One book stood out, not because it was a weighty tome on haiku, but because it was about birds in haiku – ‘Wing Beats: British Birds in Haiku’ by John Barlow and Matthew Paul, published by Snapshot Press. I knew about birds, their songs and behaviour their jiz – what made them tick as it were. So this became my go to book for all things haiku.

easy listening
a woodpigeon croons
an old favourite

But it was Paul Chambers the then editor of the Wales Haiku Journal, and award winning haiku poet, who took my very naive, gawkish first attempts at writing haiku and helped me work them up into something worthy of publishing. Here they are …

red skies—
from wind-tossed trees
stormcock sing

drifting snow
shattering the silence
a wren sings

If I’m writing at least half-way credible haiku today it is because of his patience, encouragement and ultimately belief. I can’t thank him enough.

Hyper-focussed now on finding out all there was to know about haiku, I also read about haiku techniques by the late Jane Reichhold – sense switching, the use of metaphor and simile, wordplay and the above as below technique.

And then a light bulb moment I read the Poetic Spell by Martin Lucas (1962 – 2014),
founder and editor of Presence, and a friend and colleague of John Barlow and Matthew Paul. A fellow birdwatcher he has had a lasting influence on my haiku writing …

squally showers
sweeping the saltings
the peewit’s cry

What did he mean by poetic spell.

…. words that chime; words that beat; words that flow. And once you’ve truly heard it, you won’t forget it, because the words have power. They are not dead and scribbled on a page, they are spoken like a charm; and they aren’t read, they’re heard. You can hold them in the light and turn them about and watch each of their facets gleam. They begin and end each reader’s unique reflection …

first light the pink of chaffinch in the cherry

And finally back to Bashō and his concept of karumi. Like so many of Bashō’s critical terms, karumi defies easy definition. Essentially meaning a lightness of touch, stressing simplicity and leanness, relaxed, rhythmical, seemingly artless expression leaving a space for the reader to become an imaginative participant. It also implies rhythm and attention to the poetry of the ear, especially those sound patterns that generate emotional connotations.

Heavily paraphrased from ‘Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashō’ (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1998, by Haruo Shirane).

Not every haiku will have this but it’s worth striving for. In the end some poems just work …

waking up the sounds of the day waking up

It’s very much your poem – wherever you lay your head!

across the meadow – part 7

“Stepping up the hill laboriously, 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.”

(Out of Doors in February – Richard Jefferies 1882)

up on the downs a skylark takes me higher

Sometimes, in late summer or early autumn, I’d stay up on the downs and watch the stars appear, one by one – mirrored by the cottage lights in the valley far below …

It was a strange feeling – like being between two worlds – a childlike feeling of wonder and awe at the infinity of the night sky, yet comforted and reassured by the human presence below. The curlew’s call a portal between the two.

lights twinkle
in darkening skies
a curlew’s cry

But in spring and early summer, still waking with the birds, even on a work day, I would walk across the fields to the river … listening to the birdsong. Neither night nor day, there was a tangible change in the air and an imperceptible, almost subliminal lightening of the sky.

The blackbird’s whistle is very human, like a human being playing the flute; an uncertain player, now drawing forth a bar of a beautiful melody and then losing it again. He does not know what quiver or what turn his note will take before it ends; the note leads him and completes itself. It is a song which strives to express the singer’s keen delight, the singer’s exquisite appreciation of the loveliness of the days; the golden glory of the meadow, the light, the luxurious shadows, the indolent clouds reclining on their azure couch. … Now and again the blackbird feels the beauty of the time, the large white daisy stars, the grass with yellow-dusted tips, the air which comes so softly unperceived by any precedent rustle of the hedge, the water which runs slower, held awhile by rootlet, flag, and forget-me-not. He feels the beauty of the time and he must say it. His notes come like wild flowers, not sown in order. The sunshine opens and shuts the stops of his instrument

(From Jefferies’ essay ‘The Coming of Summer’)

sunny days tease a blackbird’s song

And on weekends I would roam the fields, woods and water-meadows, all the day long, as I did when a child.

