WHC NEWS January 2007

The R. H. Blyth Award

Invitation to The R. H. Blyth Award World Haiku Competition

You are cordially invited to participate in the above competition. The guidelines are pasted below.

The deadline for the Competition is Sunday 30 September 2007. It seeks the top quality and highest standards. I therefore look forward to receiving the very best of your finest works.

Kengin,

Susumu

**********************************************************************************************************
Susumu Takiguchi (Mr)
Chairman
The World Haiku Club (World Haiku Festival)
http://www.worldhaikuclub.org
Managing Editor & Acting Editor-in-Chief
World Haiku Review
http://www.worldhaikureview.org
susumu.takiguchi@btinternet.com (ST e-mail address)
http://www.floatingstone.net (ST Arts & Poetry Site)
http://www.alc.co.jp/com/eigohaiku/index.html (English Haiku Class)
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/ (Go-Shichi-Go Column with the Daily Yomiuri)
Postal Address: WHC HQ, Leys Farm, Rousham, Bicester, Oxfordshire, OX25 4RA, England
**********************************************************************************************************

The R. H. Blyth Award

HAIKU IN ENGLISH OR IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION COMPETITION

*

GUIDELINES

[Category］ Haiku poems in any form, style, subject or convention but rooted in tradition. Each poem will be judged on its own merit. Works showing originality, newness or something different will be preferred. You are free to add any explanation to each of your haiku, if you so wish.

[Language] English (Haiku written in any other languages must be translated into English. Please, therefore, aim at top-quality translation. Other languages will not be considered)

[Standards & Quality] Highest standards and quality will be sought in this competition.

[Eligibility & Copyright］Open to everybody in the world. Your works must be new, original, unpublished and not being considered elsewhere.

By submitting your works, you shall be deemed to have agreed to give permission that the works may be published in WHC’s announcement, publication or any other use which WHC deem fit. The copyrights shall revert to the authors once their works are published. Any work in breach of these requirements, or any other normal practice of international haiku contests, including those under WHC, which WHC deem reasonable, will be rejected and prizes awarded will be rescinded.

[Submission of Works and Fees］You can submit up to 10 haiku poems.

As already mentioned, they should be written in, or translated into, English. Type your works, your first names followed by your surname (with title, i.e. Mr, Mrs., Ms, Dr. etc), address, tel/fax, e-mail address, haiku pen name, if any, with a brief bio. How you lay your poems on paper may not necessarily be observed in the event of publication.

The fees are ￡ 5, or US$ 10, or Euro 8 or Yen 1,000 for the first three haiku (it will be the same if you submit only one or two haiku) and ￡ 1, US$ 2, Euro 2 or Yen 500 for each subsequent haiku. No other currencies will be accepted.

Payment in cash (sending banknotes by normal letter post) is the preferred method to avoid high bank commission costs (no problems have been experienced so far, but make sure to put the banknotes within at least two sheets of your folded letter paper) but this will be at the sender’s risk. Otherwise, obtain International Money Order in British pounds, or sterling cheque drawn at UK banks, payable to “World Haiku Festival”. (Please make the denomination in British pound sterling)

Send your works with your payment by snail mail to: The World Haiku Club HQ, Leys Farm, Rousham, Bicester, England OX25 4RA. In addition, send the same works also by e-mail to: susumu.takiguchi@btinternet.com

[Deadline] Sunday 30 September 2007 (Midnight your local time, or postmark).

[Announcement of the results］ The results will be announced either on 28 October, the day of Blyth's death, or on 3 December, Blyth's birthday, or on another appropriate occasion. There will be the Award winner, two runners-up, and seven honourable mentions. The R. H. Blyth Award will be conferred to the Award winner only. No prize is considered for the rest of the best ten, except for the honour of it. The rest of the short-listed works will also be announced as Zatsuei (works of merit).

No individual enquiries regarding works submitted will be answered.

[Publication] The best ten and other short-listed works of merit will be published in World Haiku Review, the WHC’s world-wide comprehensive haiku magazine, and will also be widely shown via WHC's lists and other world-wide communication network.

WHC NEWS





Re: Go-Shichi-Go January 2007

The new instalment of Go-Shichi-Go of the Daily Yomiuri has been published today and is now also online at: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/language/20070125TDY15002.htm

It continues to talk about the important and fascinating haijin, Shuson Kato (1905-1993), and goes deeper to explore his innermost thoughts through his haiku, ranging from the theme of war to the love for his wife. Students of The Ten Neo-classical Haiku Commandments have a lot to learn from this haijin, especially from the viewpoint of ningen tankyu ha (the school of study of human nature), which tends to be shied away in this school of thought.For those who may find it difficult to visit the page, the text can also be found after my signature.

