Sabaki (lead poet) - Linda Papanicolaou
TRIPARSHVA RENKU - Post 9
SABAKI: L I N D A P A P A N I C O L A O U
POST 9
28th JUNE 2022
CHOICE OF VERSE 8
For the non-seasonal verse this time, we had a few submissions with animals that are kigo and therefore have seasons embedded in their subject matter. If you have not yet had much experience writing haiku to a required season or lack of season, it’s all part of the renku learning curve. Writing a non-season verse requires going through the online saijikis, testing every topic noun in your rough draft to make sure it’s not listed—and the various saijikis we’ve given you may often seem contradictory. In recent years, some authors in Japan have been experimenting with what they call a “muki” saijiki of non-seasoned topics. Here is an article by Richard Gilbert on this subject that you may find a useful source of ideas: https://www.gendaihaiku.com/research/kigo/04-heart-in-season.htm.
One of Marcie’s offers had a kigo that turned out to be serendipitous:
a pied crested cuckoo
on a telephone wire
From the trumpeting of elephants to news being spread on the telephone wires, it links and moves us on from the village festival. The only problem is that the pied cuckoo is a Monsoon kigo. Here’s an excerpt of its Wikipedia entry:
The Jacobin cuckoo (Clamator Jacobinus), pied cuckoo or pied crested cuckoo is a member of the cuckoo order of birds that are found in Africa and Asia. It is partially migratory and in India, it has been considered a harbinger of the monsoon rains due to the timing of its arrival.…
This species is widely mentioned in ancient Indian poetry as the chātaka. According to Indian mythology, it has a beak atop its head and it thirsts for the rains. The poet Kalidasa used it in his "Meghadoota" as a metaphor for deep yearning and this tradition continues in literary works…
The thing is, in our schema Monsoon season was not coming up for another verse. Still, Marcie’s verse, with our Monsoon and Love verses coming up, is an opportunity not to be missed. Apart from certain requirements, renku schemata are not set in stone and in fact, I had already been thinking that three non-season verses in a row were too many. So we’ll move the next four verses up a slot. Verse 8 is now our first Monsoon verse. If you’re uncertain about the revised arrangement, I have edited the schema at the bottom of this post. Here is our new verse with the two previous ones:
crackling silence as we bend
over the chess board / Sushama Kapur
caparisoned elephants
raising their trumpets amid
the village prayer beats / Lakshmi Iyer
a pied crested cuckoo
on a telephone wire / Marcie Wessels
CALL FOR VERSE 9
1. This verse will have 3 lines and two special topics.
2. The season will be Monsoon. Visit the Subcontinent Saijiki to select your kigo. Since the cuckoo is a harbinger of the monsoon season, it might be a good idea to make this verse about the actual rain—we don’t have rain yet in the renku.
3. in addition to the season, this is a special topic verse. It will be the first of a series of 3 Love verses.
ABOUT THE LOVE VERSES IN RENKU:
Love in renku does not mean love of children, friends, country, the family dog, etc. It is strictly about human sexual love and includes several subtopics related to the progression of a love affair. A list I used to have from William Higginson includes First sight of a lover, Waiting for a lover, Tryst, Absent lover, and End of the affair. Whatever selection of topics you choose, they should come in order— we don’t begin with the end of the affair.
To restate, here’s an excerpt that John Carley wrote for the New Zealand Poetry Society about the Love verses in renku:
Love verses should only deal with relationships which might find sexual expression. Therefore they feature adults. Get tactile if you like, but love verses stop short of pornographic levels of detail, or coarse suggestiveness.
Both the Edo period and contemporary renku (Shomon haikai-no-renga) do have love verses which centre on homosexual attraction or are capable of such a reading. By contrast, Japanese friends have told me how scandalised they were to read Occidental sequences that had love verses talking about children or animals, before realising that there was a very unfortunate misunderstanding at play!
Here’s another article, on how Basho handled the Love verses: https://www.basho4humanity.com/topic-description.php?ID=152595656
4. As always, link to the previous verse and shift away from the leap over verse. Here they are again:
caparisoned elephants
raising their trumpets amid
the village prayer beats
a pied crested cuckoo
on a telephone wire
5. HINT: Don’t try to cram anything else into the verse. Even with 3 lines, Monsoon and Love are plenty!
6. Before you post, do a bit of self-critique. How does it link to the previous verse? How does it shift away from the leap-over verse?
INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMITTING
Each participant may offer two submissions, posted together in the same comment, with your name as you would like it to appear in the renku. Instructions for submitting remain as last time.
The deadline is 48 hours from now. We follow Indian Standard Time (IST). This POST will go up on 28 June at 6 A.M. So on 30 June at 6 A.M, the window closes (IST). All 5th verse offers must be posted on this thread BEFORE 6 A.M on 30 June.
THE SCHEMA: NOTE ADJUSTMENTS IN VERSES 8-12 OF HA
Side one - jo
hokku summer
wakiku summer
daisan non season
4 ns
5. winter moon
6 ns
***
Side 2 - ha
7 ns
8 monsoon
9 monsoon love (we are here!!)
10 ns lv
11 ns lv
12. ns
13 ns
14 autumn
15 au moon
16 au
***
Side 3 - kyu
17 ns
18 monsoon
19 ns
20 spring
21 sp blossom
ageku - sp
THE RENKU SO FAR
1. Jo
house warming …
all the flavours of summer
on a dining table / Firdaus Parvi
a dozen ripened mangoes
from the neighbour next door / Kala Ramesh
the gleeful shouts
of street kids rolling
a bicycle tyre / Priti Aisola
an airplane through the clouds
in an indigo twilight / Margherita Petriccione
so close
the snow moon
envelops the field / Angiola Inglese
crackling silence as we bend
over the chess board / Sushama Kapur
2. Ha
caparisoned elephants
raising their trumpets amid
the village prayer beats / Lakshmi Iyer
a pied crested cuckoo
on a telephone wire / Marcie Wessels
INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMITTING
Each participant may offer two submissions, posted together in the same comment, with your name as you would like it to appear in the renku. Instructions for submitting remain as last time.
We follow Indian Standard Time (IST). This POST will go up on 28th June at 6 A.M. So on 30th June at 6 A.M, the window closes (IST). All 9th verse offers must be posted on this thread BEFORE 6 A.M on 30th June.
LINKS TO RESOURCES:
The schema for our triparshva: https://www.trivenihaikai.in/post/renku-linked-collaborative-verses
URLs for online saijikis: https://www.trivenihaikai.in/post/renku-linked-collaborative-verses-triparshva-4-1
Kondo and Higginson, “Link and Shift, A Practical Guide to Renku Composition”: http://www.2hweb.net/haikai/renku/Link_Shift.html
Ferris Gilli, “English Grammar: Variety in Renku”: https://sites.google.com/site/worldhaikureview2/whr-archives/grammar-in-renku
Richard Gilbert’s “Muki Saijiki”: https://gendaihaiku.com/research/kigo/05-muki-saijiki-TOC.htm
*** *** *** *** Linda,
Excellent post. Thanks a million for all the links and explanations.
Greatly indebted to you.
_()_