Japanese poetry

International Women’s Haiku Festival: Two Haiku by Claire Vogel Camargo

~ Jennifer Hambrick ~ Leave a comment
Kin Lane - Cemetery
Photo: Kin Lane/Creative Commons/Flickr

A disenvoiced woman screams on the inside, and a widow explores new-found freedom in two lovely haiku by U.S. poet Claire Vogel Camargo.

the silence
of her acquiescence
a scream

Whatever the subject of the poem is acquiescing to, with whatever wrong or misdeed she is rendered voiceless, a scream resounds inside her. You will likely not hear it – not yet, anyway – but it is there. It is the scream that says this is horribly wrong, you don’t deserve this, no one deserves this, this must stop. “This” could be any number of things – rape, abuse, harassment, discrimination, mansplaining, a good old-fashioned scolding by a male co-worker or spouse. The list goes on. And because personal safety and livelihood may well be at stake, “the silence / of her acquiescence” often goes on, too, despite all the screaming inside.

***

just widowed
all she accomplishes
without him

It’s not necessarily the case that he was a demanding husband. He might have been wonderful and supportive, as many husbands are. But before his death, she shared her space, her time, her life with him. She made his interests hers. She flexed with his schedule. Like Golde in Fiddler on the Roof, she may have washed his clothes, cooked his meals, cleaned his house. It was her house, too, of course. But still. Now, after his death, she is her own woman and, seemingly, well at ease.

Claire Vogel Camargo, author of IRIS OPENING, an ekphrastic collection, wrote her first haiku in 2010, which won 1st place. Her poems appear in journals and anthologies – including Cattails, Hedgerow, Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga, Presence, and World Haiku Review. Her 1st place haiku (My Haiku Pond Academy 2017) was the prompt for Carpe Diem Troiku Kukai “in the herb garden” January 2018. She holds degrees in nursing (BSN, MSN) and belongs to the Austin Poetry Society board, British Haiku Society, and Haiku Society of America. She lives with her husband and Great Dane in Texas.

International Women’s Haiku Festival: Three Haiku by Martha Magenta

~ Jennifer Hambrick ~ 2 Comments
makou0629 - fallen petals
Photo: makou0629/Creative Commons/Flickr

British poet Martha Magenta gives voice to the reprehensibility of sexual harassment, the after-effects of a mastectomy, and fleeting fertility in three beautiful haiku.

the depth
of pollution
#metoo

What prompts one to think it acceptable to make implicit or explicit sexual demands of someone else? The impulse may or may not be akin to the one that prompts the polluting of a beautiful landscape with an empty potato chip bag, but the results are similar: both victims are left to drown in the filthy residue left behind by those who violate them.

***

last rose of summer –
the loneliness
of a single breast

In the normal course of things, we shed cells throughout our entire lives, such that every several years we effectively have entirely new bodies. So why should it surprise us when a part of our bodies must be removed all at once? It surprises us, of course, because we are gifted with the propensity to envision only our springtime and summers, not our autumns and (heaven forbid) our winters. A lone breast shares this lovely haiku with a late-blooming rose, offering the gentlest possible reminder both of our mortality and of its place, and its special kind of beauty, in the natural order.

***

falling sakura . . .
her yearning
to conceive

What image better conveys the yearning for new life than the sakura – the cherry blossom – that timeless Japanese symbol of the fragility of life? In this poem, the biological clock measures time in cherry petals let loose from the tree, even as the poem’s subject likely marks time in monthly cycles, in squares on the calendar, and in temperature readings. This, too, is life.

Martha Magenta lives in Bristol, England, UK. Her haiku, haibun, senryu, and tanka have appeared in a number of journals, magazines, and anthologies. She was awarded Honourable Mentions for her haiku in The Fifth Annual Peggy Willis Lyles Haiku Awards, 2017, and the 71st Basho Memorial English Haiku Contest, 2017, and for her tanka in UHTS “Fleeting Words” Tanka Contest 2017. She is listed on The European Top 100 haiku authors, 2017.

International Women’s Haiku Festival: Two Haiku by Lee Nash

~ Jennifer Hambrick ~ 1 Comment
Joe Shlabotnik - Red Carpet
Photo: Joe Shlabotnik/Creative Commons/Flickr

A kept woman and a white wedding dress find their way into two insightful haiku by Lee Nash.

sugar daddy
the acrid sting
of his tobacco

The kept woman. Wouldn’t it be nice, the idea goes, if a man could provide a woman everything she needs, or – better yet – could spoil her outright, just like her father did when she was a little girl, only with bigger, blingier, costlier gifts? Of course, whatever sum the sugar daddy spends, the woman’s emotional price – her sense of her own inner strength and resourcefulness, her self-respect – is far costlier. The “acrid sting” lands in her soul, while material stuff builds up around her like prison walls.

