THE HAIBUN GALLERY: 20th February 2025. Alice Wanderer, featured poet

hosts: Shalini Pattabiraman & Vidya Shankar

mentor: Lorraine Haig

A Thursday Feature

20th February 2025

This month we have the pleasure of celebrating the work of Alice Wanderer. 

Alice Wanderer has been dabbling in haiku for decades but only became excited about haibun in 2018 or so after reading work produced by Kala Ramesh and her students on Facebook. Alice's book of translations of the haiku of Sugita Hisajo, Lips Licked Clean (Red Moon Press) won a Touchstone Award in 2021. Her first chapbook, Flow, deals with the rivers and beaches of her local place and indigenous dispossession. Her second, She Wants to See Birds and Flowers, will be appearing on the Snapshot Press website in the spring of 2025. 

Here's the fourth haibun in the series where we showcase Alice's work.

Alice Wanderer

Language Matters

I was—in the passive voice—born, expelled from my mother bruised black and she too was cut with a knife by a man in a mask. Sexed, weighed, washed, wrapped, I was laid to sleep in a cot not a word said to credit my part in the battering work of my birth. Contrariwise—my mother tongue tells me—I’ll die like I laugh, lose control wet myself … grammatically the agent.

insect-catcher

antics—a streetlight

turns on

Source:  https://contemporaryhaibunonline.com/strongemcho-em20-2brtable-of-contents-strong/haibun/alice-wanderer-language-matters/

Alice shares some of the influence that Japan has had on her writing, 'Living in Japan (my third country after the UK and Australia) has had a profound effect on my sensibility. To some degree, as I learned the language etc, I recapitulated my childhood. And then children were born there and had their early years there. I don’t read a great deal (in any language) but I watch a lot of Japanese tv series and films. I have Japanese friends and a close English friend who is a very longtime resident in Japan. I’m sure this impacts my writing but I cannot pinpoint exactly how. Perhaps I project fewer orientalist fantasies on Japan than many other westerners do. I possibly have a more historically informed understanding of haiku than many other westerners so am not over concerned with was it “is”. I don’t believe that Japanese haiku and English Language haiku are commensurate, though. Even so they can usefully influence one another.

My haibun has become more concerned with psychological issues over time but I am still interested in ecological, historical and political matters.'

Prompt:

This week, explore the inner world that is often revealed by the actions we choose. What sort of psychological influences provoke the actions you undertake at the most significant moment in your life.

PLEASE NOTE:

1. Only two haibun per poet per prompt.

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. Post your final edited version on top of your original verse.

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 haikuKATHA monthly journal.

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!