Haiga with Other Artists

The following haiga and photo-haiga present poems by Michael Dylan Welch, with artwork, photography, and calligraphy by the artists indicated, and occasionally my own artwork and adaptations. First is a tan-renga I wrote with Jeanne Emrich, who also did the watercolour painting. We printed this haiga to give as a lagniappe with copies of our book Berries and Cream: Contemporary Haiga in North America (Foster City, California: Press Here, 2000, with an introduction by Stephen Addiss). This haiga appeared in the 2003 edition of Reeds: Contemporary Haiga, pages 14–15. The second and third haiga appeared, respectively, in the Autumn/Winter 2005 and June 2011 issues of Haiga Online, produced by teams of artists, translators, and calligraphers. See also Tulip Festival Haiga. The fourth image, a photo-haiga created by Graziella Dupuy with a haiku of mine translated into French, appeared on the 25 June 2011 blog entry for the Akita International Haiku Network. The fifth haiga also appeared on Haiga Online. The sixth poem is from A Hundred Gourds. The seventh poem appeared, without the Hiroshige image, in Ekphrasis, the 2017 British Haiku Society members’ anthology. The eighth poem is a previously unpublished poem written in response to a postcard image given to me by John Budan, shared on Facebook on 2 April 2019. The ninth poem, a photo-haiga, is a still video image from “Haiku Getaway,” produced by Haiku Chronicles, released 6 April 2019, with the poem previously published in the 2014 Seabeck Haiku Getaway anthology, Rainsong. The tenth poem first appeared in Modern Haiku 24:3, Fall 1993, and in Hiroaki Sato’s Erotic Haiku (IBC Publishing, 2004; Stone Bridge Press, 2005), presented here with artwork created in 2020 by Terry Ann Carter. The eleventh haiga is a haiku postcard created by Jamie Wimberly in 2020. The twelfth image features a poem of mine as part of the 2019 Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Quilt” created by Linda Coe. The thirteenth image is something I put together for fun, and the fourteenth is a bit more serious, together with images of the same poem from its outdoor installation in Washington, DC in the spring of 2022. The last two haiga appeared in Contemporary Haibun Online 18:3, December 2022, with images from a library of Japanese paper designs (the second of these two images was also the opening image in that issue of Contemporary Haibun Onlinesee the table of contents). See also “Dense Fog” and “Tarnished Silver.”

bikers ascend

the mountain trail—

a day moon

beads of condensation

slip down my soda can

From Haiga Online 6:2, Autumn/Winter 2005

unfinished to-do list—

my roses lure me out

into sunlight

zanmu ari bara ni sasoware hi no nakahe

Haiku: Michael Dylan Welch

Painting: Mary B. Rodning

Translation: Hiromi Inoue

Calligraphy: Shisen

Haiga: Jasminka Nadaskic Djordjevic

From Haiga Online 12:1, June 2011; see also Linking and Leaping: A Haiga Primer

scented breeze . . .

our conversation takes

an unexpected turn

kunpu ya kaiwa yokisenu tenkai ni

Haiku: Michael Dylan Welch

Painting: Mary B. Rodning

Translation: Hiromi Inoue

Haiga: Jasminka Nadaskic Djordjevic

after the quake

the weathervane

pointing to earth

Après le séisme

la girouette

pointée vers la terre

Translated into French by Graziella Dupuy.

From Haiga Online 13:1, June 2012


revised due date—

a purple blossom

enclosed with your letter


Haiku: Michael Dylan Welch

Painting: Mary B. Rodning

From A Hundred Gourds 5:3, June 2016


karaoke night—

the stage lights up

for the janitor


Haiku: Michael Dylan Welch

Artwork: Ron C. Moss

waves of froth

whitening the shoreline . . .

retired lighthouse

April Fools’ Day—

my death poem

still unwritten


Inspired by a postcard given to me by John Budan with the challenge to write a poem in response.

night walk—

we all return

wet from the woods

our rhythmic breathing

a bee slips deeper

into the fuchsia

crackling beach fire +

we hum in place of words

we can’t recall

wind in the blossoms—

or is it the taiko drums

trembling them?

snow day—

snow falling

on snowy snow

cedars and firs

as still as stones . . .

mountain rain

(selected for the Golden Triangle haiku installation, Washington, DC, March/April 2022). +

paulownia

leaf

in

the

alcove

grannys

guitar

in the sky

between lily pads

a frog’s dream