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

The idea for this paper began to germinate in my mind about two years ago and since that time I have become increasingly exercised by the question of the future, not only of haiku, but also of haiku societies and in particular our own British Haiku Society. I eventually got down to the writing of it this spring, when the title of the HNA 2001 Conference, Haiku and Beyond caught my attention: no doubt the future of haiku has always been a relevant topic, but for many reasons, it now seems so more than ever.

   Where are we going from here? Does haiku have a future, a ‘beyond’? There is little doubt in my mind that it has. Bashō’s frog pond haiku is arguably the most famous poem in the world, and a form that has lasted for 400 years, is as widely practised in as many countries as haiku is today, and is argued about as passionately, is not likely suddenly to die out. However, the future of the BHS, or of any other haiku society for that matter, depending as we all do on multiple factors, is not so assured and certainly can’t be taken for granted. Haiku and haiku societies, which came into being to promote haiku, inevitably have a bearing on one another, and their inter-relatedness is something I would like to touch on.

   I think most would agree that haiku in the West has in the last couple of years reached a watershed. What ten years ago was a poem of minority interest has suddenly become overwhelmingly popular. Haiku is fashionable - referred to in national newspapers, TV sitcoms, even cartoons. The proliferation of haiku websites tells its own story and a competition in The Times last summer attracted over 7000 entries. Although the competition was organised in conjunction with the BHS and details of the organisation were given, very few, if any, of the 7000 who entered were BHS members or, it seems, felt moved to join as a result; the response to this competition was perhaps the first real indication that there are many people writing haiku who do not relate to, probably are not even aware of, the organisation. Ten years ago the BHS was almost synonymous with haiku in Britain; those who became interested in the practice of this form had often got to hear about it through the BHS and stayed on to become members. Today it would seem that many who write haiku now don’t care about its origins and traditions and much of what is being produced is trite and commonplace - rather, in fact, as haikai was before Bashō and his disciples got hold of it and demonstrated its potential. A glance at some of the websites does not lift the spirit; on-line many seem to see haiku as a kind of game rather than an art form and the jargon used to attract potential haiku enthusiasts would send off most serious writers. For the initiated, good web sites are not hard to find, but for newcomers to the scene their first experience of ‘haiku’ is likely to be Honk if you Haiku, Presidential Haiku, Dog Haiku, Teen Crush Haiku, Bad Haiku, Gangsta haiku ...

   Haiku most certainly has a future, but it may not be the kind of future that we who care about it can feel altogether happy with. There is a danger in what seems to be the present trend of haiku out there with few guidelines and little or no editorial control, and for this reason I believe that the issue of where things go from here matters a great deal. They could go in one of several possible directions and I would like to look at the three likeliest of these, suggest which I feel would most properly ensure the healthy development of haiku, and what part haiku societies might play in this development.

   One route down which haiku might go, or continue to go, is the one I have already mentioned - a kind of dumbing-down, its practice uninformed by knowledge of, or interest in, its history. A second possibility is that haiku’s increasing popularity can be harnessed to a recognition that it is an art form - that it takes a lifetime of work and experience to become good at writing it, and that membership of a haiku society probably offers the best apprenticeship. The third possibility is that haiku gradually find its way into our own literary tradition, accepted as valid poetic expression, written by serious poets and protected by the integrity of the best journals whose editors care about poetry and strive to publish only what is good.

   If the first happens - a kind of unchecked free-for-all - haiku will soon lose what credibility it has outside the haiku movement. If it goes down the second route and accepts the authority of a recognised body such as a haiku society, the high standards thus maintained will guarantee that it is taken seriously by both writers and readers. To those of us interested in haiku this would seem to be the most satisfactory development. However, as I say, there is little evidence that things are moving in this direction; while there has been some increase in the BHS membership this year, I doubt if it reflects the rash of enthusiasm for haiku in the community at large. Last year as well as The Times competition, quite a bit of media publicity attended Susumu Takiguchi’s Global Haiku 2000 Conference in London and Oxford and also Stephen Gill’s lively and well-researched Radio 3 programme, but in neither case was there any significant expansion of the BHS. This autumn there have been two well-advertised national haiku competitions, one associated with the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, but as far as I know, there was no suggestion that we as an organisation should be referred to, or involved in the judging of it.

   It seems that the horse of haiku has escaped not only from what most people would regard as the safe stable of the Japanese culture that created it, but also from the relatively safe stable of an organisation that came into being in order to point those who are serious about haiku in the right direction. I do not know if this is the case with the HSA or haiku societies in other countries, but in Great Britain, if anything, it seems that rather than increasing our links with those we would like to influence, we are actually losing touch with them. Therefore, I believe that a third possibility is the best chance for the future of haiku - down the road that pushes it in the direction of the mainstream, doing all we can to persuade those involved with the wider world of poetry to acknowledge that the time has come for haiku to take its place in our own poetic tradition. Apart from the principle involved, if the best haiku is to circulate further than our own small haiku society readership, we need more commercial publishing and marketing outlets and only recognition by the poetry establishment will give us this.

