My Haiku Journey

 

Porch to Porch: A Maritime Haiku Anthology, edited by Blanca Baquero and Carole Martignacco and published by Haiku Canada and Yarrow Press, was launched on May 20, 2024 at the annual Haiku Canada Convention, held at the K.C. Irving Centre, Acadia University, Wolfville, NS.

I’m both humbled and honoured the editors of the above collection accepted three of my haiku for inclusion in this first anthology of Maritime haiku poets. I’m grateful, too, to the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) for having posted Haiku Canada’s request for submissions. Until I received my copy of this anthology, I had no idea there were other poets in the Maritimes who shared, like me, an appreciation for reading and writing haiku.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when lock-downs were taking place here and elsewhere in the world, I could no longer focus on creative writing projects, nor could I lose myself in reading lengthy novels and non-fiction. Thankfully, I chanced upon a small book in one of my bookcases entitled, One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each. A Japanese friend had given it to me as a hostess gift many years ago. Although its cover was in English and Japanese, the introduction was written solely in Japanese, so when I first looked at it back then, I must not have read more than a few pages into the book. I do remember being happy I was still able to read many of the hiragana syllables I had learned to recognize in my childhood!

In 2020, when I reopened this same book to its middle, I discovered Peter McMillan’s English translations of Heian-era court poetry. Alongside each was the original Japanese script running down the edge of the page. These thirty-one syllable poems arranged in five lines (tanka, formerly known as waka), brought me moments of joy and peace during the early months of mandated lockdowns. Since then, I’ve acquired the Penguin Classics edition of One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each, by the same translator—Peter Macmillan—and I’m now able to read his introduction in English, as well as his expanded notes and commentaries. I was disappointed, however, to find he’d changed the wording or arrangement of a few of my favourite tanka from that of his earlier edition. At first I couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong, but placing the two iterations of each numbered poem side-by-side, I realized I was missing the lovely, wistful cadences of his original translations.

A Continuing Interest:

During NaNoWriMo years ago, I wrote a young adult novel manuscript and included a scene in which one of my two protagonists learns that her paternal grandfather–a Japanese immigrant to Canada in the early 1900s–had written a haiku for his future bride. Was what I had imagined even plausible? I searched the Internet hoping to find a credible source that would answer my questions: Did Japanese male immigrants to British Columbia gather in haikukai–poetry circles? If so, would they have continued to do so while living in the prison camps of WWII? Would both men and women have shared their deepest feelings of loss and injustice by encapsulating them in the briefest of poetic forms? My novel manuscript received an Honourable Mention in the 32nd Atlantic Writing Competition the following year.

Thankfully, Blanca Baquero and Carole Martignacco, editors of Porch to Porch: A Maritime Haiku Anthology, ended their publication with a list of recommended books for reading. Among the references provided, one title rose to the top of my “want to read” pile—Terry Ann Carter’s Haiku in Canada: History, Poetry, Memoir. I ordered a copy of her book immediately. After reading Chapters 2 and 3, I was able to verify that the particular scene in my manuscript could very well have taken place in 1923 on the west coast of Canada.

An Interest Becomes Practice:

Buoyed by publication of my haiku in the anthology pictured above, I submitted a few of my poems to the English editions of the Asahi Haikuist Network, a curated column of the Asahi Shimbun digital newspaper. I’m happy to say that those, too, have been accepted for publication. Another was accepted by the editor of the Haiku Canada Review for the October 2024 issue, now in print and available for order. I’m grateful to be joining an international community of haiku writers located around the world, while recognizing I have a lot to learn before I become as skillful as they are in noticing and transcribing the essence of a moment—whether it be one of joy or despair, contrast or paradox—in as few words as possible.