hosts: Shalini Pattabiraman & Vidya Shankar
mentor: Lorraine Haig
A Thursday Feature.
poet of the month: Stephen Henry Gill (haigō: Tito)
27 June 2024
This month we have the pleasure of featuring Tito (Stephen Gill).
Stephen was born in Yorkshire in the United Kingdom. He began writing haiku and haibun in 1972. He studied in Kyoto between 1974-75 and graduated from London University in Japanese Language & Literature in 1979.
Stephen spent much of the early 80s in Tokyo; in the late 80s, he worked as a radio script writer for BBC and thereafter created 21 programmes mostly about Japan, all featuring haiku/haibun. His ‘Insect Musicians’ won the Sony Prize for Best Documentary in 1989. In the 1990s he edited ‘Rediscovering Basho’ (Global Oriental) and served on the British Haiku Society Committee as national events officer. In 1995, he moved to Kyoto, working at Ritsumeikan and later Ryukoku Universities.
Most recently, Stephen has been lecturing on Haiku in English Literature and other topics at Kyoto University and lives in the now-rural ancient capital, Asuka, in Nara prefecture. He founded the Hailstone Haiku Circle, Kansai, in 2000 and launched the Circle’s website, Icebox, in 2008. With Nobuyuki Yuasa in 2012, he founded the Genjuan International Haibun Contest.
His books include ‘1 Poet on Mt. Ogura, 100 Poems in a Day’ (haiku & tanka collection) and ‘100 Poets on Mt. Ogura, 1 Poem Each’ (bilingual haiku & tanka anthology, HSA Kanterman Prize for Best Anthology, 2011). The list also includes ‘Stone Birthdays’ (in Japanese, illus. for children), ‘Enhaiklopedia’, ‘Meltdown’, ‘Persimmon’ (Eng. haiku anthologies), ‘From the Cottage of Visions’ (Eng. haibun anthologies).
Tito (Stephen Gill)
Scottish Journey
Wind is to me something that ruffles up the collars of our shirts, that moves the waters as they need moving. Of those of us who do not live there, who is there who goes to Scotland for sedation? We go, do we not, like Basho went to Michinoku, to be tattered and torn and purged and washed, and perhaps even to be baptized. That summer-cum-winter when I went with Kaz, a tent and a car, a hole was blown in me, a hole through which light, smoke and rainwater can, now and forever, inexorably seep.
Windy summer morning –
at the bus-stop
a woman with a lit cigarette
in either hand
(Edinburgh)
The tent is packed:
rainbow on mountains,
and now the wind
blows milk from my spoon!
(Loch Morlich, Glen More)
Across the steely loch
the full weight
of the cloudy sky
pressing down on Ben Hiant
(Tobermory to Kilchoan ferry)
The boar-inscribed stone,
the rainwater footprint;
and round this ragged rock
the howling wind
(Dunadd, nr. Kilmartin)
Back from Scotland –
at the end of the motorway
the arch of a rainbow
through which we know we have passed
(M1, nr. Watford)
(written Scotland/England, 7/93; pub. in ‘Atoms of Delight, an Anthology of Scottish Haiku & Short Poems’, Morning Star Publications, UK, 2000)
SP: Over the years, how has haibun writing changed or evolved in English? How does it compare with what Japanese writers are doing in this form?
Tito: The ubiquity today of the form of one short paragraph with one terminal haiku has begun to look somewhat facile. Yes, there are many examples in Japanese literature of this style and it does have merits for editors wishing for variety and attempting to get as many people in as possible. It suits the new short attention span age we live in. But how about the travelogue with intermittent haiku or the story with a haiku 'tail' of four or five haiku at the end? Beginning with a haiku also seems to be going out of fashion. There are so many ways of weaving poetry with prose. I am always pleased to see innovation. For example, recent attempts to write a haibun as a long poem, with haiku stanzas embedded as three shorter lines of a different tense or tone. Another example might be the lighter end of the newish trend for 'environmentalistic' haibun. I fully agree that haibun resonance can indeed be used as a vehicle through which to make an oblique statement of alarm, provided it is implied and not fully explained. As for haibun in Japan, you must understand that today there is practically none at all! Japanese poets don't even use the term. Japanese haiku journals do sometimes include so-called 'essays', which may or may not include haiku, but almost never do they set the haiku up in a true haibun way, as part of a whimsical anecdote or more fully fledged story. Yuasa, Miyazaki, Takazawa and I could all translate, so we made a big effort to have Japanese versions of the winning pieces in our publications, or have them excerpted in translation elsewhere. Miyazaki even produced one anthology entirely in Japanese. One or two organisations affiliated with us tried their own Japanese haibun contests, and I have been a judge of one of those, but to be honest the foreign writers are today much better at the art, which was largely lost in Japan during the Meiji era. We haibun judges had been hoping to start a revival of haibun practice in Japan, but so far we have failed ... and now we're all getting old! Revival will eventually come though, as haibun is such a nifty and enjoyable form.
Prompt: Imagine yourself as a conservationist or activist focused on saving a disappearing artefact, tradition, object, value, or living thing. Or write about something going out of fashion. Or attempt the perspective of the person who is witnessing loss.
Haibun outside this prompt is welcome too.
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.