Category Archives: haibun

The Best Words in the Best Order

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‘I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is prose; words in their best order; – poetry; the best words in the best order.’

S. T. Coleridge

Yesterday I read the words of an editor on the front page of their website. It seems that running a magazine is hard work and takes a lot of time. I had never imagined otherwise. I base this on the fact that I spent yesterday pushing words round paper. By the time I had finished I had taken three unpublishable poems and turned them into one possibly publishable poem and two that were better than when I started on them.

 

Poetry takes time. Lots of time.

I read some background, cogitated, deleted a few words, added a few words, deleted them, went back to the first version, and, in a flash of inspiration, deleted the first verse and the last verse and carried on messing with words.

Then I moved on to the next one . . .

The tricky thing I find, is that it’s surprisingly easy to alter something and make the poem worse.

Sometimes, when I’m in full flow, I can write a whole poem and it doesn’t need altering. I wrote one like that once and it was highly commended in a competition. I need to practice more and try to get back to that.

One of my free verse poems, when edited, turned into a haibun. Not quite sure how it happened, but it just seemed to fall into shape as I edited. It might be similar to what sports coaches call “muscle memory” – I’ve written so many haibun that I can’t write anything else. That’s unfortunate, because, as a previous editor pointed out recently, I can’t write haibun. 🙂

I’ve used pictures of Julia’s woodturning, because it’s very much like poetry. You start off with hope and a battery of skills and, if you are lucky, you end up finding something that is better than you hoped.

Writing and Watching the Time Pass

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Despite being very erratic over the last week or two I have mainly kept to the plan, though a post a day has actually meant “averaging” a post a day. Or nothing some days and two or three on others, if I’m honest. I’m currently on 117 posts in 117 days. It is good, but I need this one to keep up.

Stones at Carsington Water

That’s how people do the Buson 100. That’s ten haiku a day for 100 days. I’ve tried three times, completed it twice, failed once. That’s life. However, I’m driven by the hope of improvement rather than the fear of failure so, though I’m not happy to have failed, I’m not going to let it ruin my life. I achieved some improvement in my haiku, then I let it fall away again. I’m not, in truth, greatly enthused by haiku and write them bacause they are necessary if you want to write haibun. The article I first read about it indicated that you could catch up if you got behind, as long as you ended up with 1,000 haiku at the end of it. The link in the post that I have just linked to is no longer available, but this one is very good too.

Stone head – Rufford Abbey

Yosa Buson, an eighteenth century poet and artist, after whom the Buson 100 is named, tried to write ten haiku a day for a hundred days twice and as I recall he didn’t finish either one. He did, however have a lot of other things to do, and he did die in the middle of the second one. He was 68, which will be my age soon – probably an indicator that I should look after myself better and write faster.

It is tempting to set myself a poetry target, but I don’t think it would help. Keeping up with the current regime of one blog post a day and one numismatic article a week are hard enough as it is.

Detail from gravestone – Crowland

Some Thoughts on Poetry and Particularly Tanka

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Julia’s latest vase (she gave the last one away as a present) with silk fritilleries.

I’ve just been replying to two emails from editors. One was comparatively simple, a quick note of thanks for an acceptance. I had an automatic reply by return, telling me that they weren’t taking submissions at the moment – an impersonal response to my attempt at being polite. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised – some magazines are like that.

The other was more complicated. It was a rejection with some suggested links to articles which would help me improve. It’s the sort of response that always invites being categorised as condescending.

I read the first one and it told me that most western definitions of haiku were too restrictive. This explains why editors annoy me by publishing haiku that fall outside the published definitions. Maybe they should take down the definitions hey often display, or display a current one. Same goes for the people who are often quoted on the subject – if your definition is outdated, have the courtesy to indicate this or update it.

As for the haibun article, it quoted a number of haibun. One of the haiku wasn’t a haiku by any definition and the rest all reiterated the subject material, which you aren’t supposed to do. I can’t help feeling that if I’d have submitted any of them, they would have been turned down, not used as examples. I just wrote and thanked them for the feedback and said they provided food for thought.

Email is not the forum to exchange views over something like that, as it could be construed as argumentative and although I have issues with things, I don’t want to start an argument with someone who is trying to help.

This is the one she gave away as a present.

That’s the nice thing about tanka – fewer rules, more freedom, and fewer people writing about them.

