October 25, 2015

Greetings,

Swain's faculty and staff have a wide variety of interests and experiences, and today we hear from Poet in Residence Marilyn Hazelton as she deepens her study of the ancient poetry forms of haiku and tanka.

Poetry in Autumn
by Marilyn Hazelton, Poet in Residence

Earlier this month I participated in two poetry conferences, Haiku North America (HNA) and Tanka Sunday, at Union College in Schenectady, NY, from Oct. 14-19. Both conferences are bi-annual events. Since 1991, HNA has drawn American and international writers to locations in the U.S. or Canada for several days of panel discussions, meetings and sharing of poetry. Tanka Sunday entered its second year as a conference this year. This was my sixth time participating in HNA, and second time for Tanka Sunday.

I've been researching, writing and teaching haiku for 15 years, and tanka for eight years. They provide the basis for my writing in all forms. From my research, I know that haiku is a potentially powerful one or three line poem
with a 400 hundred-year history. Tanka, the parent form of haiku with five lines, is 1,300 years old. To write them well, haiku and tanka require time, close observation, contemplation and being open to discovery. I love reading haiku and tanka journals, and writing both forms. Also, I publish a respected tanka journal called red lights (there are current copies available in the Swain Library).

It's always wonderful to meet haiku and tanka writers whose work I've admired and read throughout the years. This year, there were 128 registrants for HNA, many from the east and west coasts of the U.S. and Canada, as well as from Japan, India, Europe and Australia. Fifty-five registrants for Tanka Sunday represented the same global span.

The highlights included presentations by Dr. Randy M. Brooks, Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Millikin University in Decatur, IL; Ion Codrescu, Professor of Art at Ovidius University in Romania (pictured with me, left); and Aya Yuhki, editor of The Tanka Journal for the Japan Tanka Poets Society.

Prof. Brooks gave an overview of an Honors Course on Global Haiku Traditions that he teaches each semester at Millikin. Prof. Codrescu spoke about combining painting with haiku and calligraphy (called 'haiga'), transforming the poems into deeper experiences. During the conference, Union College hosted an exhibit of Prof. Codrescu's work. He gave a talk on the history of haiga in Japan and his own experiences studying with a Japanese master of the form.

At Tanka Sunday, Aya Yuhki (pictured, right)  presented participants with invitations for a Tanka Festival in Japan in June of next year. My husband and I are seriously thinking about going to that gathering. In the meantime, I will be sorting through the papers, journals and notes from HNA and Tanka Sunday to see what I can creatively incorporate into my classes at Swain.

In the poetry examples below, please note that, while a kind of rhythm and brevity of line is necessary, syllable count, punctuation, and lower or upper case letters are at the discretion of the modern writer. Also, these poetic forms give us the opportunity to express and understand the small and larger moments of our lives.

For adults, the work behind these poems includes cultivating an internal and external awareness over a span of time resulting in writing that appears effortless.  For children, whose natural awareness is more present, writing haiku and tanka can be quite a bit easier.

A few haiku:

baby on her back -
the spring sky
in her blue eyes

- Randy M. Brooks

dragon fly
bearing the sun
on its wings

- Ion Codrescu


And a few tanka:

to me
the future is like those places
to which I haven't yet been
calling to me
"Come!"

- Aya Yuki


how our lives
shift and change
the years
when I was speechless
are done

- Marilyn Hazelton


This Week on Swain's Facebook...
There was plenty of action this week, as we hosted our Scholastic Book Fair and then celebrated Founder's Day on Wednesday ... we gave a shout out to our faculty and staff for reaching 100% on their Annual Fund donations ... shared an article trending in national media about parents 'overhelping' their children and its impact on resilience ... and a couple of old friends showed up to say hello!


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