Clive Bennett

A serialisation of my semi-autobiographical ebook of haiku. A sort of poetic memoir. A story of “inspirations illustrated with wonderful poems and writings” (Andrea Stephenson).

I’ve quoted Richard Jefferies rather a lot. He and I share an affinity with nature and the countryside, with my haiku often ‘found’ or intuited from his prose, an effective foil to his ‘gushing’ (R.H.Blyth) writing.

Oh and it also has the odd bit of music and occasional birdsong too.

The front cover and coloured illustrations are from woodblock prints by Ohara Koson (Ohara Hōson, Ohara Shōson Kanazawa 1877 – Tokyo 1945) who was a Japanese painter and woodblock print designer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at the forefront of shinsaku–hanga and shin–hanga art movements.

Koson is known for his depictions of birds and animals, which were often set in naturalistic landscapes. His prints capture the essence of his subjects with delicate lines and intricate details. Koson was influenced by the work of the Kacho-ga artist Imao Keinen, and his prints reflect a similar interest in the beauty and intricacy of the natural world.

The black and white landscape photos were prepared by Miss Bertha Newcome and published in “Richard Jefferies A Study” by H S Salt 1883.

The birdsong recordings are used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs4.0 license. These and many more can be found at – Xeno-Canto – a website dedicated to sharing bird sounds from all over the world.

All rights reserved. This ebook, or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Any errors, omissions or inaccuracies, grammatical or otherwise, are entirely my own.

Copyright © 2023 Clive Bennett

Dedicated to Colin Blundell (1937 – 2023)

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The Prologue

[Suddenly] “… a lark starts into the light and pours forth a rain of unwearied notes overhead. With bright light, and sunshine, and sunrise, and blue skies the bird is so associated in the mind, that even to see him in the frosty days of winter, at least assures us that summer will certainly return.“ . . .

distant bells across the fields skylark song

(Out of Doors in February – Richard Jefferies 1882)

So how come I started writing haiku – I wasn’t a poet and didn’t read poetry. Not since school anyway although the line ‘we have no time to stand and stare’ (‘Leisure’ W.H. Davies), had somehow stuck with me. I wasn’t a writer either. But I loved reading. And had done from a very young age. Mum had lots of books. I discovered the North Pole, messed about on the river, travelled to the centre of the earth, followed Alice down the rabbit hole and walked with Richard Jefferies up Liddington Hill – countless times …

It was quite by accident. I had picked up a book (more about that later) by Colin Blundell ’Something Beyond the Stars’ (Found Haiku from the Notebooks of Richard Jefferies). I didn’t know Colin from Adam (although I was to correspond with him subsequently – Colin that is).

Sadly I never got to meet him, but we shared a passion for the nature writing of Richard Jefferies. Colin believed that within Jefferies’ eloquent prose there were zen-like moments of ‘suchness’ which could be ‘teased out’ or ‘found’ and expressed as haiku. Moments Jefferies himself said he sometimes ‘lacked the words’ [Sic] to express.

Richard Jefferies, widely considered the father of English nature writing, was perhaps the most brilliant observer of nature of the 19th century. I’d read a lot of his work but this was something new, different and exciting. I didn’t think anyone had looked at his life in this way before. Indeed, as Colin argues “his whole philosophy could be said to be built upon such haiku-moments.” I would go further and say that much of his writing is prose written in the manner of haiku. Now there’s a thought!

So what better than to find my own haiku in his writing …

Here’s a favourite passage of mine from ‘The Story of my Heart’ (1883) – his spiritual autobiography.

“There were grass-grown tumuli on the hills to which of old I used to walk, sit down at the foot of one of them, and think. Some warrior had been interred there in the ante-historic times. The sun of the summer morning shone on the dome of sward, and the air came softly up from the wheat below, the tips of the grasses swayed as it passed sighing faintly, it ceased, and the bees hummed by to the thyme and heathbells.” . . .

summer grasses dreaming the dreams of warriors

Similar, perhaps too similar, to Bashō’s ’Summer Grasses’, my intuited haiku (monoku) is meant not as an allusion, though it is that, albeit a weak (in content) one, but more an example of how Jefferies approached what he saw in the world around him with a sensibility akin to Bashō.

Summer grass
the only remains of soldiers’
dreams

(translated by Jane Reichhold)

Here’s another favourite …

“‘There’s the cuckoo!’ Everyone looked up and listened as the notes came indoors from the copse by the garden. He had returned to the same spot for the fourth time. The tallest birch-tree—it is as tall as an elm—stands close to the hedge, about three parts of the way up it, and it is just round there that the cuckoo generally sings. From the garden gate it is only a hundred yards to this tree, walking beside the hedge which extends all the way, so that the very first time the cuckoo calls upon his arrival he is certain to be heard. His voice travels that little distance with ease, and can be heard in every room.”

The Hills and the Vale (1909)

sunshine filling every room the cuckoo’s call

There is a spirituality in his writing suggestive of an ‘animist’ approach to nature. He clearly felt that all things—plants, animals, stones, even weather—are sentient and alive. And once described the downs as being ‘alive with the dead’.

“… there was magic in everything, in the blades of grass and the stars, the sun and the stones upon the ground” 

(Bevis, 1882)

All of which of course lends itself to haiku which too has its roots in animism.

I’ve always felt at one with nature (and the wider Universe). The warrior buried in the mound is as real to me now as it was to Richard Jefferies then. And so my haiku storey begins. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Perhaps it all really started way back in childhood all those years ago.

across the meadow – part 2