Thought it might be fun to follow up my previous post with a little experiment in collective composition, a series of linked haikus. The idea is that I write a haiku and invite another which has some, perhaps slight connection with mine while standing alone as a poem in its own right. This allows the emphasis to shift between poems.
The first haiku received will become the second poem in the sequence and in turn provide a springboard for the third, which triggers the fourth and so on. Each new haiku need only connect with its immediate predecessor but to keep things orderly please respond in the Leave A Reply box, ignoring Reply button under Comment boxes. Scroll down these to find the latest haiku in the series.
My role will be to decide when to bring things to a close, at which point I’ll publish the sequence so far and ask for a concluding haiku – this will be the only one that has to connect with all previous haikus in the chain. Throughout, the first poems received will be used provided they conform to the Oxford Dictionary definition:
Haiku – a poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world.
Can’t think of anything else, so here’s my haiku to get the ball rolling:
Where to be happy?
Misty lands far away or
here beneath blossom?
Beneath sun and leaf
Under an English oak tree
Where we breathe and sigh
Or sharing our souls
As we nature’s soul share?
The place-? In our minds.
our minds disconnect
into the sun’s warmth, the wind
a thought on the skin
In the urinous shade
Of the car park’s stairwell, green
Lichens sit and swell.
Contributions now closed. Complete haiku sequence on https://davekingsbury.wordpress.com/2016/03/28/haikumania-the-results/
Further poem collaborations to follow. I would love you to join in.