Conversation 89: THE DAILY HAIKU Themes 8th -21st May 2021

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In this two week round-up we included NATURE as a weekly theme in response to the focus for 
Mental Health Awareness Week this year which ran from 10-16 May.#MentalHealthAwarenessWeek

There is a downloadable Nature journal to inspire us to get out there, think about how we feel before and after connecting with nature. 
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This period also incorporated the wonderful  Mass Observation Day 12th May – submit your diaries (maybe in haiku form) you can do this retrospectively
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Following on from Mental Health Awareness Week we have Creativity and Wellbeing Week 17-24 May.  Phil Isherwood created a very special set of activities to support this week around the theme of EMPATHY.
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Daily Themes:

Treasure

Feathers

Rain

Laughter

Language

Over

Dawn

Wood

Flow

Beginnings

Dust

Wildflower meadow

Farewells

Paper

Solitude

Distance

Whisper

Leaf

Paint

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Impromptu Themes:

NATURE connecting with Mental Health Awarness Week’s theme

Call out for haiku that incorporate made-up words inspired by JABBERWOCKY by Lewis Carroll https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42916/jabberwocky

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Bonus Themes:

Loneliness

Freedom

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Weekly Themes:

Red

Nature

Otherness

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Seasonal Words

#11 Longer Days

#12 May

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First Line Renga

Drawing Down the Moon

or

Afternoon light

or

New Moon

or

Walk away

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Musical Themes

MOONDANCE by Van Morrison https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lFxGBB4UGU

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN by Led Zeppelin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkF3oxziUI4

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Haiga

Thank you for your amazing contributions in response to a request for photographs for this haiga relating to our theme this week of RED.  Do respond to wonderful photographs featured here. Write haiku inspired by what you see, thinking beyond the literal representations, by either choosing a stand-alone haiku or making a new image with a haiku written over it.

Thank you for the photographs from:

Karin Lindberg Freda, Elizabeth Tunstall, Neetu Malik, Catherine Brennan, Bridie Breen, Mary White, Marion Clarke, Sina Sanjari, Dominic Willis, Hilary Stringer, Gina Hobbs, Vivien Eliades, Katharine Angelina Love & Eljse Winnubst

I would like to thank Sébastien Revon & Marion Clarke who have been instrumental in guiding this thread.

Read the blog on HAIGA – Where Image and Haiku Meet which includes insights and illuminating examples of photo haiku by Marion Clarke https://thegreatmargin.org/…/conversation-11-writing…/

 

4 Comments on “Conversation 89: THE DAILY HAIKU Themes 8th -21st May 2021”

  1. Rich (Tanka)

    I stand in the rain
    Naked and exposed
    A child praying “let me die”
    God, his angels, ignore me

    Laughter follows me
    I open my mouth to speak
    Stumbling and blocking
    Speech lost to callous remarks
    Catcalls, hoots and derision

    Daily, dawn rises
    Offering us a new day
    With far horizons
    Further away than night gives
    Sometimes night comes in day time

    A wonderful night
    When I get into my flow
    Rhythm sustains me
    Audience hooked on my words
    Ears listen to my story

    From the beginning
    Born under hypnotism
    In a trance like state
    Doctors don’t snap their fingers
    I go through my life in dream

    Acting on impulses
    Driven by medical men
    Cruel experiment
    I concede the need for death
    When I escape their clutches

    1. Belated reply to you Richard, these are all fabulous tanka – love the lines ‘further away than night gives/sometimes night comes in day time’ such a deep evocation of the blurring of time personal and universal, experienced and dreamt, felt and meant… beautiful.

  2. Some haiku from this period to share:

    when I am gone
    who will bother to keep
    my dusty notebooks?

    sell by date
    paprika outlasted you
    afterall

    search for signal
    soon forgotten when spotted
    by a peregrine

    painting sky
    your blue
    will never be mine

    against high winds
    wild ponies still – backs to the sea
    where white horses race

    pouring jasmine tea
    cup of warm rain – mist green leaves
    from somewhere else

    my fitbit
    records rewards rates distance
    not epiphanies

    this solitude
    we do not see each season
    slip to loneliness

    your keepsakes
    now mine
    each a farewell

    bumper sticker
    how do you
    haiku?

    at the same old pond
    ah no frogs again today
    just tadpoles in mud

    bluebells in brambles
    brambles in bluebells – nothing
    matters – there’s the sea

    new moon
    still keep a crack in curtains
    to let the dark out

    wish I could stay here
    until each dandelion
    turns into a clock

    dust
    let it lie
    for another day…

    set the fire
    empty yesterday’s ash
    begin again

    is your day
    spent waiting on
    rain or sun?

    arranging feathers
    a quail misses the moment
    of its sudden death

    in woods returning
    to when a leaf a feather
    was treasure to me

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