I Wish

I Wish: A 20th Anniversary Haiku Collection, edited by Stephen Henry Gill. Kansai, Japan: Hailstone Haiku Circle, 2020. 104 pages. 4 by 5¾ inches. ISBN 978-4-9911809-0-3. ¥1,200 or $11.00, or $17.00 including postage. Contact Hailstone foreign orders officer Hitomi Suzuki at indigoapple28@gmail.com for ordering details, or see the Hailstone website.

Every few years the Hailstone Haiku Circle puts out a new group anthology, and the latest one is I Wish. The group is based in the Kansai region of Japan, with most events in Kyoto, and is led by Stephen Henry Gill. This volume celebrates the group’s 20th anniversary, and its main section presents 165 haiku by 57 poets. The collection also includes a rensaku (a themed presentation of 48 loosely linked haiku), a memorial section (nine poems), and a list of the group’s events since the publication of its previous anthology, Persimmon, in 2017. All poems are in English, following the group’s goal to promote haiku in English, even though most members also speak Japanese, including many expatriates from other countries. I understand that some participants are English learners, yet the anthology is entirely welcoming to all skill levels, not just with haiku but with the language. Each poet has a page for their haiku, ranging from one to four poems each. Three pages of notes explain asterisked terms in some poems, providing useful context for readers not in the Kansai region.

In his foreword to the book, editor Gill says that the idea that a haiku should “strike then melt” was key to their selection criteria for their first anthology, Hailstones, in 2001, but notes, with joy, that twenty years later the community has not melted. In an afterword, Duro Jaiye emphasizes the group’s diversity and notes that the Hailstone Haiku Circle “has organized nearly 200 seminars and more than 150 poetic events, including ginkos [haiku walks], renga meets, exhibitions, haiga walks, and seasonal hikes at places of literary, historical, or natural significance, to help stimulate and inspire us poets in the art of haiku.” This is clearly an active group, repeatedly inspired by the rich cultural and poetic history around its members.

For readers of Western haiku, what makes this book distinctive, like its predecessors from the same group, is the way the poetry so markedly differs from poems typically found in English-language haiku journals. Many of the poems reflect what the foreword refers to as “novel experience,” a sort of trusting of one’s unique life as a bald source of haiku, where the poems are not cookie-cuttered into fashions or trends that often prevail in Western haiku journals. This extends even to the form, where many poems follow the four-line “haiqua” arrangement sometimes favoured by Gill and his mentor (also a longtime participant), Nobuyaki Yuasa. In contrast, all poems begin with a capital letter, a style conformance perhaps applied by the editor, if not group consensus, but the content remains unfettered. Here are two favourite examples, by David McCullough and Mayumi Kawaharada:

Piano to fortissimo— Snow falls softly

frogs change their tone onto the river—

at the feel of rain last train passing by

Some poems may be more challenging by their seeming foreignness, such as with some of these, somewhat randomly selected:

In an old town, Ouda

a September shower brings forth

a pleasant chat

Akishige Ida

Still pond

touched by sunlight—

sharing snow haiku

Branko Manojlović

The leaves are dead,

but not the trees. They rest

with arms aloft. They wait

Ellis Avery

The god, Kui

his whirling brush in hand—

May wind

Keiko Yurugi

Early summer heat—

the boy stands up

legs shaking

for his sumo bout

Michiko Suzuki

Layer upon layer

of birdsong filling . . .

the blue Nilgiri air

Miki Kotera

One after another

taros are offered:

bringing smiles,

the harvest moon

Takashi Itani

Sudachi slices float

in a bowl of thin wheat noodles—

their coolness!

Teruko Yamamoto

A tiny blue butterfly

flits on ahead . . .

all the way

to snowy Hakusan?

Tito (Stephen Henry Gill)

The rensaku section of the book, titled “Roller Coaster,” is the most unified. Its poems focus on a quick succession of disasters that befell the region in 2018, starting with a 5.5 earthquake in June, an extraordinary monsoon in early July, then a heatwave in late July, all described by Gill as a “fearsome summer.” He notes that the poets represented here found “ways to ‘coast’ between the ‘rolls’” with “a sense of optimism.” Yet this fearsome summer was followed in September by a major typhoon, where many Hailstone poets suffered damage to their property, resulting in more misfortune poems. Yet the rensaku does not stop there, moving on to a commemoration of Australian wildfire poems from 2019, and then Covid-19 pandemic poems from 2020. One can only hope that the next anthology will have happier themes. Here’s a sample pandemic poem by Yaeno Azuchi, revealing a sense of optimism despite calamity:

On the pine bough

a snake’s sloughed skin—

lockdown eased

In all, this is a pleasing collection of poems, not despite the subjects and syntax sometimes being possibly unfamiliar but because this is true. Readers may well want to find some of the group’s earlier anthologies. I look forward to the next Hailstone anthology as well.

Preliminary Notes

Written in March 2021.

First impressions? A small book, intimate, fits in your hand, easy to put in your pocket for a walk in the woods or wherever. High production values and a pleasing cover with French flaps, distinctive font choice, 104 pages with up to four poems per page, featuring 57 poets arranged by first name (wish the book had page numbers, but their absence makes for a cleaner look). Foreword by editor Stephen Henry Gill, and an afterword by Duro Jaiye (which notes that Hailstone has, in twenty years, organized 200 seminars and 150 poetic events, including haiku walks, renga sessions, and exhibitions). A fifteen-page rensaku titled “Roller Coaster” with sections on earthquakes, typhoons, heat waves, wildfires, and the pandemic—indeed a roller coaster ride. A memorial section honouring former members and friends. Notes on the poems, and a timeline of group events since the previous anthology in 2017. Lots to absorb and enjoy.

Second impressions? This anthology celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the Hailstone Haiku Circle, a group led by Stephen Henry Gill in Kyoto. I’ve had the privilege of attending its meetings a couple of times. Both in person and through the group’s anthologies I’ve found the range and perspectives on haiku to be refreshing, sometimes different from American approaches (a reminder that Americans don’t have a lock on what English-language haiku supposedly is). The group also includes numerous Japanese members for whom English is a second language. The book is a sign of a rich expat community that gains from Japanese interaction, with many events that focus on cultural and nature excursions in and around Kyoto. The English-language haiku community around the world has seen a spate of anniversary books in the last few years, including the Haiku Society of America, the British Haiku Society, Haiku Canada, The Heron’s Nest, Haiku North America, and other organizations. It’s a sign of haiku growth as various communities mark their milestones, and here the Hailstone group is taking its turn. So many of these groups are beyond being new but have settled into a sort of maturity, some of them having passed the baton to new leaders who keep the group’s spirit and mission thriving.

Third impressions? What about the poems? What can Americans learn from this collection that isn’t borne of American perspectives on haiku that sometime seem much more limited and narrow compared with Japanese practice? That isn’t necessarily an easy question to answer when a measure of the book’s poems may be from non-native speakers of haiku, and who are sometimes heavily influenced by the group’s leader (such as with the four-line version of haiku often employed by Gill, who also goes by the pen name of Tito). I count twenty-one four-line poems in the book (and, incidentally, no one-liners), which seldom appear in other anthologies or journals. In the group’s first anthology in 2001, their selection criteria was that a haiku, like a hailstone, should “strike, then melt.” That still seems true today, and a good proviso for any haiku anywhere.