THE HAIBUN GALLERY: 05 December 2024 — Matthew Caretti, featured poet

hosts: Vidya Shankar & Shalini Pattabiraman

A Thursday Feature.

poet of the month: Matthew Caretti

05 December 2024

Matthew Caretti

Matthew has been influenced in equal parts by his study of German language and literature, by the approach of the Beat writers, by his travels and his Zen monastic training. After leaving the Seo-un Hermitage, Matthew engaged in a pilgrimage through South Asia before returning to Africa, where he had lived and worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer. He served as Principal at Amitofo Care Centre, an orphanage and school for five hundred children in Malawi, and as director of the same NGO’s centre in Lesotho. Matthew now teaches English and leads a simple life in Pago Pago, American Samoa. His collections include Harvesting Stones (2017, winner of the Snapshot Press eChapbook Award), Africa, Buddha (2022, Red Moon Press) and Ukulele Drift: Poems from a Small Island (2023, Red Moon Press). His prose and poems appear regularly in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, contemporary haibun online, Hedgerow, Cattails, Tiny Moments and several other journals. He is the recipient of a 2024 Touchstone Award for his haibun ‘Deep Water Port’.

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Welcome to The Haibun Gallery, Matthew. We are honoured to feature you and your work all through this month. 

Slight Variations on the Transience of It All 

A rainy season echo. In each

cardinal direction the cock’s crow.

The cruise ships and tourists

called back into the deep port.

And yet.

scuba tanks respirating instead hospital beds

A steady pulse in the humid

suck and stir of a grandma’s fan.

Manned by the son of her son.

The rest gather round. Minding

the machines.

windfall accounting for failing heartbeats

At the church, they gather

for bingo. The randomness in it all.

The wide smile of the moon before

thunderheads stack the horizon.

Then shutter-slam.

angel wings in the iced tea mosquito season

Just at the stroke of midnight a ghost

crab out of the storm drain. Reason

to continue this weekend bender.

And gratitude for the forgetfulness

of living on an island.

inoperable the number of colors rainbows don’t have

—Tiny Moments Volume 3, May 2024

Standing by Mirror Pond

ode

        to

            a

                leaf

                        fallen on

                               water

How to echo the inborn praise of that which is?

                           water

                  on a fallen

                leaf

            into

        an

ode

—    Cattails, October 2022

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VS: So, Matthew, how did you first discover there was a poet in you? And, how did you discover haibun?      

MC: During grad school, I had dabbled in poetry, though my thesis advisor, a poet himself, pointed me toward prose. As I then began my career in teaching, a versified path was put aside in favor of pedagogy. My first post was at a university outside Daegu, ROK, and three years there led me to a dedicated Zen practice and rather coincidental introduction to haibun when I was gifted a copy of Basho’s Oku no Hosmichi. This text revealed a way to extend my practice, to empower my mindful living and allow it some expression, thus reawakening that poetic impulse first felt many years earlier as a student.

VS: Could you tell us something about your writing process? Do you write every day or only when an idea forms in your head?

MC: I tend to write every day, and find the early morning best suited to that. First a bit of yoga and meditation, then a coffee and into fragments and phrases scribbled in my notebook. Those could represent observations from days or even weeks ago, or have arisen within the discursive mind during that morning’s meditative sitting. While I initially strive to form nearly all those traces of lived experience into haiku, I often know rather immediately they’d function better as the poetic prose in a haibun. Others “work,” at least initially, and will then go on to a more refined process of review and revision. It’s quite rare for a piece to form a perfect circle of possible meanings as a first draft. 

Prompt for members:

The paradox that a mirror is: it shows us what we are, yet we are not wholly that. We are looking for poems that that explore the enigma of a mirror and deal with the concept metaphorically.

Haibun outside this prompt can also be posted!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Important: Since we're swamped with submissions, and our editors are only human, mistakes can happen. Please, please, remember to put your name, followed by your country, below each poem, even after revisions. It helps our editors; they won't have to type it in, saving them from potential typos. Thanks a ton!

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PLEASE NOTE:

1. Only two haibun per poet per prompt. Please put your name and country of residence under your poem, it makes the editors' work easier. Thanks.

2. Share your best-polished pieces.

3. Please do not post something in a hurry or something you have just written.

Let it simmer for a while.

4. When poets give suggestions and if you agree to them - post your final edited version on top of your original version.

5. Don't forget to give feedback on others' poems.

We are delighted to open the comment thread for you to share your unpublished haibun (within 300 words) to be considered for inclusion in the haikuKATHA monthly journal.