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The late Harold ‘Hank’ Dunlop (who died July 5th, 2005) wrote in the introduction to his book ‘Cry of the Hawk’, “In my opinion haiku is the most difficult, disciplined and complex poetry anyone can attempt to write”. Whilst writers of other forms might well disagree with this, we would sell ourselves short if we pretended that writing a really good haiku was easy. Indeed we might raise the stakes still further by considering that perhaps only one in a hundred published haiku was ‘really good’.

Given this, it is not surprising that engaging with haibun may be viewed as something even more difficult, even more beset with historical/cultural complexities and attendant guidelines. David Cobb, in his collection of haiku ‘A Bowl of Sloes’, (Snapshot Press. 2000) expresses circumspection when he writes of himself that “after devoting 20 years to freestanding haiku David Cobb feels he may be ready to extend his range into haibun”. This laudable caution may also be felt by many others, but while some may avoid embracing haibun at all, unsure what its disciplines and complexities might be, others launch off with enthusiasm to see if there is something in haibun they can make their own.

The swell of interest in haibun is certainly growing: fast in the US, more slowly in the UK, and seems to be propelled by the urge of writers to take the aesthetic of haiku one stage further. This may be partly the (western?) tendency of ‘if you find something good, make it bigger’ and partly a response to the richer possibilities of haibun over haiku.

Trying to write poetic prose with a haiku sensibility is an elusive task. At times just taking the opportunity to expand seems to deny one of the strengths of haiku so that some less successful haibun appear to have been constructed by taking a favourite haiku (or perhaps an otherwise unclear haiku) and writing a short contextualising back-story to it, thus expanding something which, in its original nature, has benefited particularly by compression and by exploiting the creative value of gaps and ambiguity.

At their best though, haibun can extend the multi-level aspect of haiku; can swell the awareness of the moment into a sense of the long immediacy of existence through time; and can extend the subliminal metaphors and correspondences in haiku into more deeply explored existential narratives.  The balance and interchange between prose and haiku can yield an infinite means for shifting tone and emotion through which unspoken understandings can be projected.

Haibun as a recognised literary activity has been around long enough for some dominant tendencies to have been established by the pioneers. All paths in haibun lead back to Basho, and its history since then and its progress world wide has been well covered. The first in the field in the English speaking world have already had their shots at defining what the desirable qualities in haibun might be, and several strong voices have emerged which inevitably steer a critical mass of haibun their way. There are also on-line workshops with friendly criticisms quite as rigorous as in any other creative writing forum.

I hope the selection of haibun in this issue of Blithe Spirit, expresses the breadth and liveliness of possible approaches to haibun and the variety of styles that the form can accommodate. Included here are both haibun that might be considered as exemplary examples of what haiku prose has come to mean, and others, less conforming, where writers have taken from the haiku/haibun aesthetic whatever they feel is useful in their own writing practice.

Good writing tends to speak for itself. For those that like to engage with theoretical aspects of writing practice we’ve found room also for Jamie Edgecombe’s essay on haibun and realism. For further information there is a haibun bibliography included after the haiku-prose pieces.