THE HAIBUN GALLERY: 10th April 2025. Sandip Chauhan - Guest Editor

hosts: Shalini Pattabiraman, Vidya Shankar, Firdaus Parvez and Kala Ramesh

mentor: Lorraine Haig

A Thursday Feature

10th April 2025

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW

THE HAIBUN GALLERY  APRIL 2025   Sandip Chauhan

Prompt 2

The Wanderings - Yosa Buson

Jōu, a resident of Yūki, owned a villa and had an aged caretaker live there all the time. Although located within the town limits, the premises were covered by trees and overgrown with grass, providing a convenient hideout for someone who wanted to avoid the dust of the world. That was why I stayed there for a while.

One autumn night the old caretaker, having finished all the cleaning and other chores, was idling away the long evening hours by a lamp, with a Buddhist rosary in his hand. I was in a back room struggling to compose hokku and other verses. After a while, I grew so tired that I pulled a quilt over me and was beginning to doze off when I heard loud banging sounds on the storm doors enclosing the veranda. There were twenty or thirty bangs in succession. My heart pounding fast at this strange happening, I got up and opened a door without making a sound.

Even this grass hut

may be transformed

into a doll’s house

Excerpted from The Path of Flowering Thorn: The Life and Poetry of Yosa Buson by Makoto Ueda.

Haibun’s Source and Context

Shin hana-tsumi (A New Florilegium) is one of Buson’s prose works, documenting events and reflections from his life. This haibun specifically recounts an eerie experience Buson had while staying at a poet’s villa in Yūki, a town where he lived and wrote haikai in his early years. The haibun describes a peaceful autumn night where Buson, exhausted from composing verses, begins to drift asleep. Suddenly, he is startled by a series of loud bangs on the storm doors. The suspense builds as he cautiously opens the door, heightening the sense of mystery and unease.

Prompt: Echoes in an Empty Room

In Yosa Buson’s haibun, an old caretaker finishes his evening chores, the house settles into silence—then suddenly, loud, inexplicable banging on the doors. The moment is left unresolved, lingering between reality and imagination. The haibun deepens the sense of impermanence—what was once a lived-in space may become something ornamental, distant from its original purpose.

Have you ever experienced a moment where an unexpected sound broke the silence? A house shifting in the night, a door creaking when no one was there, a voice carried by the wind? Or perhaps you have returned to a familiar place only to find it changed, stripped of what it once was.

Write a haibun that explores an unsettling moment—a sound that lingers, a place that no longer feels the same, a fleeting glimpse of something not quite explainable. What remains? What disappears? What echoes in the silence?

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IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT from Kala: NOTICE

              NOTICE

Dear Haibuneers

Starting from March 2025, we at haikuKATHA are moving on to a new submissions format for haibun submissions. (Only for haibun, please note!)

Writers are invited to submit one unpublished haibun per submission window.

Kindly note the submissions calendar.

1-20 March, to be considered for publication in May

1-20 June, to be considered for publication in August

1-20 September, to be considered for publication in November

1-20 December, to be considered for publication in February

All accepted submissions will receive an email to confirm their acceptance by the 5th day of the publication month.

Your unpublished (only one) haibun should be sent to: https://forms.gle/xUEiiDR9wd2dgqtR9 only during the submission period. 

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The Haibun Gallery continues as is.

We will be having editors and prompts, and your sharing…