***

white wedding dress
the intensity
of a sugar rose

Are many weddings these days, euphemistically speaking, white? Sure, the bride’s dress may gleam like the cliffs of Albion, but does the dress still convey virginity, as it did in past eras? One can still “read” a white wedding dress that way, though I suspect most would also consider doing so to be old-fashioned and, frankly, none of their business. Yet, the white dress persists as a bride’s default wedding attire, maybe because of or despite the symbol it once clearly was, or maybe – dare I say it? – just for show. So now compare, as Nash does in her poem, the white wedding dress with not a real rose, but a sickly sweet one made of sugar. And it’s only fair to ask: Which article of the groom’s attire still, even if only in the margins, satisfies social expectations of his sexual status at the altar?

Lee Nash lives in France and works as an editor and proofreader. Her poems have appeared in print and online journals, including Acorn, Ambit, Angle, Magma, Mezzo Cammin, Orbis, Poetry Salzburg Review, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, The Heron’s Nest, and The Lake. Her first poetry chapbook, Ash Keys, is available from Flutter Press. You can find a selection of Lee’s poems on her website: leenashpoetry.com.

International Women’s Haiku Festival: Two Haiku by Debbie Strange

~ Jennifer Hambrick ~ 9 Comments
Jackie Finn-Irwin - Purple African Violet
Photo by Jackie Finn-Irwin/Creative Commons/Flickr

Launching the 2018 International Women’s Haiku Festival are two gorgeous haiku by Canadian poet Debbie Strange.

Taken together, these two poems convey volumes about women’s experience. In “sisterless . . .” the special relationship that only sisters can share is viewed from the vantage point of its utter lack, and illustrated with the heartrending image of a star falling into permanent darkness in a lake.

“African violets” is a compassionate take on the parts of our lives that we may prefer to leave in the relative safety and comfort of the vagueness of the past. Likening the “fuzzy details” of the past to bold and beautiful (and, yes, fuzzy) African violets acknowledges that even the shadows of one’s past are still, in their own unique ways, beautiful and brilliant.

sisterless . . .
another star falls
into the lake

***

African violets
the fuzzy details
of my past

Debbie Strange (Canada) is an internationally published short form poet, haiga artist and photographer whose creative passions bring her closer to the world and to herself. She is the author of Warp and Weft: Tanka Threads (Keibooks 2015) and the haiku chapbook A Year Unfolding (Folded Word 2017). You are invited to visit her publication archive at http://debbiemstrange.blogspot.ca/.

A Short Walk Inside a Haiga: “synapse” Before and After

~ Jennifer Hambrick ~ Leave a comment
Hambrick - synapse ACCEPTED FOR PUB IN DAILY HAIGA
“synapse” first published in DailyHaiga 27 Oct. 2017  http://www.dailyhaiga.org/haiga-archives/2165/synapse-by-jennifer-hambrick-usa.  “synapse” poem & image © Jennifer Hambrick 2017. All rights reserved.

Anyone who creates on a regular basis knows that the process that leads to a creation is almost always as original as the creation itself. In the case of my haiga “synapse,” published recently in the beautiful online journal DailyHaiga, I thought a before-and-after might be of interest.

It was actually the edited version of the photograph in “synapse” that inspired the haiku that now accompanies it. The edited image is above; here is the unedited photograph:

DSCF2029
© Jennifer Hambrick 2017. All rights reserved.

In the unedited, photo it’s a bit more clear that the light yellow network of fibrous tentacles is actually a meandering aquatic plant floating in water – in this case, a pond – just beneath the surface.

In editing the photo, I wanted to bring out the contrast between the yellow plant and the greenish hue of the water. So I moved briskly to the electric end of the color spectrum and also applied some other filters to add a retro urban feel.

I sat quietly for a while looking at the edited photo and exploring my inner landscape in relation to it, asking myself how the colors made me feel, what, in the abstract, that yellow thing kind of looked like, and so on.

Then I listened to my intuition, which told me that the yellow tentacles looked like either a subway map or a medical image of a nerve cell ganglion – no, they looked like both at once!

The two contrasting interpretations of the photo’s subject practically handed me the two components of the haiku on a platter: “synapse,” as in a nerve cell synapse, and “the distant rumble / of the outbound train,” referring to the subway map interpretation of the yellow vine.

My deep thanks to DailyHaiga editor Linda Pilarski for again publishing my work.

“Gloaming” Named a Winner in World Haiku Association Haiga Contest

~ Jennifer Hambrick ~ 2 Comments
Hambrick - gloaming UNDER REVIEW WITH OCT 2017 WORKLD HAIKU ASSOCIATION HAIGA CONTEST
gloaming was first published by the World Haiku Association http://www.worldhaiku.net/wha_haiga/157/jennifer_hambrick_us.html. © 2017 Jennifer Hambrick. All rights reserved.

Everyone I’ve ever met has, metaphorically speaking, carved his or her initials into my soul.

This idea is the message at the heart of my haiga “gloaming,” above, which recently was selected as a winner in the World Haiku Association’s 157th Haiga Contest.

I have never carved my initials into a tree. Here’s why: Imagine what it would feel like if someone were to gouge some random etching into your flesh with a sharp – or worse, a strong but more or less blunt-edged – instrument.

