Review Articles
Bumping Along: Frank Williams
Bumping Along: Frank Williams, Hub Haiku Series £4.60 (including postage). Available from the author at 79 Westbury Road, Barking, Essex IG11 7PL. All proceeds to the National Kidney Research Fund.
Titles of haiku books don’t usually grab me, but this one did. Bumping Along suggests a laconic sense of humour, an acceptance of the humdrum in life and a talent for celebrating the small pleasures which rescue every day from monotony. And the dedication: For Constance, the Aunt I never knew - that attracted me too; here was someone who could take time to wonder about a relative who just might have made a difference to his life, someone who makes absence sound interesting. Before reading any of the haiku, I was on Frank Williams’ side.
moving in day … cool spring rain …
two crows sweep across the road at the rainbow’s end
and land on the lawn the local bar
Here the word ‘local’ brings us right into the picture, indeed in both haiku we are drawn into a personal world with which we can identify; the role of the crows in the moving in process is achieved with a lightness of touch and without any clumsy anthropomorphism.
apologising / as she brushes my arm / with flowers is as finely tuned a haiku as you’re ever likely to come across. In 14 syllables the writer manages to convey a whole range of contradictory emotions. Paying tribute to such moments is something Frank Williams does without ever dramatising the situation; noticing every nuance and shift in emphasis, the potential in every unremarkable event, he never over-eggs the pudding. Some haiku are not so successful; either the language is lazy, or the composition lacks a necessary ingredient - whatever, in one or two, the images don’t strike fire. For instance, in a blue sky / a faint first quarter moon / and the setting sun. This scene no doubt moved the writer, but it doesn’t move us because the words do nothing more than record the event; no interesting connections are made or feelings conveyed. For the same reason, neither does fit of sneezing / a fly lands fleetingly / on the back of my hand. The short haibun at the end also fails to ignite.
Narrative haiku are usually less interesting than well-juxtaposed images, but this is one of the most moving in the book: Sunday sadness / today I can’t see / the wallpaper’s faces. The poet deals with emotion extraordinarily well; it takes courage, perhaps even a kind of innocence, to be that honest and not to hedge the sentiment round with let-out clauses; I think it is this quality - a lack of sophistication - that makes me respond so warmly to the book; there is a quiet integrity about the writing that grows on one. And the occasional flashes of brilliance:-
wanting quiet
in the church a trapped pigeon
flies round and round
Page(s) 59-60
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