hosts: Vidya Shankar & Shalini Pattabiraman
A Thursday Feature.
poet of the week: Claire Everett
22 August 2024
This month at The Haibun Gallery, instead of featuring a poet all through August, we are bringing to you the Touchstone Award 2023 winning haibun. This week, we present Claire Everett’s winning haibun, A Thousand Thens (MacQueen’s Quinterly 19).
About Claire Everett:
Claire Everett has served as editor for various journals including Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, the Red Moon Anthology, Haibun Today, and Skylark, and as a contributing editor for MacQueen’s Quinterly. In her other life, Claire supports adults with learning disabilities, autism, and complex needs, and has worked through the Covid-19 pandemic. She now works as a Care Coordinator for the NHS and is a proud dog mum!
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A Thousand Thens
Claire Everett (MacQueen’s Quinterly 19)
wind-shimmered wheat
the kestrel’s belly
uplit
A solitary walk through the fragrance of all that’s green and golden, and suddenly, I am not alone.
Breathing in, I am my dead-too-young father whom I thought invincible, secretly afraid of thunder, and the sea that took a cousin. Breathing out, I am the song of the blackbird he loved the best.
Breathing in, I am my mother, wound by worry, in her rocking chair to nowhere. Breathing out, I am the light of a wagtail across the river stones, and a memory of being taught how to skip with a rope.
Breathing in, I am my grandfather, bitterly disappointed by the lie my father told. Breathing out, I am the drowsy lap, the delight of pencil on paper.
Breathing in, I am my grandmother, straight and stern as the poker on the hearth. Breathing out, I am the crispness of freshly baked pastries made by cool hands and a warm heart.
Breathing in, I am not just born of love, but of pain and joy, triumph and loss. Breathing out, I am so many hopes, dashed and dared, so many dreams, burnished and broken. All are here, on this rung of the twisted ladder, this one moment on the double helix that unravelled me between a thousand thens and now.
endless sky . . .
two kestrels hunt
as one
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Due to many commitments, Claire was not able to answer our questions. But she sends us her regards and says she is extremely honoured that we wish to feature her haibun in THG.
Congratulations, Claire, on your haibun winning the Touchstone Award 2023. And thank you for giving us permission to use your haibun here.
Prompt for members:
Take a walk, if possible a solitary walk, and observe your thoughts. Do we have a haibun there? I am eager to read it.
Haibun outside this prompt can also be posted! Remember, we are in the month of August and India has a lot to celebrate in August besides our Independence Day.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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.
#2 - 2024-08-28
(original)
Among the Scattered Shadows
Man has become busier than ever, whereas concrete, asphalt and stone blocks suppress the natural environment. Surrounded by smog, smoke and exhaust fumes on streets packed with vehicles, the city and its residents struggle for breathe.
I often wander out of city to rest my mind. However, this time the path between the skyscrapers leads me to untouched nature that I haven't noticed before. I don't know if it's because I'm losing sense of time or because nature is rapidly developing like skyscrapers.
I seems to me that I hear someone calling me and I turn around. The skyscrapers are no longer there. I don’t understand how. I continue walking and spot…
27/8/24 #1 gembun - off prompt
the soft glow of a therapist’s lamp
mosaic summer
pressing a cracked piece
into place
C.X. Turner, UK
(feedback welcome)
There nothing like waking to silence.The calm in the bed pondering wondering what today is all about !! Wondering if you will be better today than yesterday. Mentally ticking away the things to be done.Today.Today is what you focus on.But your thoughts turn over to yesterday and all those pasts. And you are busy trying to brush it off when above you lands heavy thuds .The asbestos sheets over the garage quiver in a series of thuds .The quietness is broken and so are all the thoughts .Gone with the thuds.The monkeys have finished their daily routine of jumping through the open spaces on to the roof tops and left. Daylight seeps in decipating the darkness. I slide off thankful…
#1 - 2024-08-27
(original)
The Highway of Life
We wonder what LIFE and its meaning are. The creator of life is the ALMIGHTY who made the whole WORLD out of LOVE.
The world is material and immaterial, selfish and unselfish. We are surrounded by other human beings, plants and animals, seas and oceans, rivers and lakes, mountains and forests, sky and sun, moon and stars.
Life is made up of many STORIES. Some of them have beginning and end, some never end, and it happens that some don't even begin. All of them are intertwined like a spiderweb. They look for a ray of light in order to reach the readers' HEARTS.
Stories long for people's SOULS to live in…
Post#1
27.8.24
Sabbatical
cloud drift
dreaming of a land
beyond
In my hometown Delhi, I have stopped venturing out onto the road for a walk due the snarling traffic and dirt everywhere. On a mountain vacation, I seize the opportunity to go for a stroll on the winding paths. Unknowingly the slow wander becomes a hike as I set out to the nearest hilltop. The winding terrain is covered with moss. A green soft blanket that seems to spread endlessly. Wild, white mushrooms grow out of the ground, giving the ground a pop of color. The whispering breeze, the flowing streams, and the rustling leaves speak a language of of solitude. I feel a weight lift off my shoulders.
…