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

The New Haiku, edited by John Barlow and Martin Lucas, 2002 Snapshot Press, 224 pages, perfect bound with full colour cover obtainable from P.O. Box 132, Crosby, Liverpool L23 BXS £11.50 ppd (UK), £14/US$20 ppd (Overseas) Cheques payable to Snapshot Press

The New Haiku is an anthology that draws its contents from haiku and senryu published in the British magazines, Blithe Spirit, Presence and Snapshots in Britain and the Irish journal Haiku Spirit during 1998 and 1999. It contains 318 haiku/senryu by100 poets from the 3000 or so poems considered. But given that there are more than thirty English-language haiku journals publishing on paper and countless haiku internet groups, its remit is relatively small. One quibble that I have with the editors is the actual purpose of the anthology. Somehow, and given its small remit, I think it would have been more useful for the editors to have confined their choices to poems by British and Irish writers rather than include material written by North Americans as well. This would have offered more of an insight into what John Barlow describes as ‘the phenomenon of English haiku from a British-Irish perspective’ and would have given the book a very clear purpose. It would then, as he says, ‘in some aspects, pick up where The Iron Book of British Haiku left off, taking into account the considerable changes that have occurred in English-language haiku...’ Does he mean British haiku or British-Irish haiku or the broad category of English-language haiku? This is another quibble: the skipping between the terms of English haiku and English-language haiku etc instead of being clear.

     Both editors provide introductory essays. Whilst Martin Lucas sketches a useful outline of the development of haiku and makes some good points, John Barlow gets diverted into the linguistic differences between the English and Japanese languages by drawing heavily on the work of Richard Gilbert. Surely, it is enough to know that the word ‘haiku’ has the equivalent of three syllables in Japanese and two in English in order to understand the language differences and the effect that has on writing haiku. The problems of writing haiku are much, much deeper than linguistic. In any case, the matter of haiku as a seventeen syllable poem or otherwise has been resolved as the many examples in this book show. Haiku writers have come more to fit their poem into the necessary words rather than into a fixed-form. Nevertheless, Barlow’s essay expands on many of the points that Lucas touches on, and provides information that would be useful for beginners to know. A comprehensive resource/further reading is also provided at the back of the book.

     So how has haiku in Britain changed since the publication of the Iron Book in 1998, which drew on poems, published from around 1990 onwards? Had the editors decided to choose only strong material, then The New Haiku would have provided an overview, and a further point of departure, especially for newcomers. By including weaker poems, the opportunity has been somewhat undermined to promote haiku to an audience who either do not know much about it or who dismiss it as trivial in any case. A generous and encouraging policy of inclusivity is appropriate for magazines but not for the more permanent status of an antho-logy which should act as a showcase.

     By weaker poems, I mean there is little sustainable value in examples like leaving the shop / finding outside / ‘CLOSED’ by Gregg Billingsley, Wayne Henderson’s trick or treat -  / devil and pumpkin / giggle in the street or Frank Dullaghan’s straight sentence: my ironed shirt hanging / in a white shaft of moonlight. Straight sentences rarely work as haiku because they lack true tension and they also set up haiku for criticism as being fragments of prose. Matt Morden explains away his haiku impulse in making the tea / the quiet of dawn / in a grey light as does Ken Jones with Dawn chaos of my tent / emerging triumphant / in matching socks which isn’t really a haiku impulse at all, but an anecdote. The ‘stink of Zen’ is evident in Sean Burn’s all this snow / & the fridge / still hums, Gilles Fabre’s taking the mouse / off the trap / how am I to die?, Leo Lavery’s on the piano / dusted yesterday / dust and  Ken Jones catches himself out with Ringing / silence / the clapperless wake-up bell. These are all more philosophical thoughts than haiku.

     There are some interesting contrasts in material by the same poet. Claire Bugler Hewitt goes over the top with can’t sleep tonight -  / I love the baby / too much and then hits home with the delicate spring buds / I put away the baby’s /smallest clothes although ending a line with ‘baby’s’ is a bit clumsy. Maurice Tasnier has the genuinely witty standing up / for a closer look / at the stars to contrast with the rather desperate my first visit to / the osteopath creaking / of a chair.

     Don’t get me wrong, there are many fine poems in this anthology, many of which have been anthologised for the first time, and it’s a welcome addition to any haiku library. I just feel that a more rigorous selection process would have better promoted the cause of haiku to uninitiated readers and that the rather incestuous and clubby feel that can pervade haiku would have been avoided. This is even more necessary, if, haiku is to truly be accorded ‘... its rightful place in the canon of contemporary English poetry’ as John Barlow says. If this is to happen then, as Martin Lucas says in his introduction: ‘We need a centre of gravity, which the values of immediacy and presence provide.’ Haiku needs to start somewhere and I believe that the starting point should be outside, rather than inside, the mind, if we are not to get lost in the poet’s subjectivity, but there must be an inner connection too. Lucas goes on to say that ‘We need to appreciate that there is such a thing as artistic honesty and poetic truth which goes beyond a bland report of facts. This calls for ever-deeper openness and spontaneity, rather than self-indulgence and contrivance.’ And if I may say so, an ever-watchful eye on the tendency to be complacent about what makes a haiku, a good haiku.