The BHS Spring Gathering 2023 took place on Zoom on Saturday, 3 June at 4pm-7pm UK time. Over 40 BHS members from different countries joined in. The event had two parts with a short tea/coffee break between them.

Part 1:
Articulation of the Single Line Haiku – A haiku zoom workshop by Alan Summers

This 90 minutes haiku workshop was all about the magic of the single line. It’s what we look for in that line as poets, and also as readers. As Alan said: “A haiku need not be too plainly descriptive, wildly logical, or constrained by Earth’s gravity”.

Workshop details:
On the day participants shared one previously unpublished one-line haiku into the Zoom Chat feature. Alan’s friendly approach enabled even poets who weren’t sure they can write single line haiku at all, to take part and attempt at least one single line haiku. And although the workshop had a very tight schedule, it was very positive and inclusive. In preparation for the workshop the poets were able to refer to Alan’s article on one-line haiku published in Blithe Spirit 33.1.

Part 2
Ekphrastic haiku inspired by music

The second part of the Spring Gathering was a sharing session of ekphrastic haiku. Roger Noons had prepared the following prompts of performers, musical instruments and composers (clockwise from top left):

Portrait of Georges Bizet; Opera North, an aria from Die Walküre by Richard Wagner; Scene from The Nutcracker, a ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky; Miles Davis playing “So What” from his album Kind of Blue (1959); Music score for Flute and Piano; British rapper Slowthai; Unusual musical instrument – Factory Fan Bass; harpist Madeline Kirby; Nyckelharpa (key harp) – a traditional musical instrument from Sweden; Fingering for C chord on guitar.

Participating poets have prepared at least one haiku inspired by the prompts which were shared on the day using the Chat feature.

Write-up: Iliyana Stoyanova

Images, Haiku and the Spirit workshop – 5 February 2023

The Images, Haiku and the Spirit Zoom workshop presented a slideshow of nature photographs as sources of inspiration and/or jumping off points for haiku writing and sharing. The session opened with 28 people and a participatory sacred song and dance called, “Tis a Gift to be Simple.” The song arose out of the Shaker tradition, which like haiku, values the depth offered by simplicity. The corresponding dance was choreographed by the Sufis as an in~person, sacred circle dance and was adapted to Zoom so as to be offered individually in place or from sitting. The intention was for the sacred singing and dancing to invigorate the wisdom and exhilaration of the spirit. I was delighted that the animation and joy of the dancing came through even on the screen. This was followed by a contemplative slideshow of photographs from Mother Nature and stirring haiku responses. The session closed with the Sufi dance to the song by Joseph and Nathan from the Jewish tradition, “From you I receive, to you I give.” The gratitude for each other’s company on the haiku journey was palpable. 

As William J. Higginson wrote, “The primary purpose of reading and writing haiku is sharing moments of our lives that have moved us, pieces of experience and perception that we offer or receive as gifts.” If I were to choose one word to describe the essence of the day, it would be the word gift, the gift of offering and receiving haiku. “Tis a Gift to be Simple” served as a prelude to this experience by awakening the ancient knowing of the body, ‘to bow and to bend, we shan’t be ashamed, to turn and turn it will be our delight, till by turning and turning we come round right.’ As haiku poets we bow and bend to shed everything but the heartbeat of the moment, turning the words over and over until they come round right. “Tis a Gift to be Simple” was haiku in movement.

From singing and dancing, we moved to contemplating images from nature in a slideshow of my husband Akiba’s photographs. The pictures were gone through twice, first in a meditative way and then in reverse order naming the subjects for identification purposes. The workshop invited requests to spend more time with the images people were most drawn to for a deeper exploration and to discover connections. It was here that the session took on a life of its own with participants contributing, often multiple haiku via Chat. Each person read one haiku twice and the community was asked to respond to what touched, struck, or surprised them. Seeing the gift in each haiku generated exciting, meaningful, humorous, and far~reaching conversations such as the protests for women’s rights in Iran and diverse haiku responses to the same image i.e., to some the snowy egret suggested a bride and to others Marilyn Monroe.

We closed with these words and gestures:

“From you I receive,
To you I give,
Together we share,
From this we live.”

Each haiku was a source of soul~nourishment and has inspired me to look at these familiar images in fresh ways. One haiku response is shared below to each of the six most requested photographs. The article concludes with the Bluebird image as a representative of one of nature’s many teachers. Every haiku, haiku poet and those who were present were gifts for which I’m truly grateful. Heartfelt thanks to Iliyana Stoyanova and Andrew Shimield for their guidance, support and making this event possible.  

pure as a bride
the egret
takes off
   — Andrew Shimield

cool closeness
scruffy teenager
smoking sage grass
   — Ian Paternoster

hawk glides home
peace for its prey
   — Derek Hopkins

radiating seeds
the sunflower’s future
tightly packed
   — Erica Ison

amid stillness
the steady eye
of the roe deer
   — Karen Harvey

morning light
is that a blue Buddha
perched on a branch
   — Iliyana Stoyanova

Write-up by Maryam Mermey 

On 7 December 2022 BHS members Claire Chatelet, Isabel Del Rio and Iliyana Stoyanova attended the fifth edition of the Naviar Haiku Fest, an evening of music and poetry reading at Café Oto in London. The event featured performances by members and friends of Naviar, working in the fields of ambient, electronic, and contemporary classical music. Each set was introduced by a haiku written by poets of The British Haiku Society.