With best wishes,

Susumu Takiguchi

Chairman, The World Hiaku Club

[Pasted]

Go-Shichi-Go/ Harsh realities of peace after war

Susumu Takiguchi Special to The Daily Yomiuri

Last month, I introduced Shuson Kato (1905-93) and showed some of his haiku that revealed his inner anguish, anger and sorrow over the violence of man against man demonstrated in World War II. Without any overt intention, his poems are in a sense stronger in protesting human atrocities and injustices than some antiwar movements.

Today, we shall dig deeper and look at his views on death, love and nature that can be deciphered from his haiku. We begin with one more haiku about the sorry state to which Japan was reduced by the war.

kogarashi ya/shodo no kinko/fuki-narasu

winter wind blows,
the sounds of a safe
on the scorched ground

Kogarashi is a strong north wind that strips trees, leaving them withered. It has its own sound when it blows, but the sound becomes louder and scarier when it meets resistance from objects such as trees or, in the case of this haiku, a safe.

There is no reason to doubt that what the haiku says is exactly what Shuson saw. But it is still extraordinary. A safe--a symbol of something unbelievably heavy, strong and protective, and normally hidden away or cemented or bolted to the structure of a building--is now exposed to the elements and totally vulnerable after bombing raids. The man-made violence is followed by nature's force. Thus, the story of utter destruction is related simply by the sound of the wind.
The safe may be an allusion to Japan as a state. Japan with all its distinct culture, mental and intellectual excellence and glorious military history had never been defeated until this war.

In the 13th century, for example, Japan repelled and vanquished even the gigantic invading fleet of Kublai Khan's Mongolian empire, which could be compared with England defeating the Spanish Armada and which definitely contributed to the fall of China's Yuan Dynasty. The proud nation that Japan had once been was humbled completely for the first time. It was a shock to the system big enough to create a new Japan. This little haiku with so few words sounds as if it is telling the whole history of Japan in World War II.

hi no naka ni/shinazarishikaba/nowaki mitsu

I was not killed
in the fire, now autumn wind
fills the vacuum

The peace came. Having had a narrow escape when his house was razed by bombing raids, Shuson had to think hard what to do now that the war was over. However, the devastation was such that he was at a loss even as to what to think. The autumn storm winds seemed to gust indiscriminately. Survival was in a sense even worse than having been killed as can be seen vividly in the next haiku:

mi ni shimite/shi ni ki/nokoru wa soshiraruru

cold for the dead;
for the survivors
reproach

Survivors will always feel guilty over the dead. That is one thing. But to be condemned for having been not killed is quite another and is unreasonable. Then again, wars are anything but reasonable.

The same can be said for the aftermath of war. Shuson survived the war. Now he had to survive peace. And peace, as shown in the next haiku, did not mean the ending of human conflict. Shuson experienced the death of friends and acquaintances.

shineba nowaki/ikite ishikaba/arasoeri

autumn wind
blows over the dead;
the survivors quarrel

Anger and hatred previously directed at the enemy were now directed to one another on the same side. These three haiku were written after Shuson greeted the ashes of a friend of his, further sharpening his feelings toward war and peace.

migomorite/shimaeba/nowaki fuku bakari

once pregnant;
only the blowing
autumn wind remains

Shuson's haiku poems are generally difficult to translate. This haiku is no exception and is very powerful in its original Japanese even though no specific circumstances are made clear.

However, one possibility is that the author is talking about a woman who made a perilous journey alone from the Chinese mainland, possibly Manchuria, to return to naichi (Japan) after the end of World War II. She brought back safely her four young children and was pregnant with the fifth. Tragically, though, she died once she had been reunited with her husband. This sad tale may or may not have a bearing on this following haiku by Shuson and one of his most famous. I would like to think there is a connection:

konchu no/nemuri shigao wa/kaku ari-tashi

sleeping insect...
such should be the face
of a dying person

If the tragic woman in the preceding haiku were the subject of this one, she would be the wife of one of Shuson's close disciples. Being a champion of the Ningen-Tankyu-ha (inquiring-human school), Shuson focused on the human condition in all its manifestations. The ultimate manifestation, namely death, was of particular concern for him. In this haiku his focus is on how we humans die. The popular interpretation of it is, of course, that all of us wish to die as quietly and peacefully as a sleeping insect.