 

How to Write a Tanka Prose

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Buzzard pursued by crow

This an answer to a query raised in the comments, but it’s something for everyone to read. Have a go, you might like it.

First, read this. Then abandon thoughts of haiku and haibun for a moment.

If I were starting again I would start with tanka prose. These are like haibun in that they contain prose and a poem, but they are more relaxed.

The trouble lies with the poem. A tanka is a small poem (5-7-5-7-7) according to general wisdom. This isn’t true. That syllable count should be the maximum. You can write fewer syllables.

Some editors like to preserve the short-long-short-long-long layout, others don’t mind as long as it has five lines. It’s just a poem and can include poetic effects, though probably not rhyme. As such, it is free from all the baggage that comes with haiku, and all the conflicting views of editors.

Little Egret at Aldeburgh

You can find tanka and tanka prose in Contemporary Haibun Online, Quail Eggs and Cattails. These are all available online. They are also easy to submit to if you want to have a go at being published.

Rather than listen to me, just read tanka and then practice. If I write ten tanka (which can take between twenty minutes and a week) you can be sure that at least one will tail off without being finished, and a couple will clearly be rubbish that can’t be helped by editing. Even after editing it’s likely that only two or three will be good enough to retain. That’s normal. Just keep writing and eventually you will get there. Don’t take notice of your internal editor until you have written a batch, or you will never actually finish a poem.

Eventually you will have enough to send off. Do it. You won’t be published unless you make submissions.

I send out a batch, one is probably accepted, the rest come back. I add another and send them out again. Usually one of the rejects will be picked at this point. I sometimes send things out three four times before I get fed up with them. By that time I usually have replacements written.

Little Egret – Blacktoft Sands

Next – tanka prose. They are like a haibun but with a tanka rather than a haiku. There is some discussion whether a haibun should be in haiku-like language (ie terse and often slightly stilted). You don’t have that with tanka prose, just write what you like. If you can write a blog post you can write a prose section for a tanka prose.

Then write the tanka to go with it. Some people claim to write the haiku/tanka first then write the prose section. I can’t do that. I write the prose and then write a suitable tanka.

Here are some comments I had recently.

“I think the haiku are not nearly as successful as the prose in your haibun.”

“After a careful review of your poem, I regret that I have had to pass it on.”

“Unfortunately, your work did not quite fit the shape that the issue ended up taking.”

“I’m afraid I don’t get this piece. Is it me or is its meaning or intention too obscure?”

The lesson from those comments is that not every submission ends in success and it’s all par of the process.

Heron

So, to summarise – read, write, submit, expect rejection, read, write, submit . . .

Eventually it will work out, but expect some rejections to begin with. At the start the rejections can seem depressing, overpowering and inevitable. Eventually you will get an acceptance, then another, and it will gradually build up . . .

There’s a lot of other stuff tha goes into writing a good tanka prose, and eventually I might learn some of it, but for the moment I find that the best way to work is to write plenty, submit a lot, shrug off rejection and recycle the rejects.

The recycling is key to my writing – it saves effort, and when a reject is accepted it proves that editing is a matter of opinions and rejected work is not always bad work. And above all, it’s about hard work and  persistence rather than that ephemeral thing we call talent

Good luck.

Cormorant, Lowestoft, Suffolk

More Poetry

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My Orange Parker Pen

This is a tanka prose that was first published in Blithe Spirit 36.1, the journal of the British Haiku Society, in February this year. It is different from the original version, which was about eggs and lockdown and parents. This is about writing a poem and cooking eggs. It deviates slightly from reality as I mention coffee, where we always have tea for breakfast. Tea doesn’t really smell so I took the lazy way out and said we had coffee so I could add an extra sense to the poem.

But first, a tanka, from the same issue. It is based on the annual culling of the Christmas card list as my circle of cousins decreases.

old Christmas card
displayed again
fading slightly
sent by a man
who will not send another

I thought that’s what it was about, anyway. Julia reads it as a story about the Christmas card I have been sending her since 1988. It’s a good one and the message is still relevant. Why waste money, I ask, on another?

 

Life, seen in a Frying Pan

In lockdown, I decided to make better scrambled eggs and wrote a poem in my head as I stirred and learned. It spilled onto paper, took shape and, like the eggs, looked good. On the first rejection I checked all the words and moved them into better order. On the second I added an anecdote, on the third an allegory. At the fourth attempt I slimmed it down.

