. But
a deeper reading is that this train may well be full of morning commuters, yet
is still utterly soulless, all of its occupants behaving as dutiful automatons
on their way to another daily grind. The word “soul,” too, brings an
open-endedness to the poem that allows for many interpretations.
The following is my choice for the
winning poem in the 2012 British Haiku Society haiku contest:
shadows under water
my daughter asks me
how to wish
Hamish Ironside, Teddington, England
First we see an image of shadows under water. It is easy to imagine observers
on a bridge over a stream, or by some other body of water—or even just a
wishing well. The word “shadow” points to the object that is making the shadow,
and “under water” suggests three different realms of existence—above the water,
the water’s surface, and objects below the water (as well as the water itself).
The reference in the middle line to “my daughter” tells us of a relationship in
the poem, and we sense that this is a young girl. The girl’s wish may be very
childlike, but “under water” first offers very adult overtones. It can mean
that your house or stocks are worth less than you paid for them, or it can mean
that you feel like you’re drowning, either literally or metaphorically. These
overtones heighten a contrast between an adult world and the child’s innocence.
The verb “asks” turns the static image-moment of shadows under water into a
dynamic moment—the instant something happens, thus focusing the poem. And in
the last line, everything snaps into place with the word “wish.” We feel a
child’s unsullied hopes and dreams, and her trusting desire to welcome help
from her parent, to wish for something brighter against the shadows of reality.
Asking how to wish is both a practical question (does she just drop a penny
into the water?) and a more metaphysical one (what does one wish for, and why,
and must one think of this wish only in one’s head to make sure it comes
true?). We are left with many possibilities for what could be wished, and such
an open-endedness is perhaps the best we could ask of any haiku. This poem also
resonates with me personally, since I have two young children at home. I want
to teach my own children to wish, and to wish well.
Again, my gratitude to all the poets
who listened to their own hearts and submitted their poems, and to the British
Haiku Society for the opportunity to select winning poems.
|