World Haiku Review is now open for submissions for the Autumn 2020 issue.
World Haiku Review is one of the first English language magazines for haiku and similar forms and has been carrying quality work for over a decade. This is your chance to submit haiku, haibun or related forms. WHR has also published an anthology with all the winning work and editor’s choice haiku from ten years of publication – Fuga No Makoto. Copies are available in ebook form on Amazon.
Theme – Coronavirus or your season in your part of the world.
Japanese culture and haiku in the aesthetic context
Talk by Geethanjali Rajan.
Date – 25 June, 8 am to 9.30 am. Cost – free. Details of registration are on the poster above.
Haiku originated in medieval Japan, as an offshoot of renku. This three-line poem, which traditionally requires 5, 7 and 5 mora (japanese syllables), encompasses enormous depth and has evolved over a period of 400 years. It depends upon the aesthetics of hai (lightness), wabi (detachment), sabi (ephemerality) and yugen (mystique). Developed by the Buddhist monk Matsuo Basho, it has today spread across the world and in written in almost all languages of the world.
About the Speaker Geethanjali Rajan teaches Japanese and English in Chennai. Her journey into haiku started over 15 years ago. Her poems have appeared in many journals – World Haiku Review, Frogpond, Skylark, Chrysanthemum, A Hundred Gourds, Under the Basho,Mainichi, Asahi haikuist network, Creatrix, Prune Juice, Akitsu, Haibun Today, CHO, and some others. Her haiku are part of Naad Anunaad (2016)- An Anthology of contemporary world haiku, dust devils (Red Moon Press), Beyond the fields (Aesthetic Publications) and her haibun has been included in the Genjuan Anthology (2014, 2016)and The Red River Book of Haibun. Some of her haiku have been translated into German, Punjabi, Hindi and Japanese.
She is the recipient of a few awards – Redleaf Poetry India Award 2013 (haiku), an Honourable Mention in the Genjuan International haibun Competition 2014, 2016 and 2020, the second place (haiku) at the Tata Lit Live, 2014 and a second place in The Sonic Boom International Senryu Competition 2015, The Sakura award at the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival (2017) and listed as an honourable mention in the Gene Murtha Senryu Competition 2018, Polish International haiku contest 2019 and in the 8 th Akita International haiku contest in Japanese (2019). She is currently the haiku editor at cattails (UHTS).
Geethanjali has conducted numerous haiku lectures and workshops for college and high school students in Chennai, Mumbai and Bangalore. As part of her day job, she has also co-authored a book on Practical English for Nurses (Oxford Univ Press 2015).
She enjoys collaborative writing, conducts creative writing and haiku workshops (in English and Japanese). Her interests include music, calligraphy and Japanology.
This is the last post in the Lockdown Poetry series. To all those who contributed a very big thank you from all of us at Cafe Haiku. If you sent us something and we did not carry it, do not get discouraged – try again next time.
A very big thank you to all you readers out there and all those who shared our posts. Thanks to you this series has run to twenty one posts and lasted right through the lockdown, ending just as the restrictions are being lifted in our home city of Mumbai.
All success to you all and keep writing. See you again soon.
The twenty first and last poet of this series is Kinshuk Gupta.
lockdown– the ciacda’s pitch a notch higher
lockdown– my father starts writing his will
lonely night– even so the rustle of leaves
loneliness– my mother fills her room with incense smoke
Cafe Haiku is doing a series on haiku, haibun, tanka or related styles on the subject of the Wuhan virus lockdown which is now daily life for most of the world as the virus spreads to alarming proportions. A big thank you to all those who contributed to this effort by sending us your beautiful words and images. Subscribe to this blog to read the rest of the series and be updated about future series like this one.
The twentieth poet in this Lockdown Poetry series is Rashmi VeSa.
Acquiescence and Yet…
Yet another desultory day of the lockdown, at daybreak voices explode across the road. A motley queue of people conjures up from nowhere. There is some hustle and a futile attempt to bring in social distancing. Hours later, I see the same heads, glistening in the afternoon sun. A few have stretched out on the asphalt, and others look on grazing the length of the queue. They are waiting for monthly ration for daily food, vegetables, fruits, milk, clothes, masks, medicines, pensions, wages, jobs, anything. They are waiting when I draw the shades at dusk.
fish drought we bait our sorrows into the sea
Illustration- Ramya Tulasi
Viral Gaze
The supermarket shelves are eerily empty. Few shrivelled vegetables and fruits huddle in tray corners, they look grotesque under the arclights. Cold shelves of the fresh baked section share the day’s emptiness. Used paper cups, a few days old brim up the uncleared litter bins lining the bare aisles. The cut flowers in the florist section have bowed their heads morose in neglect. Before the lockdown shoppers descended here in hordes with the single-mindedness of a pilgrim undertaking a lifechanging mission. Today, there are two shoppers. Two masked strangers moving in separate orbits like fugitives on a stealth mission.
Diwali evening… I struggle to align lamps to the gust of wind
Cafe Haiku is doing a series on haiku, haibun, tanka or related styles on the subject of the Wuhan virus lockdown which is now daily life for most of the world as the virus spreads to alarming proportions. A big thank you to all those who contributed to this effort by sending us your beautiful words and images. Subscribe to this blog to read the rest of the series and be updated about future series like this one.
The ninteenth poets in this Lockdown Poetry series are Priya Narayanan and Nick Gutierrez.
Priya Narayanan
sanitized and gloved I cleave the papaya with surgical precision
no cars to chase the street dog barks at falling leaves
Cafe Haiku is doing a series on haiku, haibun, tanka or related styles on the subject of the Wuhan virus lockdown which is now daily life for most of the world as the virus spreads to alarming proportions. A big thank you to all those who contributed to this effort by sending us your beautiful words and images. Subscribe to this blog to read the rest of the series and be updated about future series like this one.
The eighteenth poet in this Lockdown Poetry series is K Ramesh.
Cafe Haiku is doing a series on haiku, haibun, tanka or related styles on the subject of the Wuhan virus lockdown which is now daily life for most of the world as the virus spreads to alarming proportions. A big thank you to all those who contributed to this effort by sending us your beautiful words and images. Subscribe to this blog to read the rest of the series and be updated about future series like this one.
The seventeenth poet in this Lockdown Poetry series is Sandra Martyres.
Stilted conversations
Ever since the lockdown, I only have my dog for company. It’s a good thing that he reacts to my voice- every ooh and aah draws a different toned bark or whimper.
This morning I am in a particularly foul mood – eleven days confined to the four walls of my home is getting me down. Ginger the dog has been walking alone in the compound . When he gets back indoors I ask him how the world outside looks – the loud response tells me he’s had his fill of fresh air and is happy. But once I fill his bowl with Pedigree his enthusiasm wanes. He gives me a pathetic look as if to say – Can’t you do better than that? I have been eating the same stuff for over a week now….
I open my fridge and find it almost bare too – I’ll breakfast on toast and the remnants of a jam bottle. The pooch and I exchange grunts – I will have to brave the virus and head out to shop for dog and human necessities
for the first time – the neighbours chicken looks tempting
Cafe Haiku 