After five attempts I wondered if it might be bad, or if editors might dislike poems about scrambled eggs. When you think about it, it isn’t a subject you ever see. Eventually it faded from my mind, as poems like it often do. Recently, stirring eggs and making breakfast for my wife, I breathed in the toast and coffee smells and remembered the first line.

five eggs
two broken yolks
a speck of shell
things which are not perfect
still turn out well

The pen that Julia made at the wood turning group

A Haibun from the Past

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Julia on the patio during lockdown

Here’s a haibun from 2021. It had its origins during lockdown as we used to sit outside the back door and dream of freedom.

Across the Valley
From the garden we look down onto a jumble of red tiled roofs and trees and for a moment, I can imagine that we are in the Mediterranean, and not Nottingham. We eat cheese and biscuits, and warm figs, picked straight from the container-grown trees in the front garden. The back garden faces north, which will not do for figs. If I had known we would stay here long enough to become gardeners, I would have bought a different house.


crumbs
on a cracked plate
once I had dreams

First published in Blithe Spirit 31.2 April 2021

Once we were quite good gardeners

The Glittering Prize

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The world continues to offer glittering prizes to those who have stout hearts and sharp swords
F E Smith, Lord Birkenhead

I thought I’d quote Smith for the title, but make it plain I had done so. I didn’t want you to think I’d just nicked the title off the telly, though this is probably unlikely as I just looked it up and find it aired in 1976. hardly a current reference.

I needed a title with “prize” in it as I just won a poetry prize. It’s a poem of the issue award from Eucalypt, a tanka magazine. Every issue, they have two, chosen by the winners of the previous issue’s awards. I now have a commentary on my work and my subscription has been extended by an issue. More worryingly for a man with a very lacklustre education, I have select a winner from the next issue and supply a commentary for it. The one supplied for mine was insightful. The one supplied for the other winner was decidedly erudite. The one about mine used the word trochee. It’s something like 53 years since I last used the word trochee. I’m pretty sure I only used it once then.

As I grow in confidence as a poet I no longer worry about imposter syndrome and am sure I will mange to write an acceptable commentary. I can blog, I can write poetry and I can write about coins, how difficult can it be? I’ll need a few quotes to fill up the space but as long as I get down to it promptly I should be OK.

In the meantime, I should get on with my medallion presentation and making lunch ready for Julia’s return. The poem was a about the stripy shed on the MENCAP Gardens – that’s the pictures today.

I now, of course, regret not taking a photo of the whole shed instead of being arty.

One Door Closes and Another Door Opens

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More of a wish list than an actual “How to” selection of gardening books

Last night I slept fitfully and slept in late. Julia went to Stamford with my sister this afternoon and I went back to bed again, waking some time after they got home. Julia claims I spoke to her when she stuck her head round the bedroom drawer but I did not remember.

After the quizzes on TV I started typing and reading and generally frittering my remaining hours away. I have just looked up to check how long I have to do this post before midnight and found that three quarters of an hour have dissolved as I answered comments and checked some photos. It is actually 18 minutes past midnight so I have failed to post on Monday despite all my talk of good intentions.

The editor I was emailing last night has decided not to use the poem, which is fair enough. It’s my job to write things that are publishable and she has plenty to do without me taking her time up. I did suggest an edit that involved removing the first six lines and going with the rest, but this didn’t appear to be acceptable. It’s a shame, as i like being published, but I’m not going to lose sleep over it. As I said in my cheery note thanking her for her decision – after a quick edit it will be part of my February submissions. One door closes etc . . .

Books, books, books . . .

Eight minutes gone, 233 words written. It’s funny how I can write faster when I’m relaxed. Given the time pressure of a deadline I start to choke. This is probably a lesson I could apply to poetry. It always used to seem easier in the early days, when my target was to submit on the first day of the submission window rather than the last.

At the moment, I have enough returned poems to make up two submissions for February already. The target is nine for this month. I have  a few others in mind but they are for a magazine that has never yet taken one of my pieces. Sometimes, particularly when I am listing possible  targets, I list magazines that I regard as “hostile” to make sure I keep testing myself. Other times, particularly when I am feeling lazy, or am at the end of the month, I drop them from the list.

