I’ve just had a haibun published in Wales Haiku Journal. You can find it here. I have a previous one published here.
I noticed, when re-reading The Duckpond (published about two years earlier) , that I seem to write about ponds a lot. Am I in danger of becoming type-cast, possibly even being known to posterity as The Pond Poet?
It’s another possible problem to add to running out of ideas, losing my ability to write and being found out. Because the problems of writing something good enough for publication aren’t enough, I need more fears to fill the time as I lie awake at night.
With coronavirus I can now fill that time with thoughts of death, losing my job and the collapse of society, but once we have a vaccine I can start worrying about how I will be seen by future generations.
However, this isn’t a post about worry, it’s about haibun. I’m currently in the middle of reorganising my computer files, as they had degenerated into chaos and I have been having difficulty finding things. This led to me submitting four poems to a magazine, then wishing I hadn’t.
One was an accidental double submission (which I think I mentioned before) but fortunately the other editor rejected it. Two of the others were not final versions. When I looked at them again, I realised that one was an incomplete version of a revision and one was a fully revised version but, unfortunately, one that had been further revised and improved.
I’m now waiting to get them back. It’s easier, I think just to get them back and suffer the ignominy of looking unprofessional, rather than try to explain and resubmit.
Hopefully the new system will stop this happening.
Then all I need is a way of filing haiku. Tiny little poems with no titles. I have hundreds of them, and they are refusing to cooperate. It’s like grains of sand pouring out of a hole in a bucket. They are all over the place and I have completely lost track.
They don’t tell you about this in haiku books. They tell you about lightness and simplicity and all that stuff but are completely silent on the subject of indexing, storage and finding them again once you have written them.
Congratulations, Simon. I loved the pond poems.
Thank you. 🙂
🙂
Congratulations on another publication! It’s wonderful. I love the idea of “what the water sees”. Also loved the tumbling rhododendron being doubled. Well done, sir!
I don’t envy you the filing problem – you make me think of Jack Frost
That’s the shabby police Inspector isn’t it, not the natty winter hero of children’s fairy tales? 🙂
Yep 🙂
🙂
Hope you find a way of suitably filing your haibun and that the shop where you work remains viable.
Just realised it should be ‘filing haiku’. Do you not have a problem filing haibun?
Haibun have titles and I have less than a hundred decent haibun to file.
Haiku don’t have titles, often have one word first lines and I probably have several thousand stored.
I can remember most of my haibun in vague detail, but I don’t have a chance of remembering most of the haiku.
To be fair it’s a brain problem rather than a haiku problem. 🙂
Could you number the haiku – perhaps store them by date you write them from now on?
I have files where I number them within months, so I have 101 August 20. It just takes time and I can never remember what month anything is in. With just two published haiku, it isn’t a great problem at the moment. 🙂
😊
I’m sure something will come to mind. The shop should be OK as it will still generate income through eBay. There are others that will not be as lucky and I know that one or two are looking to get round the rules to stay in business. I am OK because I am an employee but owners of small shops are being given £1,300 for the month. This has to pay for rent, rates and insurance as well as “wages”. My old shop used to cost about £640 a month and that was nearly 20 years ago.
It’s going to be a tough time but thank goodness you have Ebay 😊
Yes, it should see us through.
Fingers crossed 😊
There could be worse things to be known for than Pond Poet. As for fears to keep you awake at night, the national news from over here should suffice. 🙂
Good luck with the counting. The only comfort I can off er is that it will all work out OK in the end. I really don’t know how politicians can sleep at night with the games they play with people’s lives.
lovely, oh well it seems you do well at pond haikus so don’t sweat it. loved it.
Thank you. I am working on one about a lake at the moment. 🙂
You’re so welcome. I’ll look forward to it! ❤️
🙂
You’re welcome! Can’t wait to read it! ❤️
🙂 🙂
You need a secretary. Have you thought of offering Julia the job?
I enjoyed the pond work.
Thank you. I am currently composing one about a lake. A man’s reach should exceed his grasp.
That sounds interesting. I await the result with enthusiasm.
It could take some time…
Strangely enough, no. She has strange ideas on time management.
Strange indeed.
I met her 40 years ago and though she has many fine qualities she has remained inscrutable. Apart from when I really annoy her. She can be quite plain spoken then.
Scrutability can be a mixed blessing in a marriage.
All in all it is probably better if I don’t know what she is thinking.
Hmm… I’d like to say I feel your pain (apparently it shows empathy but Gillian says I’m dispossessed of it?) but I don’t really understand lol.
Anyway at least you have something in common with Winston Churchill, he painted ponds, well he painted the same pond at least.
I did really enjoy your haikun don’t think that’s the correct spelling but I enjoyed it regardless 😀
I didn’t know Churchill had painted ponds, so you have empathised, you have praised my poetry and you have taught me a new Churchill fact. This, I feel, is the perfect response. 🙂
Aww I’m chuffed, he painted the pond at Chartwell House. Legend has it he painted a few times?
Sold for £1.8 million lol
It’s a shame yuo have to die before your paintings make money, otherwise I’d use my lottery money to buy paints. Spend £4 this week, buy the blue, then next week another £4 and I could buy green and paint the grass. Could take a while to finish but for that sort of money I’m prepared to wait.
😂😂
Phew! Good luck. A vole in the water? Startling image.
There must be some sort of haiku spreadsheet