HAIKUsutradhar. weekly prompts
A FRIDAY FEATURE
6th October
Host: Kala Ramesh
Group Mentor: Lev Hart
Prompter for August: Anju Kishore
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
A Quick Note: Starting with our October issue (issue 24), haikuKATHA will only consider haiga and tanka-art submissions that showcase your original artwork or photos. No more using stuff from free sites or AI-generated images, because we want you to boost your creativity!
But don't worry, we're all about collaboration. Because we know not everyone can draw or take great pictures. If you team up with an artist or photographer and we accept your work for publication, both of you will get credit for the masterpiece you've created. Make sure it’s their original work as well and they are not restricted by other publications to share them.
Just remember, it's on you to get permission from the artist/photographer before posting their stuff. We won't be responsible for any copyright issues. So, please keep these changes in mind. Have fun!
Important: Since we're swamped with submissions, and our editors are only human, mistakes can happen. Please, please, remember to put your name, followed by your country, below each poem, even after revisions. It helps our editors; they won't have to type it in, saving them from potential typos. Thanks a ton!
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 Only post unpublished verses --- nothing that has appeared in peer-reviewed or edited journals, anthologies, your webpage, social media, etc.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. With haiga, post details re: the source of the visual image.
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 ***
PROMPT:
Week 1
Repetition has the power of meditation, an ability to pull you in to the moment, and keep you there. It intensifies an image, expands the experience and lets you in on the limitlessness of things.
Brad Bennett in his essay, Repetition in Haiku, quotes poet and critic Edward Hirsch. “Meaning accrues through repetition. One of the deep fundamentals of poetry is the recurrence of sounds, syllables, words, phrases, lines, and stanzas. Repetition can be one of the most intoxicating features of poetry. It creates expectations, which can be fulfilled or frustrated.”
This week, let’s lose ourselves in the repetition of words and phrases. Let’s not forget to read them out loud. Here are a few timeless ones to get you going:
katatsuburi soro-soro nobore fuji no yama
(Issa)
climb Mount Fuji
o snail
but slowly, slowly
(The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson & Issa. Translated by Robert Hass)
the river
the river makes
of the moon
(Jim Kacian from his essay How to Haiku)
touching this crocus
as if it were the first
as if it were the last
(Michele L. Harvey, Ambrosia 3) Waiting to read your poems.
Anju Kishore.