THE HAIBUN GALLERY: 4th July 2024. Sonam Chhoki, featured poet

hosts: Kala Ramesh & Firdaus Parvez

mentor: Lorraine Haig

A Thursday Feature.

poet of the month: Sonam Chhoki

4th July 2024

This month we have the pleasure of featuring Sonam Chhoki

Sonam Chhoki finds the Japanese short form poetry resonates with her Tibetan Buddhist upbringing. She is inspired by her father, Sonam Gyamtsho, the architect of Bhutan’s non-monastic modern education and by her mother, Chhoden Jangmu, who taught her: “Being a girl doesn’t mean you can’t do anything.” She is the principal editor, and co-editor of haibun for the online journal of Japanese short forms, cattails. 

Her chapbook of haibun, The Lure of the Threshold was published in May 2021. Mapping Absences, a collaboration of haibun, tan bun and tanka prose with Mike Montreuil was published in 2019. Another collaboration with Geetanjali Rajan: Unexpected Gift was published in November 2021.

http://www.cattailsjournal.com/currentissue.html

Did You Call? 

November wind thuds the shingle tiles. The clock ticks thoughts into patterned silence of poplars outside my window.

I feel you've called.

I leave the gate open to let you in. The frost lies un-trodden on the grass. Did you call in this moment when the first light smudges the edge of night?

Or did you call in the white eddies of the mountain stream gushing by terraced rice fields; or in the pearly glint on the high peaks as the sun disbands the clouds? Did you call in the creak of the prayer wheel and in the bray of a lone mule in the valley below?

 Did you call at all?

first snow 

crows explode shadows 

in the still grove

A Hundred Gourds 4:2 March 2015

We asked Sonam a few questions and she graciously made time to answer them. Here're the first two:

THG: Do you come from a literary background? What writers did you enjoy reading as a child? Did you write as a child?

Sonam: My earliest memories of literature are the oral tradition and the local folklore. The Epic of Gesar of Ling, the legendary hero and his flying steed, the Namthar (religious biography) of the Divine Mad Man, Drukpa Kunley and the legends of the local deities who often assumed human forms, were the staples of my childhood. The Jataka Tales were another mesmerizing childhood memory.

I read rather than wrote as a child. When I discovered Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Tagore, Hardy, Sholokhov there was no looking back.

THG: How do you translate experience into writing?

Sonam: This is quite a complex process and involves a willingness to understand that our experience is but one aspect of writing. Unique as our experience may be, to make it into a piece of writing, I often ask myself these questions:

Why would someone want to read and or publish this?

How can I write something that will stand the test of times and looking back on it, I can say, ‘Well, that wasn’t half-bad’?

If what I want to write about is difficult to express, how best can I address this?

We have to eschew the idea that our experience is the end all and be all of writing. To try and reproduce in faithful details every aspect of our experience can switch the reader off. It becomes tedious and unrelatable. A reader asking the question, So What? is lethal for any poet/writer.

To make a piece engaging and relevant to the reader, we need to use imagination and language to craft it. Not personal attachment to details which bog down a narrative. So, chop, change and chop some more to get a coherent piece should be our goal.

The creative use of imagination and language are quintessential to how we “translate” our experiences into writing.

Prompt:

Sonam's haibun evokes a deep yearning and sadness. While the reader learns little about the person the narrator mentions, this lack of detail enhances the impact. The language is eloquent, and the imagery is vivid and beautiful. We would love to hear your thoughts. The prompt for the week is STRANGER. Interpret is as you like. Have fun!

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.