   Makota Ueda says in his introduction to Global Haiku: ‘English poetry en-riched itself by assimilating the Italian sonetto. There would not have been the sonnets of Shakespeare or Milton or Wordsworth... if the 14 line form had not become part of the English literary tradition... Some 400 years later English poetry is in the process of assimilating the Japanese haiku... [but] the assimilation of the 17 syllable form has been more problematic, because there lies a greater linguistic and cultural distance between Japanese and English verse.’ Problematic, yes, but not impossible. I don’t know by what stages the Italian sonnet was assimilated into our literary tradition but it would be sad indeed if it needed a society to give it credibility. It is interesting that while some Western writers of haiku have doubts about the validity of haiku as a poetic form, the Japanese don’t seem to. Kevin Bailey writes in the latest issue of HQ Poetry Magazine: ‘When Prof Atsuo Nakagawa, the Editor of Poetry Nippon, came to visit me in 1988... he made very clear his view that haiku should not be segregated from mainstream poetry, but should be an influential part of it ...’ The popularity of haiku in the West proves that we are now ready to assimilate it into our own tradition and it is up to us, as members of haiku societies, to be in the vanguard of this transition by doing all we can, by whatever means, to see that the best haiku reaches the poetry-reading public. Ueda ends his Introduction: ‘Will there ever be a great English haiku poet who might be compared to a great English sonneteer such as Shakespeare or Spenser?’ Surely the answer must be ‘yes’, but in order that he/she can emerge, the haiku stage must be large enough to give platform, not only to our own established haiku poets, but also to those in the mainstream who (like Nigel Jenkins) will bring their own vision to it. We must be prepared to approach poetry festivals with ideas for haiku events, maybe start a column in a local newspaper, join writers’ groups, take workshops, enter into dialogue with mainstream editors.

   But before we can go any further, there is another question that must be asked - and answered - and that is: do haiku societies want to move closer to the mainstream poetry establishment or are they perfectly content as they are? I touched on this topic in my final Blithe Spirit editorial (10/4), suggesting that the best proof of the success of the BHS would be that it put itself out of a job - the implication being that haiku would have asserted itself and moved beyond any organisation into a full acceptance of it as one form among other poetic forms. I had little reaction to this, but what I did have was positive. However, I know that there are some members of the BHS for whom the mere suggestion of any dialogue with the mainstream establishment is sacrilege - a kind of betrayal of the ‘purity’ of haiku. There are also those, who understandably enough, feel that it is pointless to try and engage with the mainstream movement so apparently dismissive of haiku. David Cobb was right to point out in his National Haiku and Global Haiku paper in Chicago last year, that the history of our relationship with the poetry establishment has not exactly encouraged optimism, yet I sometimes wonder if their legendary unfriendliness hasn’t been slightly exaggerated. Susumu Takiguchi seemed to have no difficulty renting rooms at 22, Betterton St. for his haiku workshops last year and Pearl Elizabeth Dell, another BHS member, has also hosted events there. Haiku is not without its supporters among established poets in Britain. Nigel Jenkins and Peter Finch both write haiku and have done a lot to raise its profile in Wales; and some presses do publish collections of haiku, Planet being the latest convert in this respect - the result of an exchange with Blithe Spirit.

   Part of the problem has been the fact that haiku comes from a culture that still seems alien to many in the western tradition. Alan Ross, recent editor of the London Magazine, remained until his death, convinced that haiku is so quintessentially Japanese that no Westerner should have the temerity to attempt it. Well, the Beat Poets did and we are grateful to them for doing so; nevertheless, theirs was a movement peculiar to its time that flourished and died, leaving haiku still outside the Western mainstream in America. Likewise, haiku’s association with Zen has led many in the poetry establishment to see it more as a spiritual exercise than a poetic form. Henderson’s famous saying ‘Haiku is more akin to silence than to words’ has encouraged the belief that there is something mysterious, even esoteric, about haiku - that it isn’t for ordinary mortals, but only for those more rarefied souls.

