We are calling it a tan-shahai for now, for want of knowing if there is a true name for it. A shahai is a photo with a haiku superinposed, but with a tanka?

There has been talk on other websites as to whether photos should be used to inspire haiku. We hope to get some comments on this I think: Use the little ‘cloud’ at the top of the post to have your say, or send it to me by email. My address is near the bottom of this post. In any case, here is one photo that I took; perhaps someone will get a haiku from it.

 Don’t forget to send in your haiku, or other Japanese forms and/or shahai, or haiga, or whatever is inspiring you to write these days! This blog isn’t mine, it belongs to Kado…

“Is that a real haiku, or did you write it yourself?” —Michael Dylan Welch
Check out the new link for Graceguts, the pages of Michael Dylan Welch, a good place to go for the latest in haiku, for good articles, interesting ideas, the T-shirt. https://sites.google.com/site/graceguts/home

Here is a book every haiku lover should have: It’s full of the known and newly discovered haiku of Nick Virgilio, essays about the life and work of Nick Virgilio, and an essay he wrote. It’s also lovely to hold.

From Rick Black’s Turtle Light Press. You can order from the website. $15 = $5 postage, and worth every cent. He is trying to have someone bring some to the conference. If so, then there will be no postage.
www.turtlelightpress.com

These are not Japanese in form, but short poems similar to tanka from Liu Xiaobo: ‘Your Lifelong Prisoner’ – Liu Xiaobo’s poem from prison
New book by the jailed dissident and Nobel peace prizewinner contains a moving tribute to his wife, the poet Liu Xia
From: ‘Your Lifelong Prisoner’
…
Maybe as your prisoner
I’ll never see the light of day
but I believe
darkness is my destiny
inside you
all is well

The glitter of the outside world
scares me
exhausts me
I focus on
your darkness –
simple and impenetrable

From Louise Vaillancourt: (Thank you Mike Montreuil … for collaborating!)

snow
double bloom tulips
overnight

dernière neige
tulipes
à doubles pétales

From Grant Savage:

your collection
of buddhas
may i remind you
that I too love to laugh
and have a belly to rub

Kado: Spring meeting at the Japanese Embassy in Ottawa. This will be the last chance to say you’ll be joining other Kado members at the Embassy on May 12th. (So far nearly 30 people are coming) As we are having a special guest who will be preparing something amazing, as well as guests from out of town, I need to know for sure whether you are coming, and how many will be with you. Send the information in a comment on this blog, or to me at claudiarosemary@yahoo.com

morning sun through
the hanging crystal
wedding gift from a friend
I haven’t seen
enough of lately

My friend Sanford Goldstein, the father of modern tanka, lives in Japan, and sits once a week in a local cafe, ‘spilling’ tanka, at least 25 a week. He lost over three thousand tanka he’d written when he was on his last trip to the US to visit his family, left them in a coffee shop. Those coffee shops – some giveth, some taketh away. I hope whoever found the notebook loves poetry, for he’s a fine writer.

A note about the photo in the ynklings heading; a ‘slice’ across a photo of my haiku for the 35th anniversary Haiku Canada Holographic Anthology; Haiku Canada publishes a set every five years; I have sets from other years and they are a delight. Sure you commit to hand-writing over a hundred of your haiku, and designing them if you wish – my haiku was about plum blossoms falling into ‘pink’ so I used a set of letter stamps to plunk the word ‘pink’ in pink at the bottom of the strung-out poem. Fun to do. Others are very careful about their materials. For instance Pearl has facebooked/blogged her style of writing her haiku with a real pen in black ink on fine paper.  Gorgeous. The fun is getting your set of haiku, each individualized by the poet, and signed. Treasures.  Here one from a set made ten years ago: It’s by Betty Warrington-Kearsley of Ottawa.

and another from Marco Fraticelli of Montreal, one of the editors of the collection: (with Philomene Kocher)

The poets clearly dig into their creative side for more than words! I’ll post a few more next time…

Marco Fraticelli and I have finished editing the 35th annual Haiku Canada’s Members’ Anthology, Touch of a Moth. (Scrivener Press, 2012) No one will get to see it until the Haiku Canada Weekend in Toronto near the end of May. It will be launched at the conference banquet. Heads up though, it’s gorgeous, its cover designed with a special ‘mark’ made at our request by Heather A. macDonald. A mark, not a painting; our roots are in Japan, but Japanese forms in North America have developed differently from in Japan. Members will want to order extra copies at 40% discount. No peeks though, until May.

The Call and Response project, (SPAO and rob mclennan)poets responding to photographs at the Red Wall Gallery in Ottawa, is nearly over. I am so pleased to be part of this, and fortunate to respond to the very special work of Olivia Johnston. Her portraits of teens, paired with photos of their private lairs (bedrooms) speak to the lack of commentary on this age group. Her show is called 13 – 18, the ages of the young men who volunteered to be captured on film. rob mclennan will respond to the last photography exhibit in this project. A reading/art slide show will happen on June 22nd, so you can mark calendars now.

Since then I’ve done a series of erasure poems, based on the longer poems written for 13 – 18, and hope to persuade Olivia to work with me using her images in a new project. Cross fingers for me…