Every word I’ve heard has left its mark on me on a cellular level. Such is the nature of who we are as human beings interconnected in a web of emotions. More to the point, the scars of those I love, and of those I once loved, are still with me and may always be.

I am most grateful to contest judge Kuniharu Shimizu for selecting my work for this honor.

Haiga Celebrates the Slow Trickle of Summer

~ Jennifer Hambrick ~ Leave a comment
Hambrick - summer
Summer first published in DailyHaiga, 1 Oct. 2017.  Text and image © 2017 Jennifer Hambrick.  All rights reserved.

I was delighted to have another haiga published recently in the journal DailyHaiga.

Pictured in this haiga is a detail of the bottom of a water chain surrounded by pebbles, a wooden border and fronds of a plant. I took the photo during summer in the Japanese Garden at the phenomenal Schnormeier Gardens in Gambier, Ohio.

The tranquil elegance of this distinctly Japanese scene gave rise to thoughts of a lazy summer day and to the haiku that I included with the image.

And even though summer’s over and we’re deep into a glorious autumn, we can take that summer feeling – warm, lazy days when everything seems to move at a slow trickle – wherever we go.

I am extremely grateful to DailyHaiga editor Linda Pilarski for again publishing my work in this major haiga journal.

Three Water-Inspired Haiga Published in Haiga Online

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Hambrick - the drift
Image and poem © 2017 Jennifer Hambrick.  All rights reserved.  First published in Haiga Online, Vol. 18-2, Autumn 2017.

Three of my haiga, all on the theme of water, were published recently in the journal Haiga Online.

The issue, “Borrowed Water,” features water-themed haiga by poets and artists around the world.

Hambrick - the cool slide
Image and poem © 2017 Jennifer Hambrick.  All rights reserved.  First published in Haiga Online, Vol. 18-2, Autumn 2017.

I shot the photographs in all of these haiga in June 2017 at the stunning Schnor-meier Gardens, in Gambier, Ohio, then used various digital photo editing techniques to add borders and other effects.

In “the drift,” shown at the top of this post, and in “the cool slide,” each of the visual images in its edited form inspired the haiku that accompanies it.

In “the drift,” water becomes one with the sky reflected in it.  together, they take on the role of a fluid, boundless medium through which thoughts can flow as freely as a summer breeze.

The photo in “the drift” is of one of the garden’s amazingly beautiful lily ponds, which were coming into full bloom during my visit. I decided on the particular combination of editing filters because of the effect they created on the clouds, which swirl in that lazy summer afternoon kind of way.

In “the cool slide,” water becomes the pathway for a kind of experience with dementia that differs from the horrifying response this traumatic condition usually evokes. The eye slides from a rocky shore into gentle sky-blue water, metaphorically away from the harsh ugliness of the world and into peaceful depths. Maybe there can be spiritual benefits to forgetting.

The image in “the cool slide” is of the edge of one of the lakes in the Schnormeier Gardens’ Serenity Garden, which also features trickling streams, two waterfalls, a young forest of more than 200 rare conifers, and a Japanese garden house.

Hambrick - spring tide
Image and poem © 2017 Jennifer Hambrick.  All rights reserved.  First published in Haiga Online, Vol. 18-2, Autumn 2017.

In “spring tide,” the rough edges of the piece of sea glass became the idea that guided me to create a poem about the wabi-sabi kind of beauty in one’s own rough edges, and the special compassion of the people who choose to accept them and, indeed, even see beauty in them.

Many sincere thanks to Haiga Online editor Linda Papanicolaou for selecting my work for this special “Borrowed Water” issue.

 

Poem Wins Sakura Award in 2017 Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival International Haiku Invitational

~ Jennifer Hambrick ~ 2 Comments
Cherry Blossoms - Susanne Nilsson
Photo: Susanne Nilsson (Creative Commons/Flickr)

I was surprised and delighted to learn from a fellow haikuist that one of my poems recently received a Sakura Award in the 2017 Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival International Haiku Invitational.

My haiku was one of 15 by U.S. authors recognized with Sakura Awards in this year’s competition. In addition, a single poem was named Top Winner in the U.S. category, and another 25 U.S. poems were given Honourable Mentions.

Of the 41 U.S. poems granted awards, fully six – close to 15 percent – are by poets living and working in my home state of Ohio.

The theme of this year’s Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational was “freedom.” My poem speaks to the world of possibilities that await people of all ages and from all corners of the globe who seek to build their lives in freedom and peace:

an old man
learns two new words
cherry blossom

My heartfelt congratulations to the winning poets in all divisions of this year’s competition, and my sincere gratitude to the competition judges, Angelee Deodhar, Billie Wilson, and DeVar Dahl.

“Stiletto heel” Haiku Published in The Mainichi (The Daily News – Japan)

~ Jennifer Hambrick ~ Leave a comment

The Mainichi imageWhat a pleasant surprise!

I  just discovered quite at random that one of my haiku was published recently in the major Japanese newspaper The Mainichi (The Daily News).

Here is my poem:

Hambrick stiletto heel haiku The Mainichi 18 April 2017

My thanks to editor Isamu Hashimoto for selecting my work. I am greatly honored.