HAIKUsutradhar: 5th July 2024

A FRIDAY FEATURE

Host: Gauri Dixit Prompter for July: Sankara Jayanth Sudanagunta

OUR MISSION

1. To provide a new poetry workshop each Friday, along with a prompt.

2. To select haiku, senryu, and haiga each month for the journal, haikuKATHA. Each issue will select poems that were posted in this forum from the 3rd of the previous month to the 2nd of the current month.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

1. Post a maximum of two verses per week, from Friday to Friday, numbered 1 & 2. Post only one haiku in a day, in 24 hours.

2. Only post unpublished verses --- nothing that has appeared in peer-reviewed or edited journals, anthologies, your webpage, social media, etc.

3. Only post original verses.

4. For each poem you post, comment on one other person’s poem.

5. Give feedback only to those poets who have requested it.

6. Do not post a variety of drafts, along with a request for readers to choose which they like most. Only one poem is to appear in each original post.

7. Post each revision, if you have any, above the original. The top version will be your submission to haikuKATHA. Do not delete the original post.

8. Do not submit found poetry or split sequences.

9. Do not post photos, except for haiga.

10. haikuKATHA will only consider haiga that showcase original artwork or photos. Post details re: the source of the visual image. If you team up with an artist or photographer, make sure that it’s their original work and that they are not restricted by other publications to share it. We won't be responsible for any copyright issues.

11. Put your name, followed by your country, below each poem, even after revisions.

Poems that do not follow the guidelines may be deleted.

Founder/Managing Editor of haikuKATHA Monthly Journal: Kala Ramesh

Associate Editors: Ashish Narain Firdaus Parvez Priti Aisola Sanjuktaa Asopa Shalini Pattabiraman Suraja Menon Roychowdhury Vandana Parashar Vidya Shankar

Our poets in RED MOON ANTHOLOGY 2024:

       1) Susan Burch, vegetables, Issue 19 (haibun)

       2) Lorraine Haig, Tasmania . . . Issue 17 (haibun)

       3) Lakshmi Iyer,  autumn's . . . Issue 18 (haiku)

       4) Linda Papanicoloau, stamp . . . Issue 16 (haiku)

       5) Padma Rajeswari, ancestral . . . Issue 24  (haiku)

Hearty congratulations to all our poets.

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PROMPT:

5th July

Sankara Jayanth Sudanagunta

Youtube Link: Mountainside Astronomy - Animation

"Chuttu pakkala choodara chinnavaada, chukkallo choopu chikkukunnavaada"

This is the first line of a song penned by Sirivennela Seetharama Sastry from the Telugu-language movie Rudraveena. The line translates to: Look around you, little one, the one whose vision is trapped looking at the stars.

The song goes on to slap us in the face, telling us how we have become lost in a quest for reaching heavens and all the trapping of wanting a better life while having let ourselves become utterly insensitive to the agony and the suffering that exists right next to us in this world.

These words will ring true for eternity and the metaphor of looking at stars while not caring for our own planet will make sense every time we look at news from around the world, starting from one’s own country. Having said that, we would go insane if we only looked at the world around us but not the stars because the world we live in is such. So let us do away with the supposed moral import of wasting time looking at stars and actually spend time looking at them. While the little dots in the sky are insignificant to us in our daily life (believers in astrology disagree, noted), we too are insignificant to these little dots that could range from being puny planets from our solar system to being gargantuan galaxies, each holding a billion stars of their own. 

The animation depicts a timelapse of the night sky as seen from Earth. Look up at the night sky and let it inspire you. Like how more stars begin to appear as you keep staring at a dark patch of sky, more thoughts and ideas would likely surface as you try to make sense of what you are seeing. Apps like “Sky Map” on our mobile phones can aid us in learning the names of stars, constellations, etc by simply pointing our phones at the sky. Do it. Write haiku or senryu from the experience of spending some time with the night sky.

Warmest

Jayanth <>

Looking forward to reading your haiku.

Write on! Gauri