Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

It’s true that to get into BS you have to be a member of BHS - members get value for money from lots of additional benefits - but it by no means follows, as some mistakenly think, that publication is automatic for members. As editor-haiku-sifter, I take full responsibility for choices that others in their wisdom might not have made; mild brickbats about what appears in these pages should be directed at me rather than at the amorphous fiction called ‘democracy’.  Anybody who has been on the receiving end of what are supposed to be helpful suggestions about amendments to ‘near misses’ will confirm that I am severe, by my own lights. On the other hand, a remarkable number of members say that I have a knack for choosing their favourite haiku out of a batch - there’s a lesson there somewhere.

     Quivering in my sandals, I returned a haibun to Jo Pacsoo (p52) with a suggestion that the prose needed ‘looking at’.  The result of this exchange has produced the source of what could be an interesting discussion about the nature of haibun prose, a subject which is taken up by Jesse Peel (p67) who concludes that haibun should be written in ‘whatever English style works’.

     Notions of appropriateness and decorum are as relevant now to anything in writing as they have been for hundreds of years.  There’s just as much linguistic discipline in writing haiku as there is in writing ‘proper poetry’. Haiku is not ‘any-thing goes’ in either form, imagery or style; but, though the content is limitless, haiku is not ‘thought-out’. The specific disciplines of haiku, tanka and haibun, deriving from a particular mental set, are to be deliberately  learned and practised.

     Jo Pacsoo and Jesse Peel both refer to Ken Jones’ Haiku Criteria, which are stated usefully as practical questions rather than as dictats. In summary form, they go like this:-

• Does the haibun enlarge our imaginative sensibility?
• Does it have literary quality of some kind with writing that’s economical, direct and concrete, containing authentic imagery?
• Is there feeling in the haibun, expressed with appropriate musicality?
• Is there a worked out theme, crafted so as to show rather than tell?
• Is the haibun playful, elliptical, with space for the reader, in the haiku tradition?
• Are the haiku of good quality & do they interact successfully with the prose?
• Does the haibun contain a variety of layers?

     Colin Shaddick (p44) quotes the idea that music and poetry (and therefore haiku) go hand in hand and reference is made to the music of tanka (p64)

     Advance Notice: The March 2003 issue of the Journal will be guest-edited by Annie Bachini; the usual selection of haiku, tanka, haibun will be subject to the space which she will devote to a consideration of the concept of SURREAL HAIKU.