Editorial
Editors, haiku-sifters, necessarily operate by ‘application of principles’ and, as a result of the choices they make, they become instrumental in establishing ‘a culture of shared values’ (Martin Lucas p31); they don’t operate by pernickety reference to a ‘checklist of attributes’ (p32); ‘authenticity’ (p34) transcends whatever ‘rules’ may be laid down, to capture which it may just be necessary to ‘simply gaze’ (Maurice Tasnier p60). In just gazing, we perhaps arrive at Martin’s ‘desirable qualities’ - ‘space, groundedness, honesty, transparency’ (p33) or at Brian Tasker’s clarity, openness and accessibility (p12). Accessibility for the reader is achieved by studious avoidance of ‘the impossibly private’ language of comparison.
Martin suggests that ‘the barriers between writer and reader collapse in a moment of sharing’ (p33). Brian argues that the haiku you read is a ‘seed’ in the mind, an idea which plants in my mind the parable of the sower: in relation to a particular haiku, your mind can be fertile or stony as a result of past experience, memory and the general athleticism of your brain-cell activity. Stanley Pelter points out (p21) that ‘Authors cease the moment language exists. Each and every reader changes the [writer’s] moment.’ Maybe we just have to settle comfortably on the idea that ‘the process of dialogue’ is all (Martin Lucas p34).
Principles, guidelines, desirable qualities… Just circumlocutions for ‘rules’? In general, there are at least two kinds of ‘rules’ - descriptive and prescriptive. In our context, the former might have been derived from what haiku have looked like in the past; the latter govern how you ought to write haiku in the future. It’s worth remembering that if there were no rules for cricket, for instance, there would be no game; if there were no ‘rules’ for haiku…
For some years I spent a fortnight each year marking 2000 A Level Lit essays for which there was, as a matter of policy, no standard marking scheme; like haiku now, each essay had to be judged on its own merits. To survive the ordeal, I devised a provisional set of parameters:-
During one of Annie Bachini’s workshops a few years ago it occurred to me that something like this might work for making judgements about haiku. David Platt took the idea up and produced the mind-boggling computer program he described in BS10/2. The program has the great virtue of crunching a lot of variables. His current (evolving) parameters are as follows:
If I had used this grid (which I didn’t!) to assess the ‘flight capability’ of Andrew Detheridge’s haiku at the top of p6 it would have come out thus How would Leslie Giddens’ (possibly tongue in cheek) haiku stimulated by Kate Hall’s haiku (BS 11/1 p24) fare on this basis, I wonder
Dawn sound
a silver turquoise fan opening
over Beachy Head
For me, the authenticity of Kate Hall’s haiku still outweighs all other considerations… But the alternatives have an interest all of their own. Andrew Shimield suggests yet another:-
Cracking a smile,
horizon wide-
atlantic dawn.
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