Haiku and Haibun

Haiku in Polish. Genology in the Transcultural Perspective

The book counts among comparative cultural studies. It presents a panorama of artistic phenomena of the broadly understood modernism: in Poland and, to an extent, in Western Europe and the Americas as well.
It is the first monograph of Polish poetry related to Japanese haiku miniatures. The author conducts a comprehensive analysis of lyric
poetry created over the course of more than a century (from the Young
Poland to the present), also touching upon problems of translatology and intersemiotics. The book describes texts strictly faithful to the rules of the genre, as well as compositions only oscillating around the prototype of the genre and also miniatures hiding old European literary forms under the trendy Oriental banner.

Transcultural Convergence? Polish Artists and the Oriental Verbo-visuality

The article concerns different aspects of convergence processes of the traditional Oriental genres in the Polish culture, focusing on haiku, haiga and haibun. It examines book art, visual arts and the artistic websites. The theoretical frame of the research is rooted in the concept of transculturality introduced by Wolfgang Welsch. The author analyses Polish works of art employing different strategies of combining words and images, thereby showing unexpected similarities between cultures and revealing the artistic changes caused by the choice of different media. The investigation proves the most interesting compositions uncover unexpected common elements between apparently contradictory traditions, the necessary condition is, however, at least the basic knowledge of the Other.

late evening
a vase of red tulips
on the kitchen table

“This collection was born on Epiphany. For three days, snow has been lighting roofs and resting on branches. Ontario is in the middle of lockdown, and I have time to sit by my window. I am reminded of the kitchen windows in the farmhouse: if you couldn’t see the highway across the fields, then snow was drifting in from the lake; in the other direction, not being able to see the neighbour’s home at the near corner meant it was time to stay inside. One memory led to another.

I completed this collection on Pentecost. January 2021 Ontario is still in stay-at-home lockdown. The apple blossoms have come and gone, and the lilacs are in full bloom. May2021”

-  Kocher, Philomene, “new boards on the barn,” The Haiku Foundation Digital Library
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Walking down the street where I had lived for nine years, something caught my attention: on my neighbour’s rosebush were rose hips, roses, and buds. It was late August, and I was amazed at seeing buds still. As a haiku poet, it is often when I am surprised that I am moved to write. It is also often true that this happens when I am walking, perhaps because I am closer to nature despite the sidewalks and traffic, and because I have slowed down. And so I wrote this poem: 

rose hips and roses and buds
on the same bush
August evening

I recorded my awareness of a particular moment. Reflecting on it later, I realized how much this image spoke also to my life circumstances. I was only months away from my fortieth birthday, and I pondered the parts of my life that were mature, that were blooming, and that were still in bud. After almost two decades exploring haiku, I am still astonished at how much story can be distilled into such small poems.  The potential of haiku to capture so much experience with so few words has always fascinated me.”

- Inviting connection through the gap in haiku PHILOMENE KOCHER Language and Literacy Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 2009

"The World of Masaoka Shiki's Last Years," Bungaku, September, 1984, Vol. 52, Special Issue on Masaoka Shiki, pp. 102-108.
Illuminates the theme of mortality in Shiki's later poetry and prose,  by showing how  Shiki's daily publication of his sickbed diaries in the newspaper Nippon preserved his will to live during his mortal illness.

“There is no law that says selling sex is illegal, but there is a law against anyone living on the earnings of 'prostitution', which effectively criminalises all sex work”. There are also laws prohibiting solicitation in public places. This senryu poetry sequence documents the poet's night walk and observation of sex workers at the Plaza Hotel in the Dichemso community of Kumasi, Ghana, where he lives.

In the tradition of Kobayashi Issa, Masaoka Shiki and countless other celebrated senryu poets throughout the centuries, Adjei Agyei-Baah presents herein a fine collection of senryu dedicated to the humble fart – and a fine collection it is! As an editor, I wouldn't dream of cutting one of these poems from the book. Indeed, the very thought of "letting one fly" fills me with dread. I know Agyei-Baah to be a humble man; one who is not prone to tooting his horn in public, so I'll say it for him; when the history of modern senryu is written, "Piece of My Far"t is destined to be recognized as a major literary achievement in the "anals" of our time!

                                                                                                          —Steve Hodge   
                                                                                                          Editor of Prune Juice Journal

"Vo budenje: migovi na transformacija" (In Awakening: Moments of Transformation) consists of 30 poems and Japanese prose poems (haibun) with reflections on the soul's search for the meaning of life and death, of love, and of the longing to belong and exist. Foreword by Olivija Georgievska, writer, story teller. Review by Vladimir Martinovski, literary critic, poet and fiction writer.

Language: Macedonian.
Publisher: Pranava Publishing, Viken, Sweden
ISBN: 978-91-982881-1-7
Web: https://pranavapublishing.se/bhavana

A collection of four essays on the seventeenth-century Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō, all linked by his injunction to ‘Go to the pine to learn about the pine’, that is, to try and grasp the truth of poetry — and of life itself — directly and intuitively. The collection will appeal to general readers with an interest in Bashō and the haiku tradition, Zen Buddhism, or philosophy, as well as to specialists in Japanese poetry, comparative literature, or translation studies.

Shortlisted for the 2019 Touchstone Distinguished Books Award, and given Honorable Mention place in the Prose category of the 2020 Haiku Society of America Merit Book Awards.