It’s a bit like the verse forms that I don’t do. A number of journals take what they call linked forms, which are haiku or tanka, or both, made into a longer poem. Often they are done by people writing in partnership, though it’s possible for them to be done by a single writer. I keep thinking of expanding my range, but it all takes time and effort and enthusiasm, and I’m not feeling that I have much to spare.

Books by Paul Hollywood

I have 88 submission targets for this year., ten more than last year, but I have to be as good this year as i was last year.  And that’s where the pressure starts . . .

Humans are strange creatures. Even when things are going along nicely I have to add extra layers to the general worries. Quite apart from the normal am I good enough? and when will the bubble burst? worries, I have to add to them by setting targets.

Finally, talking of pressure and deadlines, do you remember me joking about how much time I had before my presentation at the Numismatic Society – 12 months, 11 months, plenty of time to start in the New Year . . .

Well it’s 2 months and 10 days away and I still only have a few vague ideas about what I’m doing. I was planning on writing a rough script today but seem to have slept through it instead. Time, I think, for a sense of urgency to appear, ready for next month’s panic.

Yes, I read a lot of low-brow books…

Recycled Poetry

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Thomas Paine, Thetford. I wonder what he would think of the modern USA.

Yesterday I generally poked and prodded and did a few lists. I have enough poetry written to meet my planned submissions, the quality is good and it is nearly all finished. It’s a lot easier to finish something that it is to come up with an idea from scrstch. This is particularly true in areas like poetry where editors like subjects that haven’t already been flogged to death. Of course, you have to be careful, like the time I was told I was “difficult” because I referred to the poem  Adlestrop. However, I’ve mentioned that before so I won’t carry on with that.

I once wrote a poem about scrambled eggs. It was 2020 and I taught myself to make better scrambled eggs during lockdown. I tried it on four or five editors and nobody took it so it ended up at the back of my mind. A few months ago I decided to give it another go. However, I rewrote it instead of just tinkering. Same, subject, same story, but written differently, including an observation that I’d never seen a poem about scrambled eggs. It was accepted by the first editor who saw it.  Might have been flawed in its first version, might just have been the right person at the right time. Who can tell?

Gates at a redundant church – Thetford

Next month I will be going through my back catalogue of failures and rewriting a lot of them. It saves coming up with new ideas. On the other hand, if I spot any with familiar and well-worn subjects I will pull the plug on them. Life is too short to continue with old ideas, unless they work, and computer space is limited. I did once think I should store all my notes in case an American University wanted to buy them, or a biographer wanted to study me, but it’s unlikely and I need the space. It was moving house that brought that on. I had a box of notebooks, most of the writing was my normal illegible scribble and the stuff I could read was not inspiring. It is probably recycled by now. Julia’s Uncle has 9.2 linear feet of space in the Harry Ransom Centre at the University of Texas. He, of course, did everything on paper. I do most of my writing on a computer, which would, in any case, be harder to collect. Same with letters – he has letters from artists, writers and editors. I have emails.

House Sparrow

24 Posts 26 Days

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I suppose the title gives things away. Despite all my good intentions this will be post 24, but it is 26th January. Two days have been swallowed up by that mad whirl of naps, TV and procrastination. I can pull two days back quite easily, so it isn’t a problem for now. Be prepared for two supplementary posts over the coming days.

I had an email from an editor yesterday, two more acceptances, bringing the total for 2025 to 55. I know numbers mean nothing, because it’s about quality. But at the same time it does mean I’ve been applying myself to writing and I carried the plan through.

It’s the same with a blog a day – it doesn’t mean I’m writing better blog posts but it does, I hope, mean that I will improve because of the constant practice.

The same goes for ideas. In the past I have hoarded ideas, ready for the day when I feel that stars have aligned and the day is propitious for one of my great ideas. However, theory, and reality, seem to indicate that the more ideas you use, the more you will generate. It does seem to work.

In other contexts, I don’t consider this a good thing. Every time I think about it I remember being in a meeting once where one aspiring volunteer (or aspiring chair, if the truth is told) said “My strength is having ideas. If anyone needs an idea, just ask.”

What still makes me grit my teeth at this, is that everyone can have ideas, but what you need on a committee is people who will work.

That’s the secret with most things. I can have all the ideas I like, but if I don’t work, nothing happens. That’s why quantity is important, it means you are doing the work which will lead to quality. And if you are doing the work and achieving the quality, you may, with luck, become good.

Sunset at Sherwood