National Poetry Month kick-off 2011

Every year for the past four years I have celebrated National Poetry Month by posting an original haiku and photo each day in April. It has been a wonderful exercise for me in creativity and thoughtful observation. I plan to do it again this year, with the added challenge of extending into haibun. This is a form that compliments the haiku with a short prose piece that amplifies or extends the revelation. Basho, the famous 17th c. Japanese haiku poet, made it famous with his work "The Narrow Road to Deep North", which was his travel journal of a trip across Japan  interspersed with meditations and haiku. You can read it in English here, and more about Basho's journey here.

Dawn L. Stewart writes that Haibun should be

"a combination of prose strong in imagery and at least one haiku. The prose in a haibun is trimmed to its essence just as a haiku is composed of few words chosen for their particular meaning. A haibun relates a journey, whether the travels are a physical exploration of the world or an internal journey of discovery."

Here is another explanation from Bay Moon, and the latest issue of the online journal Haibun Today. As this is also the season of Lent, I am going to focus my haibun on an internal journey; that of seeking God's face in the everyday events and people around me. I hope to discover and celebrate the little graces and blessings so easily overlooked in the hustle and bustle of my days.

I invited my good friend and Poetry Sister Liz Garton Scanlon to join me. She also has been spending her Aprils writing haiku, and I thought it would be fun to bounce off each other. We haven't worked out the details yet, and things may develop, but it should be interesting...

Before I get to today's haiku I have to share what the kids in my school are doing. After the tsunami in Japan three weeks ago we heard about a project going on at StudentsRebuild.org/japan. The Bezos Family Foundation has pledged $2 for every paper crane that young people send in for Japan. The cranes will be made into an art instillation in Japan. The money goes to Architects for Humanities projects rebuilding Japan, up to $200,000. In one week the kids have made 1000 cranes! It's a perfect way for kids to make a big impact for good. I've been running to the craft store every day buying up origami paper, and cutting up old magazines, and spending my lunchtime teaching kids to make paper cranes.

Paper Crane Haibun #1


  
I didn't know these children through their fingers. Only from their eyes seeking me and darting away; their playful voices. I didn't know what they could do with squares of paper. I only gathered as many colors, shaped into hand sizes, and showed them the folds. Mountain fold, belly fold, petal fold. They came up with smushed fold and crumpled fold. And then, suddenly, relentlessly, gathering steam, they perform shocking beauty. Japanese paper, transformed, and returned with interest.

clumsy fingers
find mysteries in paper
folded beauty

-Andromeda Jazmon



Poetry Friday is hosted today at the Poem Farm, where Amy LV has been writing a poem a day for the past year! Please be sure to spend some time this weekend enjoying the poetry celebration. And please do come back here all through April for more haiku!