‘Butterflies flutter over the mowing grass, hardly clearing the bennets. Many multi-coloured insects creep up the sorrel stems and take wing from the summit. Everything gives forth a sound of life. The twittering of swallows from above, the song of greenfinches in the trees, the rustle of hawthorn sprays moving under the weight of tiny creatures, the buzz upon the breeze; the very flutter of the butterflies’ wings, noiseless as it is, and the wavy movement of the heated air across the field cause a sense of motion and of music.’

(An extract from Jefferies’ essay, ‘Woodlands’, from ‘Nature Near London’)

a warm wind across the meadows the hum of bees

Now, many many years later, happily married (I met my darling wife through work so it can’t have been all bad) with grown up kids, my walks and introspection, have been, and continue to be, a rich source for my haiku.

Why don’t you join me some fine morning – or at least poke your head outdoors and listen, just for a moment, to the birds … waking up.

But I digress, I remember because it also marked a huge change in my life as we had recently moved from the country to the suburbs of Bath. I hated change and couldn’t handle the move at all for years after … Even now, especially in spring, just like mole I get a hankering to revisit my old home. Long gone now, replaced by an ‘architect designed des res’ but still it pulls me.

waking up
the sounds of the day
waking up

I was at home playing in the woods and fields. Sometimes I’d be out all day; waking with the birds – sparrows, always sparrows chattering from under the eaves, and tree sparrows twittering from a nearby ash (and if I was lucky, a green woodpecker or cuckoo calling). And only coming in, reluctantly, as the owls began hooting, and the blackbird had sung his last song.

punctuating time
a blackbird’s song

Going to bed had its own challenges. While the outdoors held no horrors even in the dark, my bedroom lit only by a single oil lamp, had lots of spooky corners. And a wardrobe. Scary! Even the patterns on the wallpaper seemed to move.

shadows on the wall chasing sleep

Was I lonely – I don’t think so. Or did I ‘learn to be lonely’ as in the Andrew Lloyd Webber’s song from Phantom of the Opera (covered here beautifully by my daughter Bea … Excuse the plug!)

‘Child of the wilderness’ … The lyrics say it all!

I was, I suppose, a precocious child. I could read and spell, even quite difficult words like ‘intelligence’, before starting school, but struggled with writing and arithmetic.

I hated school! I didn’t fit. Had few friends. And thought and behaved differently. I spent an awful lot of time reading or staring out the window …

Hidden

I turned the page.
[…] “‘I have amazing news for you – and indeed for every bird-lover in the country,’”he whispered. […]

It was my first day at Junior (Primary) school and I had picked a book to read, from the library shelves.

“Bennett! What are you doing ?”

“Reading, Miss” (I hadn’t heard the Headmistress come into class). “We were told to”, Miss.

“What have I been talking about?”

“Dunno, Miss.”

“Come here!” (six raps on the knuckles for not paying attention and six more for answering back). “Write out, in your best handwriting, ‘I must not read in class’. Twelve times!”

Did she know that my writing was awful. I could read, and spell almost anything, but write – I couldn’t write for toffee.

I returned to my desk and stared out the window; a Green Woodpecker flew up into the trees bordering the grounds of the old Rectory. Overgrown and unkempt – a place of mystery and adventure. …

I sneaked a look at the next page.
[…] “‘As I suspected, the birds you saw and which I have been watching for fifteen minutes are Bee-eater.’”[…]

The bell rang …

morning assembly
sparrows chattering
in the playground

As told to my son many many years later. He ‘got it’ straight away! Made me think.

But it was this book ‘The Fourth Key’ by Malcolm Saville that inspired and fed my passion for watching birds … that was to last a lifetime.

across the meadow – part 3

undiagnosed
a difficult child …
if only he knew

the hurt inside
not knowing myself