Iliyana Stoyanova gave a short introduction to haiku – history of the genre, composition, differences between haiku written in Japanese and Western languages, etc.; its main principles, and some important haiku techniques. Beforehand Iliyana and the organiser Marco Alessi have made a selection of haiku which were then paired with all the musical pieces performed on the night:

– Daniel Green – an artist, museum professional and high-impact arts educator with a deep passion for art and technology education

                           through the fields the dogs the humans the sky as birdsong
                           — Alan Summers, UK (BHS members’ anthology “Temple“, 2021)

– encym & George Crowley – Encym explores un-guitaristic territory by layering, collaging and shaping improvised loops; George Crowley is a saxophonist, clarinettist, composer and promoter

                                        standing stones –
                                        I breathe in
                                        the silence
               –Nick T, UK (BHS members’ anthology “Temple“, 2021)

– Leon Clowes – a transdisciplinary artist who uses autoethnography, self-compassion and Brechtian techniques

                                                      where silence becomes song a forest
                                          — Debbi Antebi, UK/Turkey (IHC anthology 2019)

– Audio Obscura – Since 2014 Neil Stringfellow has released music as Audio Obscura, covering a variety of musical themes that touch on ambient, electronics and more experimental soundscapes

                                  life out of balance
                                  the lullaby of lost languages
                                  in desert winds
                   — Iliyana Stoyanova, UK/Bulgaria (BHS Members’ Anthology “Planet Earth”, 2020)

– Simon McCorry – a cellist, composer & sound designer in theatre, film & contemporary dance for over 15 years

                                  last notes
                                  of the cricket’s song
                                  August dawn
                   — Iliyana Stoyanova, UK/Bulgaria (Blithe Spirit 32.4)

– Manja Ristić – Croatia based violinist, sound artist, published poet, curator and researcher

                                    vigil prayers
                                    a hummingbird disappears
                                    in the sunlight

                                    veglia di preghiere
                                    un colibrì scompare
                                    nella luce del sole
                  — Eufemia Griffo, Italy (BHS members’ anthology “Temple“, 2021)

The BHS is grateful to Marco Alessi (Naviar Records) for the invitation to take part in such an incredible event and the opportunity to promote haiku to a wider audience – both on the night and via social media.

Write-up Iliyana Stoyanova

The BHS AGM and Winter Gathering took place on Saturday the 26th November 2022 via Zoom.
Participants who wanted to perform at the event were asked to provide David Bingham with up to 3 haiku or 3 tanka or a short haibun (maximum length 60 words).

Although the live event was cancelled due to the unexpected train strike, the BHS Committee ensured that as much as possible of the planned event took place with the following programme:

• Haiku Surprise — performed by David Bingham;
• BHS AGM — 47 peoples attended; the combined Officer’s reports were distributed by e-mail to the BHS members beforehand and the results of the Elections for the BHS Committee 2022-2024 were officially announced;
• Break;
• Twisting Point: A PowerPoint presentation and workshop by Jasmin Kirkbride based on her research topic ‘Twisting Point’, which explored how haiku writing, over several decades, has been influenced by climate change;
• Break;
• Members performed their own haiku, tanka or haibun.

Here is a small selection of the poems shared at the meeting:

end of summer ellipsis
shaping the yew hedge
into clouds
      (Sue Richards)

the dinosaur room
my charge’s tiny hand
slips into mine
      (Phillip Murrell)

hospice waiting room—
the music takes me
where words cannot
      (Michael Dylan Welch)

riverbank picnic
a view of the mountain tops
sat among buttercups
      (Alan Peat)

Perfection

Just days old, the four babies lie crossways in a single cot. Four round faces; mouths gasping, their unfocused eyes swimming with wonder.
A blanket has been clipped above the cot to protect them from flying glass should the windows blow in.

Spring sunlight –
so perfectly formed
eight tiny hands
      (Sean O’Connor)

Jasmin Kirkbride essay “Twisting point: the evolution of haiku in the climate crisis” was published on the BHS website in January 2023.

Write-up by the BHS Committee

The BHS Spring Gathering took place on 14th May 2022 by Zoom. It was a well-attended event with 30 plus members from both the UK and abroad.

David Bingham led the first session which was a sharing of ‘mini-haibun’ that had been sent in by BHS members before the event. The less than 80-word haibun which were discussed displayed a wide variety of form and content. They were written both by writers familiar with the genre and those for whom this was their first experience of writing haibun.

For the second part Iliyana Stoyanova led an ekphrastic haiku workshop. The participants had the opportunity to write two haiku based on the works of Ukrainian artists:
– a religious painting called “Icon of Archangel Gabriel” by Ivan Rutkovych/Іван Руткович (c.1650 – c.1708) – a Ukrainian icon painter, founder of Zhovkva (Жовква) Iconographic School of painting and wood carving;
– a piano piece called “Song without words”, Op.10/1 by Mykola Lysenko/Мико́ла Ли́сенко (1842 – 1912) – a Ukrainian composer, pianist, conductor and ethnomusicologist.

The resulting haiku were then shared and discussed.
Examples of the haibun and haiku were distributed with BHS newsletter ‘the brief #132’

Write-up by David Bingham and Iliyana Stoyanova