   Something common to most societies, not just haiku ones, is a resistance, sometimes unconscious, to outside influences. A society is by nature a closed circle and the temptation is for members to look inward rather than outward. In order to reinforce our own sense of identity, we tend to develop a kind of siege mentality; it’s important to be vigilant and work against becoming isolationist and self-sealing, otherwise haiku will be the loser, leading to a situation where haiku societies sit contemplating their navels while the rest of the world rolls on by. Before we can influence anyone outside the haiku movement we must be prepared to listen and this means reading mainstream poetry magazines, their editorials, letter columns etc - getting ourselves acquainted with what is going on out there. A move to forge links with the poetry establishment should be against the background of having some idea of where it is at, seeking to share insights about haiku, rather than telling them where we think they are getting it wrong. This is not an unrealistic goal: Gabriel Rosenstock, the Irish poet and translator, successfully has a foot in both the haiku and mainstream camps; in New Zealand (although Cyril Childs tells me the situation has never been quite as cosy as it appears from the outside ), the gulf between haiku and mainstream is not nearly as large as it is in the UK. Maybe we need a Richard Wright among our ranks a universally acclaimed writer, at home in all forms of literature, to help bridge the gap; his collection Haiku - This Other World must have sold the concept of haiku to hundreds of people who had probably never heard of it before. Chance connections can play their part too: in the ’eighties one of the committee members of the New Zealand Poetry Society, David Drummond, discovered haiku on a trip to Japan and on his return encouraged interest in it from within the New Zealand poetry establishment; as a result of his commitment, haiku activity within their Poetry Society continues to this day.

   We need contact with mainstream writers if the writing of haiku is not to become a kind of cult activity, practised in isolation from other forms of poetry and regarded as esoteric and somewhat eccentric by the majority of other poets. A poet who writes longer poems but whose main interest is haiku wrote to me recently: ‘I think we’re in danger of putting the mainstream off when we appear to be more interested in the peculiarities of form than in the content.’ Jim Kacian, in the Introduction to his recent Frogpond International questions some of our assumptions: ‘If haiku is poetry, then why do mainstream poets not consider us poets? It is too self-serving to dismiss them as not knowing better - some of these poets have made serious study of haiku and have arrived at a place different from our mainstream...’

   Many editors as well as mainstream poets genuinely feel that haiku is the poor relation of poetry and only for people who can’t write the real thing. We have to convince them otherwise. It is too easy and self-serving to assume that whenever our haiku, haibun, haiku sequences, or whatever, are rejected by mainstream journals, the fault lies in their editorial policy rather than in our work. Maybe some of our submissions just aren’t good enough to compete with all the talent there is out there. Martin Lucas suggests in his Spooks, Spectres and the Haiku Spirit (BS 11/3) that there is ‘a drift towards homogeneity’ in the haiku movement and points out that though the third edition of the Haiku Anthology maintains the level of quality of the second edition it is ‘noticeably less adventurous’. Is this not because haiku societies are too incestuous, relating only to each other, thus leading to unconscious imitation? I think it is. We need to open ourselves more to outside influence, to read good poetry, not only haiku; we need the stimulus of contact not only with other poets, but artists too (Miro’s late ‘minimalist’ drawings are an inspiration to anyone who responds to brevity, be it in words or with a brush) - there has always been cross-fertilisation in the arts and it has enriched all forms. What matters is whether a poem works, however it works; perhaps editors are rejecting our haiku because while they might be competent enough, too few of them have wings.

   How many of us try our haiku on mainstream editors? If we feel we have written something that has quality, would it not be worthwhile submitting to a poetry journal, before taking the relatively easy option of sending it to one of our own in-house haiku magazines? By doing so, we open ourselves to the possibility (even likelihood) of rejection and will lose that pleasantly reassuring sense of identity - something that all we writers enjoy each time we see our names in print; it is much more comfortable being a large fish in a small pool than a small fish in a large pool, but it is also self-limiting. By submitting our work to mainstream journals we will not only stretch ourselves, but raise the level of awareness of haiku, proving to editors that there is a public who takes it as seriously as other forms of poetry. For sure, editors of poetry magazines will often have different ideas from us about what constitutes a good haiku, will reject ours and print some that we (perhaps rightly) think are not so good, but such jostling for position is par for the course with all the arts which have always been competitive. It’s a natural and healthy process of their evolution which so far, with a few notable exceptions, has not proved such a bad way of sorting out the good from the mediocre; we have to prove our point to editors by exciting them with our work.

   Over the past 12 years the BHS has done an invaluable job in promoting haiku, in increasing people's awareness of it and the culture from which it came. But I believe the time has come for us to see ourselves now as part of the wider poetry movement rather than separate from it, to pay more attention to the contemporary poetry scene and somewhat less to the internal affairs of the society and to trust that the essential nature of haiku will be recognised and respected by poets who also enjoy writing other forms of poetry. There have always been good and less good poets and there always will be; Bashō acknowledged as much when he said: ‘those who are good at combining or bringing together two topics are superior poets’. This statement proves that he did see haiku as a form of poetry, and the question I would like to leave you with now is not, ‘Why should we bother with the poetry establishment?’ but ‘Why shouldn’t we? ‘