However, I would rather put it the other way round. I imagine that Shuson was at a tsuya (or wake in which the bereaved family sit with the dead all night long to help his or her soul set out on its final journey) or funeral of the wife. I imagine he saw the peaceful and serene face of the dead woman and was deeply moved, longing to die like that himself. The funeral took place just at the time when insects stop their singing and sleep, leaving their surroundings in peace.

shinitashi to/iitarishi te ga/negi kizamu

the hands
of the person who wanted to die,
now chop at an onion

Whose hands were they? His wife's? There is no way of knowing it unless the circumstances in which this haiku was written are shown. Whatever the answer, this haiku is striking. Once again, there is a subtle sense of humor here, which makes the tragic background of this haiku even more poignant, like a small amount of added salt bringing out the flavor of soup.
How many thousands or millions of people have said or thought that they wanted to die? Those who survived must have had the same experience of delight and gratitude at being able to do such mundane things as chopping onions.

Shuson wrote many haiku depicting hardships the nation endured, such as the one saying that if you bought a pair of shoes you had to give up buying rice. Out of this all too human sentiment, another famous haiku by him was born:

shi ya shimo no/rokushaku no tsuchi/areba taru

for my death
six-foot deep frosted earth
will suffice

Whether or not Shuson knew the English expression of "six feet under" is a moot point. Possibly he did, because there is no equivalent expression in Japanese and Shuson would have borrowed it from English. The Japanese unit of length shaku (30.3 centimeters) is more or less the same as a foot (30.48 centimeters).

He does not say whose death it is but one would assume it is his own. However, the key word is "frosted." Apart from its frozen state, frost is often used to connote extreme hardship. Other mortals may have been dreaming of going to heaven or dying among spring flowers. Famous medieval waka poet Saigyo (1118-90) wished to die under the full moon and the cherry in bloom. Not Shuson. He had experienced too many hardships to indulge himself in such wishful thinking.

tsukarene no/tsuma no te ugoku/fuyudatami

tatami mat in winter...
wife's fingers twitch,
taking a nap exhausted

Shuson's haiku poems about his wife reveal a mild undertone of affection for her, especially this haiku depicting her off guard. Nowadays, the richer Japanese have their separate Western-style bedrooms in the house but in those days that was a luxury only affordable to the very rich.

As all the futon bedding would be folded up and put away during the daytime, anyone needing a nap had to be content with just lying down on any available tatami matting in the full view of others. In summer many Japanese did so as a form of siesta. Shuson's wife must have been really tired to have to take a nap during winter.

* * *
Readers are encouraged to submit English haiku for this column via dy-edu@yomiuri.com. The next column will run on Feb. 22.

Takiguchi is chairman of the World Haiku Club, a worldwide haiku network (www.worldhaikuclub.org). A Japanese artist, poet and essayist, Takiguchi has lived in England since 1971.

(Jan. 25, 2007)

WHC NEWS: World Haiku Review's Virtual Resurrection

WHC NEWS

Re: World Haiku Review's Virtual Resurrection

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From: Susumu Takiguchi
18 January 2007

Dear Kuyu,

Re: World Haiku Review's Virtual Resurrection: http://www.worldhaikureview.org

The World Haiku Club is pleased to announce that its comprehensive world-wide online magazine, World Haiku Review (WHR), has been resurrected virtually, both in a literal and cyberspace senses.

In the absence of a webmaster to succeed WHR's former Editor-in-Chief and Webmaster, Debi Bender (now Deputy-Chairman of WHC), the magazine's position has been threatened. As a person ultimately responsible for WHC's activities, I felt towards the New Year's Eve that I needed to make a hard decision about the future of WHR and let everybody know. The bet was very much heavily on its closure, even though, after all is said and done, the only problem was the mere lack of a webmaster! That is the element which could have made this an unnecessary tragedy.

The Oriental Express would not run without an engine driver. The Titanic could not have even reached the icebergs without a captain. A jumbo jet would not take off without its pilot. Where is a webmaster, or 'the' webmaster for WHR?

I am a completely, utterly and totally non-technical person and that has been a kind of time-bomb, leaving WHR vulnerable and open to danger. In an artificially technology-orientated world, the techno-idiot or techno-illiterate has no place. Were I half technically capable as the average members of WHC, there would not have been any problem at all with WHR.

Then, what I can only term as a divine intervention occurred. On the New Year's Eve I hit upon an idea of using a Yahoo! mailing list as a temporary parking place for WHR's contents until a webmaster is found. Then, out of what I confess to be an act of sheer desperation, I have been tinkering and toying with the blog system, or, more precisely, what I could make very much of the most of whatever limited tools the blog had to offer, after some of my friends' concerned but tentative advice. It was like flying an airplane without knowing how to fly, getting married without knowing how to make love or preparing Japanese sashimi without the skills of how to slice slippery fish! However, the blog system is such that I do not need any technical skills or experience. I could do a lot of things without having any technical know-how. Vive la Google!

