In April the Red Thread Haiku Sangha mounted our biggest project yet - a dramatic reading for several voices which was to be part of an evening's entertainment at the New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth, mounted by the celebrated Tongues & Grooves literary and music group. In the event, the sudden illness of script-writer and director George Marsh forced us to abandon - or postpone ? - this original ambitious project. Instead Ken Jones and Bill Wyatt gave readings of two of their haibun, "Going Nowhere" and "A Fistful of Frost," accompanied on the bamboo flute by the superb Chinese musician, Guor Yue (author of Music Food and Love). Prostate cancer was the subject of both pieces, and the haunting flute sound, full of desperate breath, evoked the approaching end of life with melancholy energy. An audience of some two hundred and fifty responded very well.
In October we enjoyed our tenth annual gathering at Jane Whittle's house in north Wales. Something of the flavour of this pleasant weekend house-party is evident from the following selection of haiku from the event. There were also some interesting formal discussions and readings, and much good fellowship as usual. We are open to all who are concerned to combine an interest in haiku with a contemplative spiritual practice. If this appeals to you we look forward very much to hearing from you
Ken Jones
by that nonchalant scarecrow
in her raincoat
the quiet witness
of a maidenhair fern
trembling in the wind
a dead leaf
sparkling the grey sea
a silver shoal
spilt needles of the
crooked pine
tiny birch leaves
scattered by the tilting world
George Marsh
feed in Happy Valley
for a journey
hear the swift-wing moon
cutting the wind
from everywhere
faintly glowing mist
gleams like a dove of peace
the hooknosed buzzard
a man and a woman
bury stones
Stuart Quine
Helen Robinson
names of the departed
lost to lichen
stone slotted into stone
the path gets harder now
the field's gentle trickle
the ravens' croak
a grey morning
singing at first light
brought in by the cat
each rock pool
its own Sargasso Sea
Jane Whittle
after white wave -
another short day
hunched on the shore
you - and a rock
unravelled by sunlit waves
my breath comes slowly
clenching a pale pebble
this October moon
islanded by ebbing tides
ten thousand years
licking the green bones
of an ice-age tree
Bill Wyatt
why are you wearing
that frown ?
a shooting star beneath
the harvest moon
the last skinny spider
peering at me
bidding good night to the moon -
hungover dawn
a sleepless night - even that
owl cannot bring comfort
heading for the sea - what is
it that attracts you ?
