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Nailing Down the Dream
Packing Note – Contents
This package contains the Haiku Dreaming Australia:
i background,
ii project scope, and
iii its relationship to kigo.
[That's the way to nail down a dream!]
The Itch
Most Australian haiku poets delight in world haiku-fellowship and seek to make
their mark on the international haiku stage. This engagement is as
it should be, but an unintended consequence of writing to satisfy overseas
editors and judges is, to my ear, some loss of Australian identity.
Often, I suspect, Australian themes are consciously avoided and as a result
Australian haiku is the poorer, less fun to write, and less relevant
to Australian readers than it could be. At the risk of overstating
my case I confess that occasionally words like, 'foreign' and 'homogenised'
come to my mind when reading haiku made by fellow Australians.
If our haiku relate to nature surely the
nature they address should be that where we live, that which we
know and routinely interact with, and not that of a foreign country or
some virtual haikuland. And I would expect any humans
in our haiku to reflect the real people with whom we live, work and love,
and not a prototype international editor or some abstraction of worldperson.
[Haikuland n. tacitly agreed homeland for haiku;
a construct of old poems;
six years acclimatisation; most poets unaware they are
in it.]
I'm sure we can take our place in world haiku while staying
grounded in our real world. We just need to be fair dinkum.
Dreaming and Kigo
A related issue for non-Japanese haiku poets is the phenomenon of kigo.
Confronted with seemingly irrelevant kigo of Japan, a common
reaction of Australian haiku poets is to forgo all kigo or to hope it will
just go away. Others rely on their poem's content to convey seasonality,
but often that's clear to the author only. Still others redefine kigo
so loosely that it no longer designates a season and it doesn't appear in
any reputable saijiki. Some, in their loyalty to kigo, immerse themselves
in northern hemisphere cultures to the extent they mainly write about a world
they don't live in.
Much talent and energy is being invested in changing kigo –
stripping them back to season-indicators only; setting up world kigo databases,
regional and national kigo lists, absorbing them into keywords.
Since these movements bear directly on our Dreaming project, I have declared
my position in coming clean on kigo.
In a nutshell, I think there will never be a world, regional or national
collection of kigo (other, just possibly, than the Japanese) or of season words ,
which Australian poets routinely observe. Further, the environment in which
an alternative to kigo might arise, will not exist until we write haiku about
where we live. Which returns us to the aim of Haiku Dreaming Australia:
To encourage Australian poets to write about their real world.
Building Dream Fences
This sitemap gives an overview of current content
and possible directions it might take. (They are not objectives.)
Haiku Dreaming Australia will be a permanent site that displays quality haiku
on Australian themes. It will provide explanatory notes and images so that everybody
can appreciate the haiku.
By 'Australian themes' I mean those about its history, landscape,
flora, fauna, culture and human affairs.
From haiku presently to hand certain 'categories of convenience'
suggest themselves: Aborigines, the outback, fauna,
flora, Anzac, sport, beach, etc. These
categories will be changed to accommodate the haiku received, and are
not meant to influence writers' choice of themes.
Haiku Dreaming is not an anthology of haiku by Australians, as was the
case with, say, the First Australian
Haiku Anthology. That is in the purview of AHS.
I hope non-Australians submit haiku; the view from outside is equally important
and may be more perceptive. In this respect please note that themes do not have
to be exclusively Australian; commonly encountered here will do.
The project is not an interpretation of Australia through haiku; it will not be
comprehensive; coverage will reflect the haiku received. It might prove difficult
to render the ethos and defining human characteristics of Australians in haiku.
Similarly, history, the past tense, may not be readily amenable. I accept such
limitations, happy to focus or what can be achieved.
Initially the site was seeded with my own haiku.
They are being progressively replaced by submitted ones. The displayed collection
is dynamic in that it will expand in scope, and improve in quality
as haiku are added or existing ones are replaced by 'better' ones on a similar theme.
I will try not to be prescriptive so there is freedom for an Australian
style to emerge, if it is in fact nascent. I will be receptive to local idiom
and experiments.
The presentation is focused on haiku, rather than their authors. I do
not intend to make the site searchable by author.
The notes and images provided are the minimum to ensure the haiku can be appreciated;
I do not seek to produce an 'Australia the Beautiful.'
The collection will change with the times as future editors reflect their world
and the then current haiku practice. Some favourite oldies will fall by the wayside.
Such changes are not to be regretted or resisted, they are essential if haiku
is to survive.
[I have sympathy for those of us who can't change as
quickly as the genre does, for whom haiku will remain substantially what
it was when we first embraced it. Many haiku poets might feel alienated
from the genre; fallout. Perhaps periodic print or web
publication of Dreaming, say every ten years, would provide some ease.]
Invitation
I invite you into The Dream where cooee pierces the dragon smoke, where
sniffing and leaping are encouraged, and it is quite impossible to fall.
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