Please click on the URL I gave you above (well, I can repeat here: http://www.worldhaikureview.org ) to see what sort of sashimi, or love-making is waiting for you to savour. I have also managed to have the same cover page design and illustration which Debi Bender has had worked so hard to establish. This one is not a temporary or stop-gap vehicle of WHR but IS WHR itself.

I will put much less materials in an issue and hope to publish WHR more frequently with slimmer contents. Time permitting, I will envisage the next issue around April 2007. I will just publish when enough materials are available. When materials come later or too much to put in one issue they will be considered for the following issue. Call for submission will be on a on-going basis. I will announce the details in the near future.

One of the reasons why I decided to carry on with WHR was to pay respect to what enormous achievements Debi Bender made and the lack of a webmaster would be a poor and laughable excuse for discontinuing the magazine which she had worked so hard to establish. Thanks, once again, be to Google!

However, the appeal to a would-be webmaster to come forward and create future issues will continue. Also, I cannot emphasise the importance enough of technically-endowed people to discuss and come to viable solutions of how to publish WHR.

Until the webmaster is found, I will doggedly continue to produce WHR without any technical knowledge, skills or experience. All you get will be within my very limited technical capability. Because all along what matters is the contents and not the format on which the magazine is published.

So, please help me to find a suitable webmaster who will be ready, able and willing to take up this exciting and challenging post.

Enjoy!

Susumu Takiguchi

**************************************************************************
Susumu Takiguchi (Mr)
Chairman
The World Haiku Club (World Haiku Festival)
http://www.worldhaikuclub.org
Managing Editor & Acting Editor-in-Chief
World Haiku Review & WHCworldhaikureview
http://www.worldhaikureview.org
susumu.takiguchi@btinternet.com (ST e-mail address)
http://www.floatingstone.net (ST Arts & Poetry Site)
http://www.alc.co.jp/com/eigohaiku/index.html (English Haiku Class)
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/ (Go-Shichi-Go Column with the Daily Yomiuri)
Postal Address: WHC HQ, Leys Farm, Rousham, Bicester, Oxfordshire, OX25 4RA, England
************************************************

WHC NEWS: Charnwood Arts miniWORDS haiku competition

WHC NEWS

Re: Charnwood Arts miniWORDS haiku competition

From: Paul Conneally

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Dear Haiku Friends,

The World Haiku Club has a long association with Uk's Charnwood Arts and
with its miniWords HAIKU competition.

Once again we would like to join with Charnwood Arts in encouraging you to
submit your highest quality haiku to Charnwood Arts miniWORDS haiku
competition.

The last miniWORDS haiku competition was judged by Susumu Takiguchi and Debi
Bender who both travelled to Loughborough in Charnwood Uk to do the judging
in person.

Here is a link to an interview with Debi and Susumu done during their visit
to Charnwood Arts - in fact during the very process of judging:

http://odeo.com/audio/1861222/view

This year the judges will hopefully include WHC officials again and this
will be announced after the deadline for submissions has passed.

Any form from traditional to contemporary western forms including the
'zip'are acceptable

There is £250 first prize winner making this one of the biggest of all
haiku competitition prizes and it is totally free to enter. Second and third
place, commended and highly commended places will also be awarded (although
there are no prizes for these). .

The closing date for this competition is 16th February 2007.

This competition is open to entrants worldwide aged 14 years and over. All
winning and commended entries will be included on the miniWORDS 2007 website
to make the work available to an international audience.

We hope to publish in collaboration with Charnwood Arts some of the entries
in the WHR too.

Entries as many as you like can be emailed to the below with your full
contact details or posted by overland or airmail.

Put 'miniwords haiku submission' in the subject line

miniwords2007@charnwood-arts.org.uk

miniWORDS 2007
Charnwood Arts
31, Granby Street
Loughborough
Leicestershire
LE11 3DU
United Kingdom

Please share this invite as widely as possible

all that's best,

Paul Conneally
Education and Regional Director
World Haiku Club

WORLD HAIKU NEWS: The latest issue of Haiku Ireland newsletter out now

Mon Jan 8

WORLD HAIKU NEWS

Re: The latest issue of Haiku Ireland newsletter out now

From: Gilles Fabre

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The latest issue of our newsletter is out now.

Do not hesitate to send us any haiku and/or information relating to haiku by next 15 March, 2007 for the next issue to be published (app.) early April 2007.

Previous newsletter may be downloaded via our web site at www.haikuireland.org

In haiku spirits

Gilles Fabre
www.haikuspirit.org